Life's about film stars and less about mothers

As a wise philosopher once said "Life's about film stars and less about mothers." Or was that Lilly Allen? Anyway, I connect with these lyrics; I connect with the notion that mothers are made to feel less significant than celebrities. Mothers are low in social importance because, contrary to film stars, no one sees what they do. No one wants to know how many nappies you've changed today, or the monotony of how often you've rocked your child to sleep, or how many times you've cleaned up the food spat out from the several attempts at cooking and feeding him something he will actually agree to eat. No one applauds you or gives you an oscar for your dramatic depiction of a mad woman pulling her hair out at 3:30am (oh no, wait, that was real). 

I sometimes refrain from telling people I'm a 'mum' in case they don't take me seriously. I'm not sure where this comes from, but maybe it's the way people seem to talk about the aspirations they want to achieve before they "settle down and have kids" (What part of having kids is 'settled' I'll never know). There is a notion banded around the place that once you have kids you will have achieved all you want to do in life, you will put away your party dresses, put your career to bed and disregard any temptation to engage in fashion, hobbies or intelligent conversation. This, ladies, is why at 35 you are still wondering if you will ever feel ready to have children and the answer is no you won't. You won't because no one is ever going to feel ready to give up the things that are important to them, the things that bring them life or their passion for their career. 

It's interesting then, that since I've become a mother I socialise more, I have taken up new hobbies and I am more passionate about my career than ever before. Having Albie has given me a drive for life that I've not had previously - my time is limited, so I spend it doing the things I really want to do. My house may look a tip, but it's full of art and photography, poetry and music. Having a child makes you realise what's really important to you and I can guarantee you this: there's nothing like the challenge of looking after one to test your goals and dreams. If your passions are genuine then you will always find room for them in your life, your house may just resemble H&M after the January sales but hey, I won't judge you for it.

What I struggle with most is trying to juggle the things I do. I have to constantly decide which is the most important task, from the menial: 'put make up on or brush my son's teeth', to the major: 'look after my child or go to work'. I am often expected to arrange childcare at the drop of a hat because, obviously, if I'm a career woman working extra hours should come before my child, right? If I can't manage to arrange childcare last minute I am letting down an important client and may be seen to be unprofessional, but if I do go into work I am giving up my only 'son and mum' time and I'm also having to pay a day's nursery fees for what can often be just an hour's meeting. Actually, I can't blame them, they're just trying to do business on their terms, but here's how I do things on mine: I am committed to my work and I am committed to my son. I have no legal contract for either, but if I did here's the deal: my time with Albie is important, I will not get that time back. Ever. It may be an hour's meeting, or replying to an email or ringing a client on my days 'off' but contrary to what everyone else thinks, I do not have days off, I just have days on with lots of things, one of which is my son. My 'role' on those days is to give him undivided attention, not to stress solving work problems whilst he's clawing at me to build a giant donkey out of lego (yes, it was a challenge).

I guess my point is that it doesn't matter if people think your role as a mum is unimportant. Let them. There will always be people who care more about film stars and less about mothers. There will always be people who speak of full time mums as 'just house wives'. These people just express that they have no fundamental understanding of how raising children well will make a difference to the future of our country, let alone the health and wellbeing of just one child. 

There will also always be those who think mothers shouldn't have careers. Let them. These people have no fundamental understanding about the value of teaching children independence and forming healthy relationships with others. These people have no understanding that people need space from one another and that both mother and child may actually benefit from spending time apart and investing in the things that bring individual fulfilment. 

There will also always be those who think that you cannot be taken seriously in your career because you're a mother. Let them. I've had people tell me that women just screw companies over by getting pregnant and taking maternity leave, that it's 'okay for women' and it's the 'poor men' that are left to run the businesses. I'll tell you what, I'll do you a swap - you carry a melon for 9 months and then try to juggle everything whilst you hope to recover: your child's health and well-being, your home and housework, your career, your health and fitness, your appearance, your relationships. For a mother to be sat at a work desk at 9am on a monday morning means she's pretty damn committed to being there, else she would not have made the effort to dress the equivalent of a wriggly, whinging octopus at 7am.

When all's said and done, you are the only person responsible for your happiness; you are the one who chooses what to pick up and what to put down. You can't blame your boss if you work too many hours, you agreed to it. You can't blame your child if you've not got time for your hobbies, you set the boundaries. While you may think me unimportant compared to Angelina Jolie or Brad Pitt, I can tell you that when I'm doing my Lord Farquaard impression, my son thinks I'm the best film star around. And that makes me pretty damn important.

Tweet

To be or not 'two' be: The decision for no.2.

When I got married people frequently asked me one of two things; the first being 'how do you feed the guy who once ate 34 slices of pizza at Pizza Hut all-you-can-eat?' and secondly 'when are you going to have children?'

If you're married you'll know how irritating that is and people will never leave you alone until the day you go through childbirth itself. People will then give you a bit of a break to recover and leave you to get used to parenting for a day or two until they ask you the next question 'When's number two?' This question was asked me three times within the first week of giving birth to my son which I took as extremely insulting, given what they knew I had just experienced.

People have asked me for a long time now the 'when' of number two, as though it would never really be an option for me to stick with just one. I don't mind people asking 'if', it's that 'when' word that is very presumptuous. These loaded questions make me feel, well, a little inadequate. I start wondering what went wrong when God handed out the 'motherly instinct' genes and I question why I'm left with a feeling of deep dread in the pit of my stomach at the sheer thought of a screaming baby in my arms. 'You will know when the time is right,' they all say. 

As Albie approaches his third year people have gradually stopped asking me those loaded questions and the piles of tiny baby grows that I kept for 'number two' are forming dust in my cupboards. I should be pleased that I'm off the hook, but I wince every time I give something of Albie's away, like I can see my idillic family of 2.4 children slowly trickling down the drain. I cling onto a few things 'just in case' because that feeling will come, right? I wait for the day that I 'forget' about childbirth like everyone says, but 3 years later it's still nearly as raw.

I used to wonder why people only had one child, I could never understand it. I never in a million years thought that would be me. I never in a million years thought I would be desperate, not for children, but for the feeling of wanting them. I meet women who speak so excitedly about the thought of having more children and it makes me think I have missed something somehow, like there's something intrinsically wrong with me. Worse still, I'm weirdly jealous. I'm jealous because they will have what I always 'wanted', or thought I did. 

Then I'm left with the guilt. There are people who tell me that it's selfish to have just the one child (which I often think is a very selfish thing to say in itself), as though I've made this decision all about me. There's actually not really a day I don't think about it, torturing myself that if I leave it another year there will be too big an age gap for them to be playmates, and if I have one now I will have a nervous breakdown and wreck my whole family anyway.

Smug mothers look at me puzzled when I say I'm unsure about number two, as their angel baby lies quietly in the corner making the odd coo and smiling blissfully. It's that lack of understanding that makes it all so hard - of course they don't mind having another if their baby only wakes once a night and they haven't experienced the joys of colic. Please don't think I'm weird but after holding a screaming child for several hours a day I'm ready to cut my losses at one.

But time does heal and I love being a mum to my terrible two year old, he is a handful but a very wonderful one. I wouldn't swap him; he is determined, he knows his own mind, he is very, very bright and, most of all, very loving. We have done well to have him in our lives, to get him this far without chucking him out of the window. We've done well to come out the other side and feel no less frazzled, but all the more fulfilled. We'd do anything for him, have another baby, even, except for the fact that when I asked him the question he scrunched up his little face and said 'don't like babies'. You and me both, kid.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this subject too...

Blog update

I've obviously been writing for quite a while based on my diary entries from when my son was born. This was originally inspired by the diary I kept at the time and I thought it would be great to write these up as an honest depiction of what life was like with a newborn. Well, now he is 2 and a half and those diary entries seem a very long time ago and although I have thoroughly enjoyed writing them up I have come to a point where I need to write more in the present (or at least not so distant past). Hopefully by writing up his first 3 months you've got an idea of the highs and lows of being a new parent but now I'm going to write up what it's like to be living with a toddler! I hope you enjoy :)

On guard!

based on diary entry 25/4/11 (Albie 3 months)

I know we're supposed to have evolved from monkeys but seriously, according to the size of them, you'd think Boots chemist were supplying nipple guards to King Kong's 'Mrs'. Obviously I'll try anything at the moment to make my life a little easier but surely we've evolved enough to know that placing thick plastic between the baby and the baby's food is not doing anyone any favours. I mean, can you imagine if condoms were that thick? I don't think they would be in the shops two minutes before a scientist found a solution, but apparently us breastfeeding women aren't high up on the priority list. Maybe breastfeeding was never supposed to be about pleasure and closeness, maybe it's just a case of simply functioning - we provide a service; we merely need the basics. Once we're done with all this baby stuff we can go back to immersing ourselves in lotions from the Clarin's counter in John Lewis, we can do things like comb our hair and wear lipstick... but until then, ladies, you are mere milk machines. 

I tried a pair of these contraptions today whilst attempting to feed Albie. His face was an absolute picture - like, hey mum that's not my food?! He cried and fussed (nothing new) but then he proceeded to suck so hard that the nipple guards started to disappear into his mouth. I had visions of rushing him to a&e to get his stomach pumped. Maybe then they could see just how large his stomach is and just how much milk he can actually fit in there, because I swear he's an anomaly (not that I would ever wish for such an experience!).

So I gave up on the nipple guards. I gave up on trying to breast feed him in the night because it was taking over an hour each time and I was just so tired. At least Neil could take over when I needed and get some rest. 

"You're worth it, love".

Based on diary extract 23/03/11 (Albie 2 months)

My mum used to try and warn me when I was a teenager of how hard it is to have children. This would inevitably lead to a discussion about various negative post-natal body changes (which at the time seemed far worse to me than a baby crying several times a night). Not that my mum ever thought I was trying to get pregnant at the age of 16, but I guess there's always that worry in every parent's head that their children will decide to take on parenting that little bit too soon and, well, 'wreck' their lives. I think she put me off that little bit too much because I still remember those discussions decades later and it took a lot for me to decide to have a child and risk the inevitable stretch marks. She did, however, always end our discussions with 'you're worth it though, love'.
Years later, during my pregnancy, I would look in front of the mirror and see my belly getting bigger and bigger. I actually liked it - like a perverse infatuation with what my body was capable of (in this instance, looking like some sort of giant butternut squash with little legs peeking out the bottom). I found the whole experience funny, like it was some sort of game. Admittedly I was very blessed with good hormones during my pregnancy and what would normally have freaked me out I took in my stride, albeit a very clumsy one. I was very very lucky to have had such a good pregnancy, and maybe it was fitting that I should have such a horrible birth to compensate all those ladies cursing me with their morning sickness, like some sort of sick karma. Yes, that's really how I think sometimes.
Don't worry, I won't go into the birth story again, but it took everything out of me. For the first time in my life I wanted to die, call me pathetic but it's true. I felt a mixture of disappointment, pain, frustration and then the joy of seeing my baby for the first time. I've been through a mix of emotions and I feel emotionally and physically exhausted. I'm no good on no sleep. I've battled with a change of identity, feelings of failure and guilt and even anger. I feel like I sometimes can't cope, especially when I don't know why he's crying. I hate feeding him. To top it off I have a little pot belly.
I've had serious doubts as to whether I should've had children. Don't get me wrong, I have felt a special bond with Albie from day one - a love like no other - but it's almost been too much for me to cope with. I think that maybe he should've been born to a stronger woman, to someone more capable. That feeling of it all being worth it was so far removed for me.
Today, however, Albie has been on particularly good form (always helps) and he smiled at me all day. Neil and I took him out for lunch and he was as good as gold as we sat outside the cafe and had a bite to eat in the glorious sunshine. I suddenly felt incredibly blessed - it finally hit me like a tonne of bricks.  I felt lucky to have this little person in my life, this little monkey was worth it. Yes, he is. For the first time in two months I picked him up and honestly said 'You're worth it, love.'