I'd like to say I knew what motherhood was going to be like, that I knew I'd be tired and things would be frustrating.
But when you are holding a crying baby with an unrecognisable mess exploding from the top of her nappy while your almost three year old is weeing on the carpet screaming at you to get him new pants and you can hear, over all the noise the torrential sound of food being hurled out of your pantry and being emptied on the kitchen floor by your four year old whom you only just gave two apples to after he hate four pancakes but he's "sniffing out food" because apparently you are unfair and hes starving so much he's going to die.
Or later when you have changed the bomb that went off in miss divas nappy , successfully wrangled said almost three year old into clean clothes while he's yelling at you because the shirt he wanted to wear is in the wash,
You have moved the four year old to the lounge and put on a suitably inappropriate show that you know will have him plastered to the screen while you mop up the wee from the already child mess stained carpets and your daughter is pulling your hair for stability because god forbid she not be immediately in what used to exist as your own personal space.
All of this with a pounding headache temperature and the fact that you haven't slept properly for four months because little miss post op doesn't sleep.
All of this makes you really wonder whether these rosy images are some sort of cruel joke they play on poor unsuspecting ladies whose uterus is crying out for a baby.
I can just hear in my head the ladies without children reading this now
Having quiet judgement on me
Oh I'm sure I'll have it together better than that
Pfffft that's bad parenting it's not those darling children's fault.
No, it is.
Children have this inbuilt sense, they know exactly when you are vulnerable and weak , they can smell it on you just like a wild animal can sense fear in it's prey and they use this with deadly precision as their opportunity to strike.
Leaving you with two options
To start screaming like a raving lunatic (which you later regret )
Or to just let them watch the damn TV or drink that damn lemonade JUST SO THEY SHUT UP.
Again though, the double edged sword,
all of this happened in the space of an hour.
I sit on the couch feeding miss diva to sleep and she finally succumbs and I pop her into bed.
I have a breather , hiding in my ensuite like an illegal immigrant crossing the Mexican border.
And the world is grey and you wonder how much you are messing your kids up, how much of your parenting is going to warrant hours in a therapists chair to get over, you wonder how much cleaning you can do before your brain explodes because it's a struggle keeping the house looking nice when all three of them just seem to want to make mess to annoy you. You wonder if you can curl up right there on the cold tiles which may perhaps have a splatter of mr fours wee because let's face it , he has shit aim.
I'm doing my best
I'm doing my best
I'm doing my best
They're doing their best
they're doing their best
I Just keep chanting this mantra .
I'm doing my best
They're doing their best.
You walk into the eerily quiet toy room to find both boys studiously creating a train track of epic proportions , you see their eyes light up as if you hadn't yelled at them
As if the day was fresh again and the excitement to see you were playing with them without the baby sister being needy just washed all the hassles of the morning away.
Their little quirks
The way they tell you imaginative stories
Usually filled with superheroes magic a smattering of violence and lots of bums
Just melts you.
The open arms when baby wakes and cuddles into your neck letting you know she's forgiven your hasty behaviour this morning.
These good moments they outweigh the crap.
But there is crap, and I think today we as a modern society with so many links , so many people only showing us the good things we build this huge pedestal that we put every single other mother on , but that's too high for us to see, these daunting heights are un reachable. And they aren't healthy.
Take deep breathes .
Be gentle on yourself
I'm going to try
Because these little people they are so worth it
And by god I love them with every single fibre of my being.
Much love
