I Have a Dream....

‘...a song to sing. To help me cope with anything’.

Anyone else hear this in their head when they think about having a dream? Especially the Amanda Seyfreid version from Mama Mia. No? Just me then, I guess. Move along, nothing weird here.

This movie is perfect to me, every single time.
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I have a dream occasionally that one day I’ll wake up completely put-together.

You know what I mean, don’t you? Flawless hair, impeccable dress sense and mad skills with makeup, yes. 

But beyond that (and aside from it, really) I dream fervently about being the mum who does it all flawlessly. The mum who breezes out of bed, readies her husband and sends him to work smiling with a belly full of homestyle cookin’ and a lunchbox full of healthy homemade snacks, prepares the kids for school/daycare – again with the excellent food. Cruises to school with all homework complete, helps out in the canteen, comes home and plays with the baby undistractedly for hours. The mum who spends naptime giving her sparklingly clean house a quick once-over and then has a lunch date with friends before going to school pickup and heading home to prepare a thoughtfully planned, nutritionally beneficial meal, clean and tuck in her kids before relaxing with her husband. I dream of doing it all alone, with no snags or flaws, and without tears of pleas for help.

I’m not that mum. If she exists, I want to know about it, because I want to pull her perfectly-coiffed hair and tell her she’s a liar.

This bitch... seriously.
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My dream isn’t going to come true. I’m the mum who isn’t getting out of bed at 5am to get her husband ready for work (seriously, he’s on his own there). I’m the mum fighting the kindergartner to eat her breakfast while the baby flings porridge at my head, at the same time realising we forgot the reader last night and I’ve run out of lunch muffins. I’m the mum who remembers canteen duty 20 minutes before it starts, on a day when I don’t have a babysitter ready. The mum who’s barely left her house in weeks, and hasn’t had a social life in months. I’m the mum who realises at 6pm that she hasn’t defrosted dinner and makes bacon and egg salad, before skipping bathtime and sending the kids to bed so I can have a quick reprieve before the baby wakes.

Maybe if I had animal helpers and a Fairy Godsomeone...
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My heart wishes my kids had the perfect mum. The one who never misses appointments, who reads endless stories every night and who takes them on educationally enriching, yet entertaining trips every weekend. But my head knows the truth about me and the truth about my kids. My head knows that I get to watch them grow, and be their mummy, and that's enough. My head is grateful.

I’m never going to be the put together mum, because it’s not me. I’m the slightly scatty mum wearing yoga pants everywhere. But I’m also the only mum my kids have. I’m the one who kisses their scrapes, smooths away their troubles, plays games with them, cuddles them every single night and generally takes care of them. I’m the one who makes sure they never go hungry, even if occasionally they eat a 2 minute noodle omelette. I’m the one who will always be there. 

I may not be the perfect mum, and how the hell can I be? She’s a myth! But I’m their perfect mum, put together just enough for them. A dream is just a fantasy. I should just be happy I do the best I can. Because in reality? I do OK.

'I'll cross the stream, I have a dream.'

  I'm linking this post with Musings of the Misguided for this week's The Lounge, and also with A Parenting Life for Thankful Thursday. Pop over to visit and find some more fab blogs to read?

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Just a Few Hours

I experienced Mummy Nirvana on Saturday. 

At 8am, I jumped out of bed, did my makeup, got dressed, jumped in the car….and left my kids and husband at home. For 5 hours.

It….was…BLISS!

As mums, I know we’re not really meant to admit that running away is our fantasy, but be honest, occasionally we all have that dream of being single and kid-free. Saturday was the closest I’ll ever come to living that dream, and I’m not ashamed to say that I loved every second of it. 

Here’s the honest to goodness truth: I went out to do the groceries. A few months ago, Husbeast and I did the sums and worked out that if we go to the nearest major shopping town 45 minutes away and make use of Aldi, the green grocers and she bulk butchery, it’s cheaper even with the travel costs than doing our grocery shopping at the local Woolworths, so these days we head there a minimum of once a fortnight. Normally, we all go together on a Sunday, but after two weeks of school holidays I’d had about enough. I needed a few hours on my own, and so Husbeast was on parenting details with no choice.

For those curious, I wrapped it up in the big pretty bow of ‘the Easter Bunny needs to finish shopping and he can’t do it with Boo watching’. Why yes, I am a genius.

I wanted to play my music loud in the car and sing at the top of my lungs. I wanted to buy clothes, and browse Priceline for a few choice makeup items. I wanted to be the one picking Boo’s clothes without her arguing and wanting trashy crap I wasn’t willing to pay for. I wanted so badly not to change a nappy, make a bottle, have an argument or say ‘No, I’ve already said no to that!’ for just a few hours! Is that so wrong?

Apparently so.

I got Mummy shamed for my time away. The disgruntled Aldi guy (why are they so damn sour? The get it better than a LOT of other supermarket workers!) asked why I looked so happy to be grocery shopping. I told him that I was relaxing and having some kid-free time and got told (by the lady behind me) that ‘your children are a blessing, be thankful for them and not for being without them’. It took all my strength to reply with a reserved ‘they’re spending time with their Daddy so Mummy can relax.’

How very dare she? When did being a mother mean I ceased being a person with needs? Why can’t I have, and relish, a few hours away without being made to feel guilty? My kids were safe and looked after, Husbeast was happy to be with them and I needed that time out. It recharged my batteries so I can be a good mother for another few weeks.

What I wanted to say to the lady and her opinion was ‘Go fuck yourself. Until you live my life don’t you judge my choices, how dare you?’ I wanted to detail the assorted school holiday tantrums, the teething, crawling, standing and falling dramas, the ins and outs of separated parenting and my manipulative, slightly unpleasant stepson and make her understand that my job is hard as fuck and I deserve a rest. But I didn’t. Four years ago, as a very young, very single mother, I would have. But now, I know that her archaic opinion doesn’t matter. She’s from a different time, and it’s possibly a very, very long time since she was a stay at home mother. Likely she never had step-drama or chronic illness and me unloading on her isn’t going to open her eyes or mind, it’d just waste my breath and upset me. 

Instead, I took a deep breath, said ‘thankyou’, paid for my groceries and came home to love on my kids and husband. And as I drove home, singing at the top of my lungs, I reminded myself of one thing:

It’s not selfish to take a few hours for yourself. It’s necessary.

It's Tuesday and I'm joining up with Essentially Jess for I Blog On Tuesdays. Pop over and read a few of the other awesome blogs linked there!

Still so Tiny

I’m a mess of emotions as I write this. Overwhelmed, worried, tired....more that I can’t think of the names of (see the third emotion).

For weeks now, Diddy has been breastfeeding pretty constantly. Out of each 24-hour period, maybe 6 of them have been spent without a baby attached to my breast. I’ve told myself that this was OK, because I was giving her the very best start in life. Visits to the Maternal and Child Health nurse were showing she wasn’t putting on much weight, but I figured any gain was good, and kept on keeping on. I was expressing and topping up occasionally, but mostly to relieve blocked ducts.

Yesterday morning, we had a 7-week weight checkup which showed my beautiful girl has gone two weeks without any weight gain at all. She’s growing tall, but not fat. As of Wednesday, she’s only 230grams over her birth weight. Not good at all, I’m totally aware.

For weeks, people have been looking at her and going ‘she’s still so tiny!’ and I’ve told myself that it was ok, sometimes breastfed babies are small. But everytime someone says it, it’s niggled at me and later on I’ve been teary about it.

Turns out, a massive dose of oral thrush has hit my poor baby, making it painful for her to suck and affecting her little body so much. It’s been 3 weeks since I noticed the white around her mouth, but I was sure it was just milky residue on the skin. No-one else was telling me to be concerned, so it was OK, right? Apparently not. She’s got blisters around her beautiful lips, and her ineffective sucking hasn’t been getting all the good stuff out of me.

Did you hear that? Pretty sure my heart breaking was audible around the world.

Yesterday, the tears fell all day. I felt inadequate. I’d been starving my baby and her sweet, content nature and my demand-feeding philosophy meant I’d been missing it for weeks. It was time to put a plan in place. Now, I’m breastfeeding, followed by a bottleful of expressed milk. Once a day, if needed, I’ll give her a formula feed, just to make sure her tummy stays nice and full. I’ve been avoiding formula, but last night when Husbeast gave her the bottle, she was ‘milk drunk’ for the first time in weeks. She was so content and satisfied, and I can’t deny my baby that happiness, especially not when she’s still getting all the good stuff I have to offer.

I’ve started treating the hideous thrush, I’m pumping after every feed (surely the Medela Swing is a gift from some higher entity? AMAZING) and I’m making sure my baby is full, happy and on the way to recovering from a crappy few weeks. It breaks my heart that it took me so long to realise something was wrong.

Yesterday, I was forced to admit something was wrong with me, too. Not just sleep deprivation (though that’s sure as hell not helping), not hormones and not my run-of-the-mill anxiety. Yesterday I admitted out loud that this time around I’ve been hit with Post-Natal Depression. 

I’m scared, I’m sad, I’m angry and I’m exhausted. But mostly I’m relieved to finally know what’s going on with my baby, why she’s ‘still so tiny’ and be working to fix it. I’m relieved to have admitted something serious is up and be taking steps to fix it. I’m glad I got there before I did something to hurt myself or either of my precious babies. And I’m glad that, even though she’s skinny, my tiny baby is still developing. She smiles now, and no matter how crappy I feel, when she hits me with that huge, gummy grin, I know I’m doing something right.

I'm back!!

It’s been a LONG hiatus. Much, much longer than I ever intended, but it was necessary.

Over the past few months, life has been overwhelming me. Nothing particularly huge has gone on, over-all (there have been moments!), but the sheer fact of getting out of bed each day, mothering my kids and keeping my house has driven me to a very dark place, which I haven’t felt like sharing with everyone.

I love blogging. It’s cathartic, it allows me to organise my own thoughts and air the views I can’t be bothered putting on social media outlets because I get annoyed when people hate on me for having an opinion. I like the thought that I’m reaching people, that I’m not alone. But I didn’t want to share my dark place, because none of you deserve that. No one in the world deserves to be party to the self-loathing, despair and bile I’ve waded through the past couple of weeks (months) and I’ve tried my hardest not to share with anyone.

My husband and kids, sadly, cannot avoid it all the time, but mindful of their love, their support and the fact that they don’t deserve it, I dish it out very little. Same with my friends. They know I’m sad, moody and very unpleasant, but self-restraint on my part has meant that they know only fractions of the bites the Big Black Dog takes from my soul, and that’s more than they need to know. I’m trying, in my own ways, to be the kind of person they deserve.

Big things have happened the past few weeks (months). Happy things, including finding out the sex of our tiny person and said tiny person being incredibly healthy, O learning to write her own name and spell it out loud, a wonderful honeymoon for B and I. Sad things, including losing our beautiful friend Katherine to the epic cancer that’s been eating her body and the realisation that I’m probably going to need a C-Section for the birth of our tiny person. All of these things have come with their own set of emotions, whether positive or not so, and each one, in its own way, has taken some of my rather limited energy. 

I’m working my way through all of my stuff, and I’m finally ready to re-join the blogosphere, hopefully with a happy outlook on life. Hope you’ll jump back aboard for the ride!!

What a great day to start back up!! It’s Flog Yo’ Blog Friday over at With Some Grace!

JUST a Stay at Home Mum

For years now, I’ve bought into the idea that it’s somehow a bad thing to be just a stay-at-home mother. Since O was very small, I’ve piled myself up with extra activities, convinced by the childless and the naysayers that I wasn’t doing enough if I just enjoyed being a Mummy to my child. I gave in to social stigma, ignoring warnings from doctors and family, convinced that I was a superwoman with the power to do it all.

I tried to be her. Turns out I was going the wrong way about it.

When O was tiny, I worked at a local business doing payroll and administrative tasks, before finding I wasn’t handling the pressure of having to be dressed like a human and out of the house three times a week. Then, I took on a Certificate in Business Administration, because I was told it would be valuable. I involved myself in small jobs here and there, telling myself that it would be good for O to have a mummy who was making something of herself. All the time, I was neglecting O, who was relegated to daycare, and sending my body and mind into a turmoil of exhaustion and depression and feeling awful for being ‘not enough’.

I have to interject here that I love, and always have loved, my daughter. She has never gone without anything, and has always been my gorgeous baby. Neglect probably isn't the best word, but it fits.

Just after O turned one, my boyfriend at the time convinced me to start a photography business. He told me he would help me with setup costs, and that I needed to do something more than being ‘just a mum’. I began this business in 2010, working hard to produce images my clients would love. It worked reasonably well for me, I loved the work. But all the time my house was turning into a disaster, and I was getting more and more tired and overwhelmed. I lived alone with a small child, just mobile enough to create a disaster zone and the split focus of mothering, housekeeping and work was sinking me further into the pit. But still I slogged on.

When I moved in with said boyfriend, the pressure to succeed got greater. He figured he had started his own business at 21, why couldn’t I manage? It was hard not living up to his expectations, so I pushed harder. I was with O as much as I could be, and when I wasn’t I was working or cleaning the house, constantly falling down on one count or the other, because it was just too much. At the same time, I was completing a certificate in adult training and education, teaching photography and computer skills classes three times a week and increasingly becoming the shoulder that friends leaned on when things got tough. I did all of this with a smile on my face. At the time, if I complained of exhaustion or misery, boyfriend would admonish me and I finally stopped complaining, my dissatisfaction instead eating at me. He didn’t clean or cook, that was all up to me, as was parenting of O. After all, why should he do anything? I was living in his house (paying an exorbitant amount of ‘board’ as well as food and bills) and he had helped me start my business, so I should show my gratitude by looking after him. And O wasn’t his, she was my responsibility. I told myself all of this, knowing that was the prevailing attitude in my house.

In late 2011, convinced that my dissatisfaction was due to a hole in my life, I took on a university degree. I’ve always wanted to be a counsellor and began studying Social Work full-time, adding further pressure to each day. Pretty simultaneously, I came to the realisation that I wasn’t happy where I was. In fact, I’d been backed against a wall for months, pushing myself to the limit to satisfy someone I didn’t particularly like much anymore, and probably hadn’t in a very long time. Someone who seemed to derive power from my tears, exhaustion and misery. During my first semester break, I made the decision to leave, and on Boxing Day 2011, O and I moved in with some close friends who had a spare room in their share house situation.

Just after leaving. Happiest we'd both been in a LONG time!

Since then, I have met and married (in rapid succession) my soul mate, B. Every day, he reinforces with me that I’m pushing too hard, that my responsibility is to look after myself, my child, my family and my home. I’ve pulled back from my business a lot in the past year, and at the end of March I’ll be closing operations entirely for an indefinite period. I’ve finally been diagnosed with the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome that I’ve undoubtedly had for several years now. I’ve been through several small jobs, but have left them all when my limit has been reached. I’m appreciating my daughter more with each day that I allow myself to be her mum and to feel the joy of that privileged position. Today, I applied for leave from university. I plan to use my credits to fast-track a TAFE certificate in Counselling in my own time. I never wanted to be a Social Worker, and I’m learning to accept ‘good enough’.

This guy... he saved me.

I still push myself a little too hard most days, but I’m learning. These days, I listen to the people who tell me how important my role as a mother is, rather than worrying about being just a mum. I laugh with my kids. I enjoy my husband (mostly). I commit to my friends, but I’m learning to say ‘no’ when I just can’t cope or when their issues are impacting on me and my family too much. I’m not running away from my life anymore, I’m accepting that the role I can’t escape is my most important.

Yes, I’m just a stay-at-home mum. But you know what? I couldn’t be happier.

How could this ever not be enough?

It's Tuesday, guys. Therefore, I Blog on Tuesdays with Essentially Jess