This leads me nicely to my next confession (I’m on a roll here and I’ve got a feeling due to the fact you are still with me and haven’t put me down to go buy a Kit-Kat or put a wash on that our Every Mum friendship is well on its way to being cemented good and proper). If not the next bit should do the trick…
So here goes, confession No 2:
I don’t always enjoy motherhood.
I know. SHOCK HORROR! Right?
I can hear the perfect parenting vigilantes running down the road shouting ‘Burn the witch!’ right now.
However, isn’t this what we all need to hear? Doesn’t every mum need to hear the honest truth that motherhood, like everything we turn our hand to in life and similar to everything we experience (even the most magical) isn’t always enjoyable all of the time? And that it is totally OK to feel this way. In fact, totally normal and it doesn’t mean you’re a witch or a terrible mum.
Yes. I know. Big, HUGE confession to make so early in our friendship. Bear with me and I’ll tell all.
You see, pre-motherhood I had this image of the mum I was going to be and the sort of motherhood I was going to have. It was the type of motherhood I’d read about in all the magazines and on all the blogs and had seen in films. In my Perfect Mummy mind’s eye, I was happy, confident and in total control of this ship called Mother. Breezing through my new mum life, creating a perfect home, running a successful new baby business (because that’s what all new mums do right?), clad in white linen with a smiley and easy-going baby attached effortlessly to my hip and me enjoying every second of it.
But then, something happened. I pushed a tiny human out of my vagina, and ever since I’ve noticed a distinct smell of something quite different in the air.
Do you smell it too?
Since becoming a mum do you also feel surrounded by a distinct smell of shit? I do. And, the smell, my lovely new friend, is not coming from my tiny human’s nappy or the Poo Pants of Shame I stuffed in my nappy bag three weeks postpartum after accidentally pooing myself in the middle of Mothercare. (Cheers, Mother Nature, for the heads-up that childbirth runs amok with more than just your bladder).
Oh no, that smell burning in my nostrils following the birth of my first tiny human, was the distinct smell of judgmental bullshit being flung at me and other mums from every direction and sucking the joy out of my experience of motherhood. From how I was handling my pregnancy to how I gave birth. Was I bottle-feeding or breast-feeding? Was I a baby wearer? A co-sleeper? A gentle parent? A dummy lover? A baby-lead weaner? To just when exactly was my tiny human planning to crawl, walk, talk, start applying for MENSA!
And you know what? It made me sad. It made me angry. It made me want to do something!
This book in your hands is me Doing Something.
It is me making a stand for every mum out there and saying enough, is enough. Stop with all the perfect parenting propaganda. Stop with all the pressure to be the perfect mum. Stop with all the judgement thrown at mums trying to make the best decisions for themselves and their families. Just please STOP with all the perfect parenting nonsense. Please!
Instead, this book is about bathing in the beauty of own our truth. It is about us being brave. It is about owning our own crazy, beautiful, challenging, dirty, hilarious, disgusting and honest mum reality. It is us telling the world that we are mums who sometimes get it right. We are mums who sometimes make mistakes. We are mums who sometimes have our life together. We are mums who sometimes want to run away from our responsibilities like we are running from a burning building. We are mums who sometimes suffer with our mental health. We are mums who sometimes look hot and we are mums who sometimes just look like we have peeled ourselves off the local park bench after being run over by a herd of snot-wielding tiny humans. However, this is us. This is who we are. No smoke and mirrors, no airbrushing.
For every mum out there feeling lost in the wilderness of motherhood. For every mum out there feeling pressure to be the perfect mum. For every mum out there questioning why their life does not look like the parenting described in the media. For every mum suffering with their mental health. For every mum feeling like they are alone. For every mum questioning if they are a good enough mum. For every mum feeling judged. This book is for you!
I want to show every mum that you are good enough. That you are doing a good job. That regardless of whatever is going on with you right this second that you are one hell of a mum and a woman. You are magnificent. Yes, just as you are. No matter how long it’s been since you last washed your hair. No matter how short your temper is because you haven’t had more than two hours of goddam sleep. No matter how imperfect and inadequate you feel when measured up against your pre-baby vision of how life as a mum should be. Just you hold on to this fact: you are already the perfect mum for your glorious, milk-scented, chubby-legged tiny human and regardless of what motherhood throws at you:
You BLOODY ROCK!
Welcome, my friend, to the every mum revolution.
Hold on to your stitches and nappy bags; it’s going to be one hell of a ride!
IT’S TIME TO GO BACK … WAAAY BACK
So, seeing as you are still with me and haven’t been put off by my Poo Pants of Shame confession, I think it’s safe to say we are now buddies, amigos, mates, gal pals and fellow Every Mum allies. Therefore, there’s only one thing for it. It’s time for a Craig David ‘Re-Rewind’ moment to cement some fellow mum history between these sheets and find out how this mum came to think she was capable of taking care of a tiny human, let alone writing a book about it.
SHE’LL BE COMING ROUND THE MOUNTAIN WHEN SHE COMES
Being pregnant, living up a mountain in a foreign country miles away from my family and the things I cared about most in this world (namely my mum and Boots the Chemist) was not something I ever imagined when I used to flirt with the rose-tinted idea of becoming a mum in my mid-twenties.
Now, don’t get me wrong, this isn’t as treacherous or as exotic as it may first appear. The mountain was in France, not the Himalayas. It’s not as though we were living in a mountainside shack, miles away from civilisation – even though sometimes, when everything in the village shut down between the hours of 12 noon and 2 p.m. and I couldn’t go to the supermarket twenty-four hours a day it could feel like it. (Wow! Talk about First World problems!) No, it was France and the Alps – a ski resort called Morzine, to be exact. It was one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever lived and had fresh running water and an amazing health care system (albeit a ride down the mountain – the hospital not the running water).
So how the hell did I end up here I can hear you asking?
Let’s start at the beginning, shall we, and meet the pre-baby me. Let’s take a good, long look at her so we can see how far the free as a bird mighty have fallen. Hang on a second, I think I can hear her shiny Geneva heels clicking down the shiny Geneva pavement now, clicking and swooshing her way to a swanky client meeting in a swanky Swiss building. (I know, I almost can’t believe this me actually existed either!)
So, I know what you’re thinking, how the hell did the now disheveled and slightly unhinged me find herself once upon a time clicking down a shiny Swiss high street in shiny Swiss heels?
Well, it went a little something like this. My hubby, Jamie, had lived in France since a teenager and after I went on a ski holiday in his French hometown of Morzine, we were properly Cilla Blacked and hooked up by mutual friends. We were smitten from the word go – or should I say smitten from the first of many drunken snogs as we tried (and failed) to ski home from an end-of-season party on the slopes. The holiday and the snogging ended and I returned back to my life and career in marketing back in the UK. (Yes, I once was a functioning member