Skip to main content

On motherhood and...Tiredness


Tiredness is…
Emptying a can of sweetcorn into a sieve in the sink, before realising the sieve is upside down.
Walking down the ridiculously steep hill you live on, feeling quietly proud of yourself for getting the baby in the sling and all her bits and bobs in a bag, then remembering you’ve forgotten to put your own coat or jumper on.
Locking yourself out of the house with the baby inside (not quite as bad as it sounds – see previous post).
Forgetting to invite one of your best friends to your birthday.
Making it to the Post Office 0.5 miles from your house and feeling like Captain Oates.
Being so bad tempered that you tell the cat to fuck off.
Also, envying the cat for sleeping so much.
Having utterly nonsensical arguments that go something like this:
You: I’m so sad I can’t leave the house tomorrow to meet X because the baby has a cold.
Them: Not to worry, you can always rearrange.
You: WHY ARE YOU ALWAYS TELLING ME OFF?
Consuming three bowls of cereal, three biscuits and three cups of tea for breakfast, adding sugar to all but the biscuits. Food is fuel.
Realising you actively hate inanimate objects, especially the car seat.
Pioneering new recipes, such as ‘fish finger Caesar salad’
Crying at ‘Ant and Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway’.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

On motherhood and...Boarding life

One of these days, someone will say to me "Remember that time you decided it was a good idea to take a residential job in a boarding school with a toddler and C working (more than) full time and then you nearly had a nervous breakdown?" and I will be able to smile wryly. At the moment, the ongoing catastrophe that has been my work/life balance since January 2018 is still very much too close for comfort, or any wry smiling. Flash back to June 2017, and the logic is pretty damn logical. I am about to return to work, with just the school summer holidays between me and a four-day-a-week teaching job, located 40 minutes from Brighton. I am asked whether I would be interested in a promotion - and it's a promotion that comes with accommodation on site. I LEAP at the chance. No mortgage, no commute, the chance to save - and of course the actual desire to learn more, the ambition to be more senior within the school, and the chance to develop my pastoral skill set which I had ...

On motherhood and...The Conspiracy of Silence

I have had the great privilege recently of knowing not one but two families in the early stages of raising twins. Obviously I can’t speak for them – I can’t even imagine the complexity of such a mammoth task – but one thing I do know, because they have told me, is that it is hard. One friend, when I saw her last week, told me she was deliriously happy but also felt she had no understanding of quite how tough it was going to be. Partly because nobody  really  told her what to expect. I was chatting to the parents of some friends about this (who have also raised twins) and we were thinking about the nature of advice, and how every new mother feels, somehow, like they didn’t really know what to expect and that they could have been better forewarned / forearmed. This is such a predominant theme among new parents, and I have heard variations on it (and said it myself) a zillion times. Why wasn’t I warned? How could I feel so unprepared? Why did I go in blind? Why wasn’t this ...

On motherhood and...Pressing the button

There is a button, introduced to me by my friend Simon, which I use more and more the deeper I get into maternity leave. It is not a real button, it’s a metaphorical one, but I still imagine it as big and red, and making a satisfying ‘thunk’ when activated. This is the charmingly-named ‘fuck it’ button, and you use it to keep yourself sane. For example… Scenario 1: The door bell rings. You pick the baby up. The baby suddenly does a poo of such velocity that it miraculously leaps from her nappy and down her leg, from whence it travels all down your boob and also your leg and, somehow, a bit of your hair. When to activate the button: You’re still going to have to answer the door, so you press the button and use the baby as a human shield to cover up both her and your own pooey state. This exacerbates the clean up operation no end, but at least you look clean when you open the door to the Yodel guy. Scenario 2: You and the baby go swimming, you are delighted with how much she lov...