I was a really good mum, before I had kids...

I must admit I have stolen this blog topic off another 'Kiwi Mum' blogger, but it was too good not to share. If you haven't already, you should have a look at this website. It pretty much sums up everything I feel right now. Prior to having my son I had all these grand ideas about "what sort of mum I will be". I have included below a checklist, of sorts, to give you a better idea:

• Every day I will make a "plan" of new and exciting things we can experience together, to enhance the learning.
• We will go for long walks each day, discovering new adventures along the way.
• We will do fresh baking each day.
• There will be no 'tinned' baby food & everything will be natural and organic.
• Although we are parents, my partner and I will continue to go out on regular dates and make time for one another
• Saturday (my partner's day off) will be "family day". No chores, just playing together and going on adventures as a family.

Anyway, that is just a brief "taste" of the kind of mother I was going to be. Below is a list of how it has actually worked out.

• It is impossible to really "plan" for anything as at the last minute, things change. Any time I make a plan in advance, my son with either be sick, teething or do the poo explosion from 'nam as soon as we arrive. On the one day I have forgotten nappies and wipes.
• Some days I don't even leave the house, or (for that matter) shower/get changed out of my PJs. I cannot even go to the toilet any more without a little person watching my every move.
• I am an awful baker. No matter how hard I try (which admittedly isn't that hard, as I said earlier "lethargic sloth") everything tastes like cardboard or bricks. And my son would rather smear the dough into the carpet than "help".
• Sometimes my son will have luncheon & tomato sauce sandwiches. This is on the days where I can't find the can-opener to serve his canned meat delicacies. Chicken in a can. Win.
• When my partner comes home from work, we often sit on different couches. We take turns at going on facebook, and can go for days without communicating about anything other that parenthood or work.
• Saturdays I spend grumbling around the house, muttering about how my partner doesn't help with the housework. I can count on one hand the number of proper "family adventures" we have been on together. Ever.

Okay, so I might be over-exaggerating a little, but I'm sure you get the point. Basically noone can prepare you for parenthood. Any pre-baby warning from other parents basically goes down like a cup of cold sick. If I could go back and tell pre-baby me one thing, it would be "just go with it". No-one really knows what they're doing anyway. Who cares if you spend days without showering? Hygiene is overrated. I'm not super-mum and I never pretend to be. I don't believe such a person actually exists. Facebook is filled with trumpet-blowers (another great example can be found on STFU Parents website) and I know that I too have been guilty of this. 

Seriously though, I wouldn't want my 'proudest moments' to be that "I just did 5 loads of washing, went to the shops, baked 10cakes, cleaned the entire house, took the kids for a walk & got a brazillian...all before 11am!", and if they were my proudest moments then I certainly would feel too tragic and embarrassed to broadcast them to the world! What's next? "I woke up, I gave my son breakfast, I had breakfast, I brushed his teeth, I brushed mine, I put him down for a nap, I showered, I got dressed...etc" ? It is, however, deemed socially unacceptable to create a status update saying something along the lines of  "I stuggled not to run away from it all today", but in reality that is how most of us feel at some point! What I guess I'm trying to ask (in a roundabout kind of way) is why people (myself included) feel the need to pretend that they're supermum? Surely it should be okay to just say the truth? I know I found it ridiculously hard when my son was first born, but all the other mums would be saying "oh mine sleeps like a dream"and "breastfeeding is wonderful" etc... When (as I later found out) none of the 'angel babies' were actually sleeping through the night, and all of them had cracked-bleeding nipples from failed latching. It is ridiculous!

I realise I have gone off on a little rant there, so my apologies for that... I tend to get carried away (I refer to my previous post in which I did explain that I was a Butterfly).

My point actually was: I don't want to be proud that I have baked 10cakes & run a marathon before breakfast. I don't want to be proud that I have survived another day. I want to be proud that I have achieved something amazing and made an impact on the world. I want to be proud that my son didn't stop laughing for 10minutes because I didn't do the dishes and we had a tickle-fest instead. I want to be proud that I got off my arse and didn't spend every spare second bitching about how 'unfair' life is, and questioning where my big break was coming from. I want to be proud that instead of waiting for life to happen, I have made it happen. I just want to be happy!

Over & Out.