Natalie Lue writes....
There was a moment last Friday when I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. I had been working for most of the morning and the bambino had decided to be in a super hyper mood. As she proceeded to empty out my filing, tear up my to-do list (probably wasn't going to be used anyway...), and find the crusts left from my breakfast and either eat them or sprinkle them all over my bedroom and inside the bed, I felt like hurling myself on the floor and having a toddler tantrum.
Fortunately I have a very good friend who is also a mum (or the boyf) who can have a moan to, but as I listen to Other Mothers talk about motherhood, it seems that many regard it as taboo to even suggest that the average day of parenthood isn't like a walk in the park, full of happy clappy moments where you coo and goo all day.
You only have to check out the fab True Mom Confessions to see that if you're going to bitch about your difficult day, you'd better do it on the quiet as a confessional. What the hell is wrong with us? Why do we as women like to make a rod for our backs, create dirty little secrets that don't exist, and hold ourselves up to impossibly high standards?
I've mentioned before that I live under the IDGAF (that's I Don't Give a F*ck) mentality when it comes to spending braintime on what other people who don't know me think. Failing that, I apply Ah F*ck It/Screw It which is for when I couldn't help but think about it but it's so frickin' mind numbing that I write it off by saying "Ah f*ck it!"
Now before anyone tells me off for being a mum that swears, I have cut back my swear words dramatically since pregnancy and considering that I worked in media, that is quite an achievement! Anyway...I digress...
The point is that motherhood is difficult enough without having to pretend. I can pretend for the bambino, after all, she doesn't need to know my every idiosyncrasy and mood, plus it would be unfair of me not to pretend that Santa, the tooth fairy, and other such things of childhood exist, but why the hell am I pretending for other people?
The trouble with pretending for everyone around you is that you become a crowd pleaser and it can be difficult to know when the pretence ends and the reality starts, and after a while, the lines become blurred. By constantly pretending, you make a rod for your own back and you set impossibly high standards for yourself because you end up having to maintain them or break the illusion, which in itself can be a pretty arduous task. You then have to live a secret life where the outside world thinks you're Wonder Woman, Hilary Clinton, Oprah Winfrey, and Nigella Lawson all rolled into one when really, you're just you.
You're normal, you have great day, you have sh*t days, you have catastrophic sh*t hit the fan days, and you have amazing days. You have flaws, you make mistakes, you have successes, and sometimes you just have to cock it up and chalk it up to experience. There will be days when your baby will make you laugh till tears roll down your face and days where you will feel frustrated at not being able to please them or get anything done. You'll start the day with thirty things to do and by the end of it, you'll have fifty because the day really didn't go according to plan. There are times when you'll want to bitch and it's called venting! If you don't vent, it gets trapped inside like bad wind, and you'll end up feeling irritated and resentful.
That's why I don't hold back because I have no intention of going crackers for the sake of looking like motherhood is the easiest thing on earth. I'm lucky that I have friends who have a similar mentality, who emphatically state that they don't enjoy pregnancy, that they feel like they're going around the bend some days, and that they sometimes give processed food where the 'handmade' part was the moment that they took the lid off and spooned it out.
It's because honesty breeds honesty so if you can bring your real self to the table a little more often, you give others permission to breathe out and be real themselves, which is general all-round good karma for the already weighed down sisterhood.
Of course, there will always be that ONE uptight Other Mother who would have you believe that everything is fannytastic, but let her live in her reality and you live in yours.
Natalie Lue has recently become a Mum That Works For Herself from Home and the boyf and her were peeved when the bambino decided that she wanted to 'play'...at 4am this morning!
