Where did my confidence go?

Its one of those nights where I can't sleep for the buzzing of my 'to-do' list pinging round my head; ironically, I don't think I've felt this tired in months.  Smallest Boy sleeps through and has done since he was around 5 months (no smugness intended - this was nothing whatsoever to do with my parenting skills) and Small Boy, although wearing, has been calm and collected all night until his 7pm bedtime.  At which point he took no time at all to choose a story and then to drag Dad upstairs to read it, leaving me with my hot (yes - you read that correctly) cup of tea and my iPad.

So, what is going on?

Well, I've realised over the past few weeks that the things I used to be good average at have sort of disappeared.  Don't get me wrong, I've never claimed to be the world's best socialiser, or the most committed and diligent of employees (although I have certainly tried) but lately, if I was to be given a score out of 10 for either of these things I think I'd achieve around a 2 when previously I'd like to think I was around an 8.

When I became a mum to Small Boy I feared that my life would change and I was determined not to change too much. I wanted to be Mum and I wanted to be me; not too much of a challenge?  I was eager to get back to work when I realised it wasn't all coffee mornings and manicure appointments and I thought that would be enough to keep me ticking over as 'myself'.  But then I realised that Small Boy needed me, and in truth I needed him; more than that, I didn't crave my pre-child life back at all and I started to embrace the changes.  I enjoyed staying in on a weekend so that I was raring to go to whatever fun activity I'd found for Small Boy on a Saturday and Sunday morning; I wanted to stay in on an afternoon whilst Small Boy slept and I read until he woke up.  I thoroughly enjoyed being quiet and in a bubble and I felt sad at the prospect of returning to work.  I did though, and it wasn't half as difficult as I'd built it up to be.

Fast forward a few years to the arrival of Smallest Boy and life is pretty much the same.  But as I realise that he is my last child I've also realised that my life has changed beyond all recogntion and for some reason I've been thinking what happens next?  I haven't made much effort to lose the four spare tyres from around my middle my baby weight despite it being a whole year.  My roots are starting to grow very dark, thankfully I'm not grey yet, but I can't say my hair looks anywhere near natural which is the real problem.  I wear whatever I can find for the day, I'm past the days of being covered in baby sick but I haven't started to make an effort with my clothes like I used to.  In fact, I still wear maternity clothes most days because none of my other clothes fit me. I avoid the opportunities to dress up because trying to find something flattering and inexpensive is nigh on impossible.

Without making this sound like a self indulgent pity party, I'm not exactly happy with the way I've definitely let myself go.  And I'm too busy with remembering how to do everything I need to during the day to address it.  Probably the hardest part of all of this has come to light over the last few weeks since I returned to work and clawed my way back into the real world.  But I just don't fit anymore.  I made the decision to leave when I realised that I couldn't sacrifice our home life and the time I needed with the Small Boys, but that certainly wasn't a reflection of my place of work.  Quite the opposite, in fact.  My career used to be my baby and I'd certainly not let it go for any trivial reason, but I have too much respect for my profession to continue and make a hash up of it: I could't do that, not after the blood, sweat and tears I've put into it over the last 12 years.  But, its sadly no longer a profession that is what we might deem family friendly. This whole experience has made me feel like I'm the round very round peg being forced into the square hole.

I'm excited about my professional future; I've got a few projects coming up that I've been desperate to try for a few years and I've finally found myself in a position to try them.  But how do I work on myself?  Are mums destined to remain stuck in the limbo between maternity leave and normal life?  Do we ever find our way back?  I'd love your advice if you've found your way, I'm worried that without that crucial piece of the jigsaw I'm always going to feel like I'm trying to get something back.

As a firm believer of never looking back that idea doesn't sit well with me, but how do you move forward when some aspects of the past were exactly what you need?

My 5 Favourite Things

I love this blog challenge, it's very difficult to narrow my favourite things to just 5 and the more I think about it the harder it is! So, my choices are: 

1 Little chubby hands

 

 

I took this handprint of my 7 month old as a present, at the time I thought it was a cute idea but as my 7 month old grew and grew it made me realise just how little he once was. Nothing is better than my toddler putting his chubby little hand into mine, even if it is to lead me to the biscuit tin or the sweet aisle in the supermarket. It's one of the things I'll miss when he's older and no longer needs me to hold his hand. I try to give him the guidance he needs so that he won't need to hold my hand forever but that is such a struggle for me: I want him to hold my hand forever. The idea of him growing into a teenager and then an adult is so difficult to picture, but this picture of his handprints that I have displayed on our shelf reminds me every day that his funny toddler ways will soon become memories. They make me think twice before wishing a difficult day away. 

2 Our dog

 

Usually found snoozing on the sofa, our dog is somewhat of a hero although she's so silly no one would ever think that. We got her in 2010 as a sort of therapy dog after poor health; she was exactly what we needed. She's definitely a handful but more often than not she's happy lazing on the sofa (well they do say that dogs are much like their owners!).  Being a dog seems to confuse her, I'm sure she thinks she's a human and is very confused as to why she sleeps downstairs and is given her food in a bowl on the floor. She is always happy, she's becoming a great friend to our boys. I'm definitely envious of her ability to relax and do nothing! 

3. My Mulberry Bayswater

 

Well actually, any Mulberry! I had a definite Mulberry addiction pre-children. I enjoyed nothing better than a trip to a Mulberry shop, just to window shop was enough. I love the classic designs and the fact that they smell so good. I've had my Bayswater for 6 years and despite being a workhorse she is beautiful. The leather is ageing so well. My love of Mulberry is certainly one of the things that has stayed with me post-children, I found that after my first son was born I lost a bit of what I used to be like, I suppose my priorities changed a lot which happens to all first time mums. Mulberry reminds me that there is still a less mumsy person in there somewhere, even if she hides away most of the time. It gives me those precious few moments of self indulgence And plus, it's big enough to use as a baby bag which is a massive thumbs up in my book! 

4 My First Love

 

This needs no explanation. 

5 Beautiful Flowers

 

There's nothing like a lovely bunch of flowers to brighten up a room, they're particularly lovely in the summer time and these ones smell delicious. Another reason why I like these particular flowers in the picture are because they were a recent birthday present from my brother - he remembered my birthday without any prompting this year which I really appreciated. 

So there are my 5 favourites of today, I could have added so many more and writing this today made my day so much better. It's funny how just thinking about the little things can totally shape the type of day we have. I'm going to start tomorrow in the same way. 

(Un)helpful advice?

Embrace the chaos: this has to be the single, most helpful piece of advice I was ever given as a first time mum. Having a seemingly relaxed and carefree life before children was something that I definitely took for granted, as were a lot of things (spa treatments, relaxing baths, uninterrupted sleep, nice nails and hair, the smell of perfume rather than vomit etc, etc, etc). Once I announced I was pregnant, along came all of the usual helpful advice from those more experienced, and it made me start to panic about how on earth I was going to cope. I used to thrive on the routine of knowing what I was going to do and when. Apparently babies do too but they try their level best to turn that routine on its head, Small Boy and Smaller Boy have proven this one on many occasions. I used to become stressed out when thing went off track, but I found that by accepting that things were not always going to run as what I perceived as smoothly, made for a more successful day. But what about all of the other helpful advice that was thrust our way? The advice about feeding, sleeping, walking, traveling, playing, educating, bathing etc? Well I dealt with some of them like this:

Firstly, I'm a rubbish cook. Absolutely terrible. Experience has taught me that not only do my cooking skills not allow me to actually produce anything edible but that, actually, I don't want to. As simple as that. I despise cooking and the time it takes. So how on earth was I going to manage to produce wholesome, home cooked food for my PFB in between all of the routine following, baby groups, mum meet ups and educational lessons that would take place approximately every 15 minutes throughout the day? (Please excuse the obsession with educational experiences, the teacher in me can't seem to let that go). Well obviously it wasn't. So when it came to it I stuck with the simple things: veg, fruit, meat.  Nothing hard about that. Whether it's baby led weaning, puréed or a mixture of both it really doesn't matter. Small Boy ate what he liked,  threw what he didn't and made lovely patterns with the bits he wasn't sure about. Smaller Boy is the same (except probably eats one too many quavers).

Secondly, the helpful advice about milestones. My ears seemed tuned into the constant low level conversations about who was doing what at what point in their first year:  who was walking first, who could sign, which was better: crawling then walking or missing out the crawling altogether? Clearly, my 6 month old was behind because he could not yet recognise the 26 letters of the alphabet or sign the words to his favourite song when it came on the radio, which of course reflected badly on me as a parent. Of course now I realise it was just not important, not at all. As a parent you trust your judgement: approach it with logic as you would everything else in life. Babies do things at their own pace, panicking about it and trying to force things to happen doesn't serve to actually make them happen. All it does is take away that enjoyment, and I reckon most first time mums look back on the first year and wish they had taken less notice of others and more notice of themselves. I know I do, I definitely take this approach with Smaller Boy but even then it's a struggle to not slip back into old habits of worrying.

The rest of it? Well, I filed each piece of patronising, wrong and just plain stupid, ahem helpful advice in the B1N file for later. Someone else's way of doing things may be useful to you if you're struggling, of course our friends and family mean well. But that doesn't necessarily mean their way is right for you. It doesn't always hurt to change things a bit, but sometimes it's just not you, it's just the way things are. If things are working for you then you leave them alone, common sense and intuition are the most powerful tools we have as parents. If something doesn't feel right then don't do it, whether that's taking away the dummy or not using one at all, or co-sleeping or not co-sleeping. No one is right, or wrong 100% of the time. That reminds me, I need to take out the rubbish.


Retrospect is a great thing.

We Never Stop

So this week has been half term and, as I mentioned in my last post, I try to cram in as much as I can when I'm off. I think this stems from the bucket load of guilt I carry around with me every day I'm at work; it ranges from feeling like a rubbish mum because I should have prepared a filling and balanced breakfast (as opposed to the piece of cold toast Small Boy chose), to missing out on an ideal outdoor day because I'm working. I'm thinking this is mainly because nice outdoor days don't come around very often! But I do feel like I'm constantly on the 'I'll-make-it-up-to-them' carousel. 

You know what I mean; I guess most parents do. It's not as if every single day can be full of exciting excursions to various fun, yet educational, visits to new family-friendly places because, for a start, they usually cost a fortune. And the main reason being that normal life seems to get in the way, I've managed to convince myself that this is a huge flaw in my parenting. As a result of this, every school holiday results in exhaustion from start to finish as I fulfil my quest to become guilt free. Except it isn't fulfilled, I always end up feeling worse and up until today I've not been able to put my finger on quite why this is.

It's so simple: I'm feeling guilty because we never stop and look at the here and now. I suppose I've never really considered that the mundane day to day things we do are actually experiences too. So today we changed our plans; we actually cancelled our plans for the day when Small Boy refused to get off the sofa (so although it sounds like I had a moment of enlightenment this wasn't actually the case) and sat down. 

It's funny, when we're forced into doing something our automatic reaction is to fight against it but when it's a 3 year old there really isn't an awful lot that can be done. Well, there is forcing them to get changed out of their Storm Trooper costume and into regular clothes and then pinning them into their car seat, but that's not a great start to the day for anyone. Today was supposed to be a 'fun' day (we know that standing outside waiting in queues and having to use a portaloo with a child is not actually fun) and a stage show involving Mr Bloom; instead we traded it in for playing with trains, megablocks, drums and watching Shrek. Suprisingly, we traded it in for actually having fun instead of telling ourselves that we were having fun. 

So I've decided that I'm going to make notice of the times I feel guilty during the day and think about what the actual issue is. So far today:

Smallest Boy didn't have his teeth brushed until 10am.

Smallest Boy had to sit in his play pen whilst Small Boy threw the ball for the furbaby (Smallest Boy sees it as a challenge to race against the furbaby for the ball, it never ends well). 

Small Boy watched tv for a lot longer than I usually allow.

Smallest Boy got excited when Waybaloo came on CBeebies, he shouldn't have a preference over tv shows at 11 months (in my mind).

Small Boy had sausages for the second day in a row.

Both boys didn't have much fresh air today

Bedtime was an hour later than usual due to our routine being out of kilter.

And do you know what? It's absolutely fine! No one is any worse off for it. I have learned that my cooking skills still require improvement and that I really shouldn't be allowed in the kitchen; that the level of mess whether out of the house or in the house does not change; and that Smallest Boy has a passion for climbing (on everything, my fitness levels should have improved today!). So it's not really about doing it's about appreciating. Of course I knew this before, I just don't think I ever considered it on a day to day basis. I applied it more to things like firsts, new things, unusual things and one-offs. 

And now I'm going to appreciate a giant bag of Wispa bites and a hot cup of tea.  All to myself. 

I'll tackle the carnage that is my living room tomorrow.