Has your motherhood journey been what you wanted/expected?

I'm the absolute weirdo who strangely found mat leave in the pandemic with my 2nd easier than my first non pandemic mat leave with my first. It just took the pressure off to be rushing to baby class after play date, non stop family wanting cuddles etc, we got a really good routine established as nothing to disrupt it. It was really quality bonding time with my oldest (3 at the time) and baby.

No, I had twins and had dreams of them sharing their childhood and growing up together. One of them is severely disabled so things have not turned out like that at all. It's hard but we still find joy in many things and I'm very lucky to be their mum. But was it was I envisaged? No!

As a mother of adult children, I’m sad that they hardly make any effort to contact me. Their childhood was great, we got them driving and encouraged PT jobs in college. They all did the hobbies they wanted, had lovely holidays and days out. But now, very little contact. I assumed all adult children had weekly contact with their parents, like I did, and my friends in my teens/20’s, but no.

My career takes up at least as much of my time, energies etc as parenthood, to mention only the most obvious one. I’m not being snippy, particularly, just saying having had DS isn’t the single most significant even of my life or anything. Other things have certainly changed me far more.

I don’t think I had any expectations as such, we just wanted children. Obviously I thought they would enrich my life as I wouldn’t have had them.

I didn’t enjoy being pregnant and hated giving birth, but being a mum has made me feel very happy, more than anything else I’ve ever done.

My parents were abusive and having my own children made me realise quite how bad my childhood was. I had lots of therapy and I’m no longer in contact with my parents which I wasn’t expecting, but it’s definitely a positive thing.

Motherhood made me look at who I was, how I dealt with situations and made me address some some negative traits I had due to my childhood. My relationship with my partner got stronger and it’s made me a better person. I don’t think I’d have reflected on things so much without having children so in that way, it’s brought the unexpected but in a very positive way.

Another bloody 'journey'...
Does no-one just live/have a relationship/have kids/have an illness without it being descibed as a fucking jouney?

I love being pregnant. I haemorrhaged during my first birth and almost died which was terrifying and very unexpected, I haemorrhaged a week after my second birth and had to go back into hospital, also very scary. My third pregnancy followed a big gap and was challenging mentally due to genetic testing and long waits for results but still loved my bump again. Thankfully baby is healthy.

Two of my children were diagnosed with disabilities which makes our days incredibly difficult. I would not change a single thing (except to have more understanding and a bit of help now and then so I could have a break) as my children wouldn’t be them without their disabilities and they are wonderful children. They make my heart sing.

I always wanted to be a mum, my mum said I was born aged 25 and always knew what I wanted regarding a family and it was always the most important thing to me. I would honestly have more children if I could, I love being a mum.

Has my journey followed what I thought motherhood would be? Funnily enough when I was little I always ‘had a feeling’ that my children would need extra help, I can’t explain why I felt this way it was just always an underlying thought and I’d always say to myself ‘but we’ll be ok because I’m their mum’ and it indeed turned out that way and we are ok.
I adore my children, I would die for them, I love them more than I know how to explain. We play, we laugh and we get through this crazy journey together. So in that respect I suppose motherhood is as I expected. I do look back and wonder how I made it through some days/stages of the past 15 years.

We have challenging circumstances but I never thought motherhood would be easy. And this is my only experience of motherhood, I cannot imagine it any other way.
I’m in a very difficult patch at the moment and am feeling quite down, quite tearful each day and I would really love some time to just recoup, even just a little bit. But this phase shall pass just as all the other hard phases have and I’ll be fine and we’ll get to a slightly easier (but never easy or straightforward) phase soon enough and we’ll keep going as we always have.

Mine are only little but so far it's been wonderful.

I'm very much in the "mummy mummy mummy" stage which can be exhausting at times but I love being the person they love more than anyone else in the world.

It's harder than I thought but I don't regret it.
I thought i'd have lots but stopped at one due to it being harder.
I did have dd alone though as her dad left me. No regrets though....ive met a lovely man and dh is great with dd.

It really isn’t ’the biggest thing you’ll ever do’. It certainly isn’t the biggest thing I’ve ever done (so far). I just had a child. Lots of people do.

No and no.
Years of difficulty trying to get pregnant. 1 twin pregnancy and a singleton.
9 months of all day sickness with both pregnancies.
1st birth ended up in itu, very unwell.
Husband left so am a single parent no contractor cms (would not change this though).
I loved maternity leave (had to go back early after 1st so was sad but it worked out fine).
2 dc have medical and sen needs, which has been hard.
Then I became disabled (when youngest was 5) and it changed our world completely. I lost my job, had to move house, dc became young carers all the while I'm a carer for two fighting for and mostly failing to get the support they need.
My dc are fabulous and doing really well, they're all teenagers /young adults now and I've had none of the teenager issues you'd expect, they all have a great work ethic and plans for the future.
I have lots of guilt because it's not the childhood I imagined I'd give them but we've all adapted, we're all surviving.

Mixed bag really.
Great things:

1. Being a mum has been the greatest experience of my life, with a closeness and happiness that I couldn't even imagine was possible.
2. The ever closer integration of our families and their love for DS swells my heart.
3. I laugh and enjoy time with DS or DH and DS just so much, it is amazing how much we find to do.

Things I can get on with:

1. I was unwell and anxious in pregnancy, and a difficult birth plus complications discovered later; all of that I can mostly get past.
2. Regrets about things we missed out on from covid, from work needs - we have had times of sadness and missed experience imposed on us; it's better as time passes, but has caused hurt.

Things I struggle with:

1. School. We have an amazing kid, outside school we get nothing but compliments. From school it is just endless, mindless, inconsistent issues and the worry caused by things that then constantly turn out to be nothing drive me crazy. The lack of focus on handling difficult kids that get rough drive me crazy. DH also finds it crazy but insists all schools are like this. I've no idea how to get through even the next year.

I love it but I work full time. I don’t think I’m a “natural” mum but I do it my way and my dc are happy, confident and thriving so it’s working for us.

Does that answer the question concisely enough for you?

I miss my old life, I miss being me. I miss the lack or guilt & worry.
Will it all have been worth it, the right thing to do?
Who knows, too soon to tell.
But if they were ever to be taken away I wouldn't want to live.

dont like it. wish i hadnt

😂😂😂😂😂

I guess I just don't look at things that way. I do feel nostalgic about them being younger etc but I don't really think of it as a journey. I suppose if you were going to think like that then everything is a journey. I'm more a take is at it comes kind of person.

I never had big expectations of how it was going to be.

It was initially NOTHING like the books/interent/NHS experts/midvies/other mothers said. Nothing. This whole bullshit "sleep through at xweeks" etc, does this at x-weeks blah blah blah...made me learn fast that each baby is different.

It took us 8 years of heartbreak with multiple miscarriages to become parents, and I’m now on my own with the DC, but like @2023NEWMUM2023 I have never known such happiness; I love being a mum.

First thing I've ever felt born to do

Sure it has it's ups and downs and it's not easy but I can't imagine people I would rather spend time with. They are insanely interesting and funny people to be with.

I don't however have any expectations and we just roll with it.

Expected? Yes, I'd say so. Hard graft with joyful moments, missing some aspects of my old life and welcoming new ones. I had a good pregnancy and birth and DS is a happy, curious, adventurous 5 year old. But I knew I'd struggle with the relentlessness of a toddler.

Wanted? Hmm. No, not yet. I'm looking forward to the more independent years. I partly, mainly, had children so I'd eventually have an adult one!

Having had an IVF pregnancy with complications and hospital admissions and then having an emergency C section after years of TT I still wake up everyone morning and go to bed every night thanking my lucky stars that I'm a mum. I had a moment before doing the bedtime routine. Little boy was cuddled up to me having a bottle, I'd just washed his hair and it had that lovely baby smell and I thought I'm the luckiest mummy in the world! Some days are harder than others and it was a shock gping back to work as well as studying a degree part time (it sounded great in my head when I was pregnant lol). But actually being a parent is less hard overall than I expected it to be, maybe because we'd been TT for so many years that it felt like an impossible dream. Little boy tends to sleep through and has done since a young age. He's one kow and such a happy smiley lad ❤️ I just need to get my act together once he's in bed and so my jobs, tea, walk the dog, uni work and fond time to exercise and spend time with hubby. But I'm very happy. Take care x PS. Sorry for such a long post!