What surprised you about parenting exhaustion and daily stress

[getthatone]

Sleep. I knew I’d have bad nights but I had no idea how this would actually feel. Or how long it goes on for. Youngest is 3 and still wakes up once a night and often wakes at 530.

How hard it is to get stuff done. Even in the middle of cooking dinner I’m disturbed more than ten times to look at this, comfort someone who fell, break up an argument.

That most of the stuff on CBeebies isn’t for under 4s.

How stressful getting them to eat is.

There are more.

How much pain I would be in. All.the.time. My two year old weighs 22kg and it’s easy for people to say don’t lift them but it’s often unavoidable, combined with those 5.30 am wake ups it’s grim

Oh yeah carrying children who are perfectly able to walk is a killer.

Yes sleep is the biggest, before I had my DD I thought oh so what if newborns need to be fed 3-4 hourly throughout the night that’s fine I don’t know what everyone complains about, nope my DD was awake from 8pm-5am up until she was 6 months screaming and agitated and from then on she would wake every 30 minutes, by the time she was one she was then waking every 3 hours and now she’s 2 she still wakes 3/4 times a week around 2/3am.

Housework, I really struggle I have to spend my evenings doing it whilst she’s in bed which means getting no time to relax and just take a minute for me, sometimes I struggle to even wash my hair because I don’t have time.

Not listening, this is becoming a new one, for some reason I expected a 2 year old would be able to listen and do as I say but nope even after repeating myself 5 times she still does not cooperate, which I find stressful

Sleep, being touched out.

I’m no martyr, but it’s really hard to find space for an identity beyond mum if you don’t have any family support.

but on the plus side… the highs are far higher than I could have imagined.

Just how much life I have to live before I even start work in the morning! And just how parenting starts the second they wake up, full throttle.

@Bobbykins oh my gosh this! I have lived five lives before drop off