Do you enjoy motherhood?

[AndromedaM31]

AIBU to ask whether you enjoy motherhood? I don’t. I’ve got 2 boys, one has just turned 6 & the other just turned 18 months. The older one I suspect has OCD as he’s very high maintenance.

I love my kids to the ends of the Earth & would die for them. But I don’t enjoy being a mum. It’s a relentless daily grind, punctuated by periods of intense worry & anxiety when one of them is ill. I get nothing done, there’s never any sense of progress. I just spend my days moving breathlessly from room to room picking up after the little one who is a professional house wrecker, whilst the 6 yr old follows me moaning because he’s not getting 101% of my attention.

I’ve sacrificed my career to have them & have lost workplace skills, + a hell of a lot of professional confidence over the last decade. I’m horribly skint.

It’s a lifestyle choice, and I did choose it so I’ve got no one to blame but myself. But I do sometimes wish I could be one of these mums who seems at one with their choice! I struggle to accept what my life has become & who I’ve become.

Interested to hear how other women honestly feel? Do you like being a mum?

I mostly do. I enjoy reading stories (the first few times anyway, after the 15th repetition some of them do get a bit tiresome), I like playing with playmobil or splashing with my daughter in the bath. The past few months of lockdown have completely burnt me out on it though. Every day is just another boring day of dragging out the bloody playdo or running races in our tiny concrete back yard with nothing to do and nowhere to go.

Right now? Honestly, no. DC are 6 and 2. I loved the baby stage but the toddler stage is so utterly relentless and DC1 has autism and is getting progressively stronger and more violent in meltdowns. I dread weekends (especially now - lockdown has been hell), I can barely leave the room to go to the toilet without risk of something happening let alone do any proper cleaning and was overjoyed to be going back to my p/t job last week because of the break it gives me.

I hope that somewhere along the line things will improve but I fear that it might not happen.

Not half as much as I thought I would. I almost constantly feel like a failure and guilty, no matter what I do it never feels enough. The crying gets yo me alot more than I thought it would. Alot more.

That said, mine are 3, 4 and 5 now. Its gradually getting easier. Once they hit 4 onwards I enjoy them much more. I find every hour seems like two hours before that.

Also, have lost my figure and have no clothes that fit me anymore. That affects me too. Cant seem to get my head around eating less or better, or exercising with three little ones around. So that gets me down too.

Overall, being a mum wasnt what I thought it would be. I am though, very much looking forward to it when they're all over 4. I read that studies have shown that it takes until a child reaches 6 before most mums get back to the same levels of happiness they felt pre-kids.

No, and that’s why I had only one. If we knew beforehand what it’s really like very few of us would breed.

Now I’m a grandmother and I find that I don’t like that either!

We had kids without really thinking it through 😂🤦‍♀️ in hindsight I wasn't very maternal/broody anyway.

I now have three of them 🙈

I spent quite a bit of time wondering what on Earth I had done for the first few years.

Now the eldest is 9, youngest is 4 and about to start school and I'm beginning to enjoy some of it. It's not su full of drudgery. The kids can help tidy up and get themselves dressed.

I'm much better when I have my own physical space, and a job!

@SouthernComforts I didn't have the biological urge with my 1st as she was an accident. I'm pregnant with my 2nd (planned) to give the 1st a sibling (to play with hopefully) and feel more like a family unit, I think we will stop at 2 though. I'm dreading the newborn stage again!

Yes, I love being a mum. Ifind it quite easy, but I have it very easy. My dc are 4 and 6, they sleep well, eat well, they're pretty laid back and well behaved, I don't work (well I had just dipped my toe back into work when Covid hit), don't have significant health or money probkems and have a partner who is supportive and a good parent. Most of which are mainly luck, so I'm lucky too. I do worry a bit about the teenage stage though, I'm not sure how well we'll get on raising teenagers. My sister's dc are in their 20's and lots of her friends who struggled with small dc came into their own with teenagers.

I find life hard work in general. I struggle with, well, everything. Mental health issues mean life is all a bit hard work. But I love being a mum. I struggle with it and it’s hard but I love it. I cannot imagine my life any other way, my kids are amazing and I genuinely enjoy their company.

Yes, increasingly so. I have a five year old and four year old twins and they're all big enough now for me to stop being perpetually terrified of accidentally hurting them. So I found the baby stage by far the most difficult but that's because I was so scared- they were so small and I was being entrusted to look after them! That was the main source of stress, I'd say. All in all, they've been very easy children.

Mostly. It helps that they're largely grown up now.

It was knackering when they were little, but also lovely: I talk to them now about the things we did when they were little - after school picnics, the paddling pool, walking to school with the dog - which I remember loving, and find that they enjoyed them too. It's not the holidays that stick in their minds so much as the smaller fun things that we did on a more regular basis.

What I wasn't really prepared for was how much they still need you in their 20s, and how worrying it is when one's life isn't going to plan. On the other hand, I also wasn't prepared for how much fun it is to have good times with them. They're a different generation, and I think without them I'd be very likely to get stuck in a rut of not having a clue about how things have changed in terms of outlook and expectations.

I love it now my kids are on their twenties.

I enjoy it but work four days per week in a career I love, and I've found that makes the difference! I love the time I spend with LO and appreciate it more because it's not 24/7.

I love it. But then I always knew this was the one thing I wanted to do more than anything, get married, have a family.
So I'm a SAHM with 4 kids. It's hard hard work. But there's nothing else I would rather do.
It's a really wide spectrum. Not everyone loves day to day motherhood, even if they love their kids.
There are also peaks and troughs. I find the baby phase exhausting and I have an inkling the teenage years might be a challenge for me. But other phases/ages are just a joy.

Yes. I always knew I wanted to be a mother and the love I feel for my child is more amazing than anything I have ever felt. The constant anxiety and the daily grind is nothing in comparison to that.

Having a child made any stupid anxieties I used to have melt away and I feel like I am stronger and more capable now.

BUT I don't enjoy every minute with my child. Working and having time in adult only environments is vital - I could not be a SAHM, ever. I have never felt much guilt about using childcare.

Yes. I genuinely love it. I even accept the poops and wees and sleepless nights. I didn't think I'd be a Mummy. After I had children I realised I was missing something before and my life had no real purpose. I feel fulfilled by having children. Probably one of the rare few!

I would kill my for children and die for them too but it comes at a toll. Motherhood is draining at times but I am a better person for it.

I couldn’t wait to be a mother from a young age, and I obviously adore my son (2) but I find the day to day reality of it totally boring drudge work. I love him so much yet so find myself wishing away the time until bedtime and missing my old life. I work full time which I enjoy (and need to do as I’m the breadwinner) but then feel terribly guilty about it. I’m pregnant with DC2 and have always wanted 3, even though rationally I don’t enjoy it very much! Must be a weird hormonal thing.

Yes, I do, but my dc are now all adults. It's a different game.

I didn't enjoy sleep deprivation. I didn't particularly enjoy feeling overwhelmed. I didn't enjoy the crying at 3am. I didn't enjoy the guilt of feeling somehow I wasn't giving enough to work and also I wasn't giving enough to my dc. I think most longterm things are like this - you don't enjoy every phase or every aspect of the time you are in, but being a parent is a 50 year (ish) job. It's about adjusting your expectations a bit.
It is bloomin hard work. It can be exhausting. But it is the most satisfying thing I've done, and along the way it has been a lot of fun, love and enjoyment too.
Sometimes you need to look for the 'new' enjoyable bits rather than hankering after a previous life. Sometimes you have to grit your teeth and repeat 'this is a phase. It too shall pass' over and over. Sometimes, you have to go and watch them when they are asleep and let your heart just melt again.

Yes I love it! I'm only 7.5 months in so there's obviously so much I'm yet to experience but currently I feel absolutely fulfilled and so happy with our decision. I have been blessed with a very easy baby though so it's difficult to say whether I would feel the same with a more challenging child. Current plans are to just stick with one as we might not strike gold twice....

I honestly don't know...I wish I enjoyed it more than I do. I LOVED pregnancy and holding my new baby for the first time and marvelling at them. But I really struggle with the sheer tediousness of it. I only really enjoy it at nap times and bed times which makes me feel awful. Some days are fine and some days are horrific and I regret doing this to my life.

I worry I'm not that good at it because I don't really play and I get so frustrated at being whinged at and not being able to get things done. I don't shout or anything, I just wish so bad for my old life. I long for the day he will watch a film or read a book on his own for a while. This may be lockdown talking as it's been extra hard to never get a breather.

Ive only got the one and I'm not sure if we're one and done. I always thought I'd like three, a nice busy household. But I feel like any more that would tip the balance. I'd love to be pregnant again but I don't want to care for more children. I'm actually an introvert and live for the time I get alone or to do what I want.

I love my baby more than life itself. I just wish I had a nanny so I could direct my own day and free up some of my time for some balance.

Similar to a pp I read somewhere that if you try and recreate your old life with a baby you're bound to fail as it will always be less enjoyable than it was, because the freedoms and spontaneity are gone. I think that's quite true.

18 months is the age I hate the most, they're still a baby really but annoying because they can move around! Even 2.5 is better (have that now).

Your 6 year old does sound like there at the more difficult end of the spectrum, as my experience by this age is they're happy to play on their own for a whole at this age, so I'm not surprised you're worn down. You must get a break whilst he's at school though (assuming he's year 1)?

I I think the golden age for parenting is when all your kids are 5 to about 11 or 12 (I'm not there yet). Before 5 you just have to still do so much for them and I've read on Mumsnet that teens are awful

I love watching my kids grow up, there is something deeply magical about seeing then develop. The relentless non stop repetitious nature of parenting though...yeah I hate that. Hoping it will get better as the kids get older, at the very least if I could get a whole night's sleep on a regular basis I'd be a new woman.

I have two little girls and I absolutely love being their mum. The eldest has just turned 3 and the youngest is 5 months. Both of them have always been excellent sleepers which I'm sure definitely helps!

I'm not going to lie and say they're always easy because they certainly aren't at times (especially as the preschooler has started having her stroppy moments), but I do really love motherhood.

I dislike the lack of freedom and all the drudgery and the constant mumming and that my career has nosedived. Apart from all that I love it! 😃

No, mostly not, I'm not suited to motherhood. I've never really come to terms with the loss of freedom, peace and quiet of my old life. I love my DD but if I could go back I would make different choices.

I can see how I will enjoy life when she is an adult, but I've lost so much of my own life in the process.