Has your motherhood journey been what you wanted/expected?

[Welovecrumpets]

I was just discussing this on another thread and am curious.

I have 2 wonderful children who are thriving and fairly easy to be honest so I know how lucky I am, and rationally I know these are minor complaints.

My first baby was only 6 months when covid hit so most of my maternity leave was spent holed up in our flat in a heatwave dealing with a crawling and then walking baby who was bored stiff. I still feel a bit sad we didn’t really get to fully enjoy our time together, we were confined to 1 room 23 hours a day for months, hardly saw anybody, didn’t do anything. We didn’t have a garden or enough space to set up elaborate play areas.

My second baby was quite a worrying pregnancy, hyperemesis which meant I was bedbound for months, some medical concerns which took weeks of tests to put to rest, followed by an awful birth which we felt lucky to emerge from (relatively) unscathed due to negligence by the hospital who carried out an investigation and apologised. I had read so many stories about second births being better that I suppose I expected it to go well and it was very disappointing that it went so wrong.

That aside as I said my children are wonderful and I feel very lucky, but sometimes those memories just come back and bite me on the bum a little. I suppose I’m just curious to hear from others about their motherhood journey and whether it’s been what they expected/hoped for. All stories welcome, just a chat.

In short, yes. I’ve had 9 years as a SAHM and am retraining now, I didn’t see that coming but feels good. Do not regret my SAHM years at all, and I think I had a vague vision of not being a SAHM forever so that tracks.

My births were not as I ‘expected’, but then what really did I expect? I didn’t know WHAT to expect. The aim was to have a baby I guess, and that can take many forms and have many results. Luckily my 3 came out healthy. I however have come out of it with 2 substantial issues from 2 different births.
So I guess I didn’t really realise THAT is what people mean when they say ‘your body is never the same again’.

Dont remember really having any specific expectations of the kids, but they’re above and beyond anything I could have expected.

Some yes, some no. I had quite a scary first birth and a much better second. I had three miscarriages before my first successful pregnancy, which I was neither expecting or prepared for. I breastfed like a dream. My children are both relatively easy and very healthy. The sleep deprivation of the first year with both of them drove me demented. I find balancing work and motherhood hard but easier than a lot of people do. I found working full-time with a toddler and no childcare during covid awful, especially as I was also pregnant. I've found school age more fun and easier than toddlerhood and toddlerhood more fun and easier than babyhood.

I think I've been very lucky overall but that there are things that weren't great. They're only 6 and 3, so I'm sure there will be much more to come, good and bad, that will surprise me too!

The idea of a ‘motherhood journey’ sounds like some ghastly SM soundbite. I don’t think I had one. I planned not to have children and then decided to ttc aged 39, without any particular expectations, other than hoping it would be interesting. I wasn’t able to BF, hated maternity leave, and dashed back to work early, but DS (now 12) is just gorgeous, though challenging — sensitive, restless, big emotions since birth. M really glad I did it, though. It’s great watching him grow up.

No , not in the slightest. In short, I just don't like it. Sad to say out loud but the truth.

I thought I’d get bored on maternity leave but I loved it far more than I thought. Had a tough time breastfeeding which I found quite sad, I was so intent that I would be able to do it easily so feel a bit of grief that I wasn’t able to. I love being a mum more than I could imagine.

I think the idea of a motherhood journey is a bit silly. It is just life and we live it and get on with it.

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!

If motherhood isn’t a journey then what is? It’s the biggest thing you will ever do pretty much. You might not ever feel emotional or nostalgic or reflective about anything but some people do, now and then.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

Nor did I but I didn’t expect a pandemic!

😂😂😂😂😂

dont like it. wish i hadnt

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

What else incurs the same amount of input when it comes to time, money, mental energy..? Anything? There’s no need to be so snippy - if you’re generally allergic to anyone being sentimental maybe this isn’t the thread for you.

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.

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.

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.