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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

Honestly, no, it's been very different. I imagined I'd be living in London being a SAHM and being very "on it". Ended up moving to Asia when pregnant. SAHMdom didn't suit me and I went back to work when DC1 was 12 months and only had 10 weeks mat leave with DC2. DC basically had a pretty free range childhood that was unrecognisable from mine and which I therefore struggled to navigate in terms of "is this the right thing to do?" We are now back in UK, they are now mid teens and still don't really know what I'm doing. They seem to be fine but I'm not sure I've ever felt fully in control of the process.

But you know what they say? " Life is what happens when you're making other plans"

My pregnancy was pretty breezy despite gestational diabetes and I had a planned section due to concerns about DD’s size and my placenta - which was also quite breezy (she was a normal weight in the end 🤷🏻‍♀️).

I don’t think I’m a particularly good mum but I’m trying my best. I don’t really know what I expected but I suppose I thought I’d take to it better. I don’t think I’m particularly intuitive with it and it hasn’t really come naturally to me like a lot of mums I know. I struggled early on with colic and reflux and I kept getting told ‘it gets better’ but each stage brings its own challenges. She probably deserves a better mum than me but I really do my best for her.

No, not really. My DC1 was a very sick baby and needed two operations in her first year. Thankfully was before the Tories got their hands back on the NHS…

Not long after having DC2 I separated from and later divorced their father.

DC2 has ADHD which has also been tough.

Im a single parent in a very full on, full time job in the public sector. I didn’t expect life to be this tiring.

That said, life is also pretty wonderful. I have two fabulous, amazing children who make me proud and happy daily. I have an interesting job. I have wonderful friends.

I guess I don’t see it as a “motherhood journey” but just as my life. Which started before I had children and will go on after they’ve left home.

That said you make me feel very old having only had your first during lockdown and to have had a second since then - where has that time gone? I feel like lockdown was five minutes ago! 😱

Chill out

I guess I don’t see it as a “motherhood journey” but just as my life. Which started before I had children and will go on after they’ve left home

Oh I agree and motherhood isn’t the only thing in my life (although with a 4 and 1 year old it is by far the biggest). I realise ‘journey’ sounds a little wanky but there isn’t really another word for it that fitted the title…

I do think some people seem disproportionately irritated by it though!

it's not the childhood I imagined I'd give them but we've all adapted, we're all surviving.

I really like this, it’s spot on - we all adapt.

Oh dear, one of those posters who doesn't like it when someone disagrees with you. If you do not like the opinion of others, or you only want an echo chamber of people telling you how wonderful this 'journey' is, post on a different part, of MN, such as parenting
Don't expect everyone to think this is a) a fucking journey, and b) as saccharine as you want it to be

I wasn’t criticising you, it’s just not how I’ve ever looked at it. I see it as part of the whole, iyswim. And part of their whole lives too.

I wonder if calling it a journey puts more pressure on you to have things “perfect”? Not that it irritates me at all, I’m just wondering. We can never have a perfect experience of motherhood or anything much else, I guess.

No, my eldest DD is disabled. It's nothing like I expected or planned.

I had great birth experiences with both DCs. Reality bites in the decades afterward.

P.S. @Welovecrumpets , plenty of life experiences require time, money and mental energy. And guess what, we don't call them journies, it's life.

Wtf is your problem? OP has posted a question in chat. To chat. I don’t think she was expecting everyone to say how wonderful motherhood is, she has expressed having some struggles herself, but you seem strangely irritated by the way she’s worded her question.

OP, I suggest you just ignore this poster.

I definitely don’t think mat leave would be the worst stage to be age during the lockdowns.

Both no and yes. After 4 years of infertility I had a very anxious pregnancy and probably unreasonably high expectations. A really panicked emergency section hadn’t been on the cards in my mind, nor a baby who could not latch. The first year stressed me out so much with expectations vs reality, especially due to a gruelling pumping schedule in the first months. That all being said, I am absolutely loving being a mum to my 2.5 year old, she has her moments but is overall a dream, getting to know her and teach her and love her and grow with her is absolutely magical, with lots of mundane bits thrown in. I could not really want for more, I feel exceedingly lucky.

Yes- I can confirm that homeschooling primary age kids absolutely sucked! 😂

I was 21 and ds was an unexpected pregnancy. I had been with now dh for 4 years, we were doing OK financially so we said we would give it a shot. I didn't know what to expect but I had an easy pregnancy and birth and it turned out I loved being a mum. I found it all very intuitive and always felt so in sync with him. 2 years later we decided to have dd and again didn't really have any expectations. I think I had the optimism and energy of youth, I was really chill, I fed them when they were hungry, cuddled them when they wanted cuddles, let them sleep with me when they wanted to be close to me, I never really overthought things and just went with the flow. I was a sahm until my 2nd was 4 and it was the best time, I just really loved being the mum of small kids and really came into my own as a person.

They are teens now and I've enjoyed the whole lot really, they are growing into great people and we have a great relationship. Overall a 10/10 experience.

Not if it’s your 2nd or 3rd baby and you’ve had the luxury of the normal experience first time so now just want to hunker down safe in the knowledge you know what you’re doing. Were you a first time mum in the lockdown?

I must admit, I'm also not up for 'motherhood journey' as a phrase, but I take the point that if that phrase is just being used to indicate that it's a really significant thing, then fine.

I was surprised in two ways. I was terribly worried I'd be a bad mother, or I'd find it really hard to be patient with my child; I was really frightened about that, and frightened I would resent her (there are reasons why I felt like this that go back to my childhood). Actually, I found motherhood absolutely wonderful - I adore my DD and, during the hard bits when she was tiny (and again when she was a toddler and soul-draining! ) it was wonderful feeling this absolute sense that this was where I was meant to be, and I had it all in hand, and we were a team. I love that feeling. And I am so, so proud of her.

The second thing that surprised me was how persistently I wasn't accepted as her mother, because I'm her non-biological parent. I'm fairly stereotypically feminine, and grew up assuming I'd have babies biologically and it'd all be quite straightforward, and then I assumed when my partner got pregnant that it'd all go swimmingly and no one would bat an eyelid. It has surprised me how relentlessly society is set up to make you feel as if you don't exist/shouldn't be there, if you're not the bio mum. And that's been an ongoing shock. But I wouldn't trade it for the world!

I think all ages brought challenges in lockdown. Mine were 16 and 11 so missed their friends terribly. Oldest missed his GCSEs and all the plans he had for the summer. Youngest missed the transition stuff to secondary. At least they could video chat to friends to keep in touch with friends and could do things independently.

I think I’d have struggled more being at home with babies/toddlers though. 😬

One thing I didn’t realise before having kids was how bad your mental health can get going through PP. I went to lots of antenatal classes and although we where told about postnatal depression it wasn’t really discussed in depth just “if your depressed see your GP.” Post natal anxiety wasn’t even mentioned and I had this so bad