Who are these mums???? (Jokes but slightly serious)

[sunshinewithrain]

To you, the mum I see on insta and fb.......
You have been having nights out from your baby being very young, you have lovely hair and make up, you go to work, you have holidays abroad, your kids have their hair done in plaits or other fancy up dos, u put pictures up expressing your love for your wonderful husband/partner....... u probably got pass tickets and could afford to......
Who the f*** are you?
I'm struggling to make ends meet, my partner is as much use as a chocolate fire guard, I only work 34 hrs a week yet can't keep up with house jobs, I've just tried baking for the first time with my 2 year old, I literally turned my head for one second and half the pack of sugar was added and there's flour everywhere 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 I lady washed my hair 4 days ago ......
But I know she's 2 (nearly 3) and I'll never get this lovely time with her again ❤️
Oh and I don't grass tickets...... and tbh I can't justify the prices but I'm crying my heart out and looking back in anger all the same 😂

Also, having a untidy house or not going for glam nights or ‘slobbing around in joggers’ are not moral failings. The people who ‘have their shit together’ aren’t better people than you.

A lot of health is luck.

Maybe some, but it also depends on whether you prioritise it. I eat healthily, make sure I don’t get overweight, exercise, don’t smoke, don’t drink much alcohol, look after my gut health etc.

I think it all matters.

I would fall into that category but I don't post anything on Instagram or Facebook. I don't like the culture of showing off or only showing the best sorts of your life.

I was very picky when choosing my husband and he's a good egg.

He's really hands on with the kids.

I only work 18 hours per week and we have a cleaner (small children at home and we have a pretty large house).

My mother in law is a total cow but will happily babysit for us to go out every so often and travel too.

The downside to this lifestyle is my husband works ALOT in a stressful and very senior position so despite being hands on he's not always around.

My family were poor as church mice. But the times I remember were times spent walking in the park with my mum, and other times cooking with her. And you sound like you are making memories too.

i knew someone who is who you described - her husband does everything for her, she has a cleaner and her parents do tons

quite sad really these fake instagram lives! don't believe everything you read on social media! They only show the good bits!

Not at all.

Perhaps you should have married into the Royal Family & become a useless blood-sucker.

SM is a total con really. If I was on Instagram (which I’m not due to cynicism) I’d look like I had it set - amazing car, house, highly academic children, gorgeous holidays etc etc blah.
I do have a wonderful wonderful DH who I tell daily.

However, my kids are Young Carers, I appear to be collecting auto immune diseases, some days I can’t function due to the pain, know the Paramedics and a&e drs by name at my local hospital and regularly have to get iv morphine and then get Ubers home at 3am. I even had a consultant write on my latest notes that I’d had a 10/10 pain episode on my latest visit last week. That was sobering.
The illusion of a perfect life is just that, an illusion.
However, very extreme pain and illness has taught me that every single thing has a positive to it. If you try to find that in every day, everything becomes so much happier.

Look,don’t marry a useless feckless man and then complain oh woe is I
kinda self explanatory

30 hours.

They are older now, but I didn’t have ‘help’ with chores etc. Just a teen to babysit sometimes for a night out or I would do stuff on the weekend they were at their dad’s (single parent). It was always a mad scramble to get ready in ten minutes once I’d got DC ready for bed!

I didn’t have that much money but I budgeted carefully.

@Wantitalltogoaway what do you mean by Maybe some, but it also depends on whether you prioritise it

There’s no maybe about it, lots of illnesses are genetic, cancer can happen to the healthiest person, environmental factors and stress also has an impact and are hard to limit.

There seems to be a growing narrative that eating well etc will stop a lot of illnesses. It’s one reason healthy younger people often don’t go to the doctor because they think it can’t happen to me. Of course it’s good to be healthy but naive to think it means you can’t get ill.

I’m guessing he wasn’t useless when she married him 🙄

Sorry, but ‘over the teats’ really made me laugh when talking about having kids!

@Shakenandstirredup Good question! She hates it and is very much in denial about being sick (apparently her agreeing to be in a wheelchair for days out is to 'help my anxiety' and not bc she gets dizzy after a few steps) so won't have her photo taken in it. We often take selfies though, so if you randomly followed my Insta you'd probably think I have LOADS of family help and my mum comes on plenty of days out with us!

This exactly I'm afraid, DH was hands on from the beginning, I could go out without baby exactly as and when I felt ready, an our or two from 6 weeks, a brief meal out at 12 weeks and first overnight away at 9 months.

We both earn well so out source the cleaning and occasionally diy type jobs. I went for 3 nights to Amalfi coast when baby was 2 with my mum and sister and Dh just got on with it no fuss.

So in short.

Both have good jobs and get stuck in, outsource some chores.

My lovely neighbour retired and, as a paying hobby, joined a blogging circle. (No idea whether it did actually pay.) All the bloggers posted "living the dream" blogs.

I would read her blogs and think I wished I lived where she lived. Except that I did live where she lived, right next door.

She posted about her love of gardening (genuine) and include photos of her wonderful garden. Except that she didn't ever post a photo of her whole garden, which often looked as damp and windswept and weedy as mine, just close ups of individual flowers. So she didn't need her whole garden to look good, she just had to have enough individual flowers scattered around to photograph.

I remember once when it was cold, grey and had been pissing rain non stop for three days. She posted "There's nothing better on a chilly day than a bowl of home made soup." And she posted a photo of her soup - red tomato soup, in a green bowl, with a crusty roll on a side plate, a curl of butter, and a nicely folded napkin.

I realised I'd had soup for my lunch too, but I hadn't colour co-ordinated my soup with the bowl, or bothered setting the table.

That was the difference between her "living the dream" and my bleak "when-will-it-stop-raining" mood. She'd colour co-ordinated her soup with her bowl, just to get a nice photo for her blog. I'm sure she didn't normally fanny around with her soup.

That's the secret, I think - spot the good details, like the day your daughter's hair looks good, photograph that, and imply that it's representative of your whole life.

@FirstTimeHomeowner fair enough.

That’s why I said “maybe some”. Obviously it’s not all lifestyle. But it’s not all luck either. Obviously.

Actually I'm not the mum you speak of cause I never post on social media lol but o suppose if you were my mate you might think of it that way. But you'd also probably have seen my tears going back to work when baby was 13 months. It's worked out in the long run but was a rough transition

34 hours a week is almost full time (36 in most places). I worked 15 hours and later, 18 hours week when my child was little. It was quite enough. Later I went full time but he was at big school then.

How you are feeling is how most of us feel, op. It doesn't last forever, things will get easier I promise you.

I can't work out if you managed to get Oasis tickets or not, I hope you did; my son is going, I don't know which concert, here in London or in Manchester. He's in America at the moment, spoke to me today and I asked him. He and some friends saw Noel Gallagher a few weeks ago at Warwick Castle, and they all enjoyed it.

I agree, I have a couple of friends who post like they have a perfect marriage ones oh had another mental health breakdown she had to work two jobs as he couldn't work for several weeks she was exhausted and on bring of divorce but looking at social media you would think it was harmony. I tell this to my kids social media is fake, people only want to post the good things and want to keep up with the Jones. Op your life is probably very normal give your self break and stay off social media!

I look at friends and am in awe of how sorted and how they have their shit in order. They do amazing things with their kids (lovely days out and activities etc). But then, talking to them, they say the same about me (which makes me laugh, as I don't feel like I always have my shit together!). Some are wealthy (and have the means to do amazing things or pay for outsourcing a lot of the crap), others are not (but still do amazing things etc). Some are single and some are in amazing relationships. A couple of them do the SM posts about all the things they do and have (lots of hashtags with "blessed", "live/love/laugh" etc) but hey, if that makes them happy, then why not. I used to beat myself up about how much better they were as parents etc, but then their situations are different from mine.

I don't post on SM much at all, but if you saw me from outside, you might think I had my shit together. Most of the time, I'm winging it, trying to be organised and juggling a lot of plates.

I reckon: try not to compare yourself (I know, easier said than done). I'm a single parent of 2 DC, working FT as a nurse, living in a rented place. My DP are dead and I don't really have any family nearby who can help. XH is no help. I just try my best to make sure the basics get done and then anything more is a bonus. I'm just happy that I can afford to support myself and my DC...and that I'm not in a shitty relationship. And I'm very grateful that DC and I are healthy and safe. It's only because the DC are older that I am finally starting to look after my own health/wellbeing (so going to gym).

Travel counsellor!! I've heard it all now

Some pp have nailed it. At the heart of it, kids value time together, doing quite simple things with their family. They don’t care about how tidy the house is, how mum’s hair looks or how many followers they have on their SM. A big part of me despairs at the need to document life through a partial lens. My advice is to not follow any account that makes you question your own worth as a parent and person.

Well then he could easily go back to not being useless now that he has kids and a wife who needs him, don’t you think that sounds fair enough for everyone? If not, why not?