To think jist feeling this rubbish is mum life reality?

[miniworry]

Just that really. I feel s, I look s and I feel like I don't even have enough energy or time in the day to eat healthy or even wash my hair let alone exercise or socialise.

I'm a mum to my DD 4 and my DS 15 months and I also work full time as a headteacher which involves not stopping the minute I get to work and also work in the evenings.

Prior to having my children I did CrossFit 5x a week, ate healthy and was 2 stone lighter than I am. Never skipped my hair or nail appointments and was never without freshly applied tan. Now I just about manage to squeeze 1 run in per week whilst my DD is at dance class, I just crave junk food or takeaway once the kids have gone to bed as I've had no time to make food, and I'm now on day 6 without washing my hair because I just can't muster the energy once they're in bed. The house is a pig sty mon-fri and I spend the weekends washing and tidying up with DH ready for it to be trashed again by Monday.

Is this just simply how utterly exhausting motherhood is? And that you just essentially let yourself go- or is there something I could change? I've had recent bloods checked so not low in anything, except self esteem. I hate looking in the mirror as my skin looks awful, my clothes are years old and I'm just not me anymore! I don't feel like the person I was when I married my DH .

I feel

I was a teacher and held SLT roles so take my hat off to you for being a HT with a young family!

Don’t do or change anything for the next month and use the summer to properly re-group and prep for the autumn term.

It might sound obvious, but you are the headteacher and so do have quite a lot of power over your working life. Is there anything you can change in terms of your day-to-day responsibilities that would make life easier? For example, meetings, teaching, assemblies or delegation of work. It doesn’t have to be forever and will also give your team development opportunities. You could also consider asking the governing body for a payrise - read to the end of my post if you immediately recoil from this idea!

Hair: I don’t quite understand you not washing it in the shower, but have you considered a GHD smoothing brush? I find it quite useful for just smoothing my hair a bit on non-hairwash days. Even if I just do the parting and front section it looks a lot better.

Clothes: a certain amount of formality is needed as a headteacher, while still remembering that you are working with children, so a capsule wardrobe is a good way to approach this. Pick two colours: navy and light pink for example. Look on EBay or Vinted for brands like Hobbs, Whistles or Jigsaw.

Navy trouser suit
Extra navy trousers or skirt
Pink shirt with collar x 2
Blouse x 2 with a pink or blue element in the pattern
Patterned jersey dress on a navy background x 2
Textured cardigan or knitted blazer with a pink or blue element in the weave

This might sound a bit formulaic but it is far better than stressing about what to wear in the morning. Personally I would avoid black as I don’t think children like it and it can look a bit funereal in a school environment.

Food: a slow cooker, Cook and Charlie Bigham meals are your friends. Do you use your oven timer? Once a week I put in jacket potatoes to cook while we are out at an activity. I use the slow cooker several times a week, you can prepare the bowl the night before and just turn it on in the morning.

Help: you have a large local network as a HT, can you find someone whom you can trust for occasional ad-hoc babysitting? What about ex-pupils who are now at university? Or discreetly ask a friend on the staff or governors if they can recommend anyone?

Finally, I sometimes find it useful to ask myself the following question: ‘What would a man do in this situation?’ 🙂

‘I’m only coming out half done if the house is on fire,

absolutely bloody brilliant! This is an amazing rule to live by!

Not sure it would work as a single parent but I like the idea in theory. It is bloody hard full stop.

I noticed one poster said a cleaner didn’t make much difference. Some days I am not that bothered about her coming and other days when I am overwhelmed, I would happily kiss her feet. I think sometimes people can pull you out of a hole and it’s easy to get into a hole as a parent.

Deliveroo/the milkmen who deliver toilet roll/food etc and food delivery services are handy.

The robot hoover can be a godsend.

The GHD styling brush or Dyson one are handy too, for looking put together quickly and some compact make up.

OP, I would find out who is good via Facebook searches for mobile hairdressing (or get recommendations - beauty therapists are always in the know). It can be very handy getting your own hair done and the children’s while at home.

Having a weekly cleaner always puts me a couple of hours ahead of where I would be. It’s a big boost to me as a single parent.

And the best thing is that once you have someone in place, you can ask for a favour if you are stuck. My cleaners have acted as babysitters sometimes for me and they have come to my rescue when someone is coming/I have a crisis or need a deep clean.

This. Suggestions that OP goes part time are non starters, I would say, given that she's the breadwinner plus it sounds like her husband's workaholic approach is, tbh, a luxury your family can't afford. You really need to have a conversation about him stepping up at home and stepping back at work.

My tip is that planning what you're going to wear each Sunday for the next working week saves morning panic when you can't find clean tights etc. @BadSkiingMum 's capsule wardrobe advice is good.

@miniworry the 'quick and dirty' solution in terms of health supplements that make you feel/look better is a soluble multi-vitamin in your water bottle, drinking at least 2 litres of water daily, and getting collagen powder to sprinkle in your tea and coffee. (I use Vital Proteins which comes in 10g sachets). I also keep nice hand/body cream on my desk and at an idle moment (like waiting for people to join a Teams call) slather plenty of that on my hooves/arms.

I have no practical advice, I just want to say you are doing a huge amount and you should be proud of yourself for keeping it together for so long. Go easy on yourself. You are working incredibly hard.

This, exactly. I used to work as a teacher ( not a headteacher) and had two children. I had a cleaner and sent clothes to the laundry. It all helped.

Yep, it's a nightmare. But I would stress that you are in a bad phase. I was similar when mine were that age . Husband away a lot, still dealing with nappies, needing constant supervision, constant mess, night waking, early waking..., AWFUL I was broken at one stage. It got better about a year ago when my oldest was 5.5 and youngest 3. B the eldest grew up a lot and the nappies were gone. Now at 6 and 4, they get up and entertain themselves in the morning. My elsest makes his own breakfast. I can have a shower and leave them to it.

They house is still a total sh@thole my daughter is a mess machine. She still takes great pleasure in just emptying out cupboards. Aaaargh but it's getting better.

I do think getting as much help as you can is a good move . Even if not financially. Buy nice ready made food during the week. Up the cleaner. Get a gardner. My brother has a nanny two days a week and I am so envious. He gets two days where he has childcare until 7.30pm and two days he can go out after work, not feed or bath the kids.

This does not sound sustainable for anyone. As a PP has said, you’re running yourself into the ground as the main breadwinner and childcare whilst DH chooses to do a low paying job. Not cool. At all. I’d give him an ultimatum. Better job or separation. Literally how dare he watch you fall apart when he brings so much less to the party?

Sorry I should have clarified that whilst I'm the breadwinner in terms of salary, there isn't much in it, only a couple of thousand- it's not like he is on significantly less than me.

He's absolutely knackered too and he does help out a lot at the weekends but because there 2 such different ages one of us has DS at home whilst the ther runs my DD to dance and swimming lessons etc! I do have an hour on a Saturday once I've dropped her at dancing so many I need to protitise this as time to go for a run not do more errands.

Also what this thread has taught me is that we woman are pretty badass at all we juggle 🩷 thanks so much for the solidarity.

Hi @miniworry ive been thinking about your thread! As a teacher that can only manage part time, I think you’re amazing! But I was thinking, do your staff know you struggle? Or do you put on your HT Pants and pretend you’ve got everything together? If it’s the latter I wonder if a tiny bit of vulnerability and letting your guard down will help? Feeling that you
can say ‘I’ve literally not stopped and I’m exhausted. I’ll get back to you tomorrow’ would help. I think staff, particularly female, would react well to feeling that we are all just overloaded and need support.

@OhHellolittleone oh bless you that's kind of you to be thinking about this thread- no the staff don't know as you're exactly right, I don my big girl pants, my heels and my suit each day and power through! Maybe you are right about the showing vulnerability.

@miniworry Absolutely what @OhHellolittleone said. As a deputy I took over responsibilities for arranging cover, timetabling and other things through the year such as proof reading reports etc. HT then gave final approval, but she trusted me to make good decisions for the staff, pupils and school.

My children are 13 and 5 now, so although they sleep well, I now have football practises, matches, music, sports etc etc to contend with.

After 20 years of it though, I'll be honest, I've quit education altogether and now work in immigration and inclusion for the government here, earning the same but with more scope for progression and shorter hours.

Oh my word, your role FT and 2 LOs, wow! A friend is in the same position and I don't know how she does it. I went back to teaching PT at first and the only days I looked decent were my workdays!

Do you have a cleaner to help? I can imagine you're trying your best to keep on top on top of workload and then going home to be Mum, that's tough.

There are the holidays of course but as HT you will have so much to do.

Go with your gut, you can take a step down, less pressure, and no one would blame you. Xxx

I think this is an interesting point!

I’m a doctor married to a doctor, so face similar issues to you in terms of shift work and lack of flexibility/WFH. Also, probably a similar financial position where a cleaner is viable but something like a housekeeper is definitely not (despite what MN thinks)!

I can think of two female consultants I worked with as a junior who had multiple children and managed to make FT work look easy. They were always held up as an example to female trainees by senior men. They were both incredible women, no doubt about it - but what was never mentioned was that they had very wealthy families and husbands, and this enabled them to have huge support in keeping family life afloat - housekeepers and live-in nannys and kids in boarding school. It was amazing that both continued to do a challenging job, despite it presumably costing their families money for them to work. However, this is not an option for most professional working women, and it’s so disingenuous to pretend that it is easy, by holding up these rare cases as an example!

The wool quickly fell away from my eyes when I had children and realised how impossible it was to be everything to everyone without the help of family or buckets of cash behind the scenes. I try to be realistic with my colleagues as they move through training because people in this career and others need to think about the realities of family life, unless they want to go mad! It’s something I wish I’d considered more carefully when I was younger. As it stands, I’ll never be able to be as good or look as good as the women with the bulletproof childcare.

Not a dig at you at all, OP, by the way! Just my musings after reading this thread and also, kind of reluctantly, taking some comfort in the fact a lot of us are feeling a bit fried. Totally relate to what you said previously about working so hard to do well, and then occasionally looking back and wondering why you bothered.

I think it's good to model holding yourself to the same work-life balance standards as you would want to offer to your staff. It gives them permission to find their own balance.

When I was deep in the nursery years I recall a highly paid acquaintance of my husband breezily saying: ‘Oh it was easy going back to work with my first child, I had a nanny and it was so simple.’

Well, yes, it was simple because you had a nanny.