'In the trenches'

[saraclara]

AIBU to think that referring to early motherhood as being 'in the trenches' is pretty crass? I've always hated it, but this week it's particularly jarring.

Being in the trenches meant sheer terror, millions of deaths (around 3m died in the trenches) and many more injured and traumatised for the rest of their lives.

Comparing wrangling toddlers, to that, just seems deeply inappropriate, imo.

I’m pretty sure that 99.99% of people who use the phrase are actually fully aware that raising your baby in their nice warm home is not in any way comparable to living in mud, being shelled, going over into no man’s land and seeing their friends blown to bits. It’s just a phrase.

doing my head in - one’s head is not actually being done in.
its getting on my tits - nothing that gets on my tits has ever been literally ‘on my tits’. Except my husband….

and so on and so forth.

YABU. My DS2 only slept for 20 minutes and then screamed the street down for 6 hours straight, before another 20 minutes sleep and another 6 hours...on a loop for 2 years. There were days I wished someone would just kill me. It was the hardest thing I've ever had to go through and even now I'm so fiercely protective of my sleep that it affects my social life, for example.

I haven't heard anyone say this for some time, but yeah you're right, this has been a saying for some years when someone has a cold/flu. 'Urgh, I feel so ill, I've got the plague!'

This. ^ It's like when your mum was mad at you when you were naughty and she said 'I'll bloody kill you in a minute!' She wasn't actually going to kill her child!

Or when someone says they 'laughed their head off! Their head didn't drop off!

Or when someone finds something hilarious, and says 'OMG I'm dead!' They're not dead!

Or when someone says 'For the millionth time will you stop that (or something similar,)' they have not said it 999,999 times before.

So someone saying they're in the trenches when they're finding life hard going, is fine!

I usually hear that people have 'the lurgy'

😆 'Getting on my tits' is a weird phrase though really isn't it?! I say this too.

I also love to say the much hated on Mumsnet phrase 'it boils my piss!' 😆

Oh yeah, that's very common too! 😆 WTF does it even mean 'lurgy?'

I voted Not because my grandad got the military cross for fighting all the way through the battle of the Somme . The things he saw gave him nightmares for the rest of his days . So in my opinion YANBU.

Oh bore off!!!

Yabu

it is the trenches

I thought parenting a baby/toddler was being "at the coalface"?

No offence intended to anyone at an actual coalface.

I’m really offended by your phrasing ‘ against the tide’ OP. My brother got swept out to sea when we were kids. He actually was trying to swim against the tide and nearly drowned. I don’t appreciate you making glib comparisons with this genuinely traumatic event.

the only one who sees a confusion is the OP and people who are offended let's be honest

Well when DC was very little and I was feeling run ragged, teary, relationship strained with DH I came on here looking for support and one poster said basically "don't worry kid, everything you've described is completely normal, gave example of their DC going through similar you're in the trenches now but in a couple of years you'll be out the other end"

I took comfort in that, like it was a shared experience, and I felt normal instead of like I was about to crack from failure to keep my shit together. Obvs I know its not literally being in a war trench or bringing my child up in a bombed out tent city, so please don't look for offence where none is intended. Its just a turn of phrase like, starving, or freezing or feeling like death warmed up. Its not a literal comparison.

Nobody who matters can possibly be offended by “trenches.”

There are no living veterans of the front line in the Great War.

But people use exaggerated language all the time.

”I’m starving!”
“If my husband doesn’t stop snoring, I’ll kill him!”
”I could murder a cup of coffee”

Life with a young baby/child is difficult. Suicide is the leading cause of death in women with a baby aged 6 weeks - 12 months. If we’re going down the road of picking apart people’s words, you calling early motherhood just “wrangling toddlers” could be seen a crass tbh.

🙄

Don’t be silly.

I think someone needs to look up ‘figurative language’.

And if we’re actually thinking about trench warfare, you may be interested to know that one influential theory for the reasons for ‘shellshock’ (what we would now call PSTD) being so prevalent in WW1 is because men primed for war as the ultimate masculine activity, in fact found themselves in situations which had largely been women’s experience — confined, immobile, waiting, unable to act.

Why are you eyerolling a poster who is describing PND?

Just a figure of speech. I might say I'm Hank Marvin when I'm particularly hungry, but I'm not actually Hank 😃🎸

Because the first four years of motherhood are described as "being in the trenches" on MN and the response to me calling this dramatic and mother hood being not being something I am merely surviving was to list a load of post partum health conditions. Motherhood is more than postpartum and child birth, they are actually vanishingly small parts of being a mother.

Obviously post partum health problems are actual health problems. Thats not what people are referring to when they talk about "the trenches", they are talking about is having young children being shit. Once you have survived child birth and made it past the initial post partum period you're not going to die from being a mother, which is what that poster is trying to make out to be the case. To list a bunch of ways child birth can kill women including PND as a response to a statement about mothering young children not being a shit thing you have to merely survive is silly. No one would see a woman with child birth injury or PND complaining about being ill and reply "you're in the trenches!" They would reply "you're ill, go see a doctor, hope you get better soon." She's conflated two separe things and it's silly. That's why I'm rolling my eyes.

Its quite common for phrases origionating in warfare to be used to describe something else. "On the front line", "Hold the line", "bite the bullet", "caught some flak". They've passed into common usage and are not considered offensive. I don't see a reason in the trenches is any worse.

It’s just a turn of phrase

What is wrong with you?