To long for the time in the future where I’m a grandparent not a parent

[partytimed]

I adore my two children, 6 and 1 but feel burnt out and exhausted most of the time. I often feel envious of grandparents who can be involved with their children and grandchildren and then retreat to a peaceful home and full nights sleep after spending time with them. I have obsessive thoughts about how nice this must be. Today we have a Christmas meal with extended family at a restaurant. I’ll be wrangling the kids and the doing the bedtime routine, feeding them, up in the night and awake at 5am. The grandparents can be a part of their lives and then go home stick the telly on and please themselves. I’m so envious about it! My aunt said something like she was going to have a bubble bath and a glass of wine when she got in - it sounds like pure heaven to me but so far away from my life. I guess I feel a bit trapped in this responsibility. Can anyone relate?

You might never be a grandparent!

When my children were babies and toddlers I lived next door to an older lady in her seventies. She always stopped to coo at the baby or bend down to chat with the toddler, admire their stick or leaf or whatnot.

She would then straighten up and smile at me and say wistfully, "These are the best times of your life, if you did but know it"

Don't wish it away OP.

When I am in my seventies and revisit my forties I shall remember my DD screaming at the top of her voice because I peeled her banana for her and I shall say fuck this, I’m going back to my seventies.

They are ours to wish away after all. We don’t all love these years.

As the wise lady said, “These are the best times of your life, if you did but know it”.

. . . if you did but know it.

But they aren’t There have been many miserable, overwhelming moments and last year I came within a cats whisker of a full on nervous breakdown, needed anti depressants just to function, gained nearly four stone (have mostly lost it now) and lost just about everything.

Things are a bit better now but still fairly shit!

@rainyrainywinter but the message is still not to wish your life away.

I am grandparent age and my heart is packing in and I have lots of musculoskeletal pain. It is hell.

DO NOT wish one single second of your young healthy life away!!!!!!!!!!

I’m not reading it that way at all. It’s wanting to move to a time when life isn’t as intense and as exhausting, is all.

I often look at PIL with their quiet, calm, clean, beautiful home and think … you’ll get there, eventually!

And you will get there, but there are significant sacrifices to be made along the way to get the clean, calm space. There will always be intensity in life.

This. I have just become a grandmother and I love it and I’m trying to offer support with childcare etc. However, I really miss my children when they were at the same age.
The days are long and the years are short etc.

OP - I have teens and what would I give to go back to the hard days when they were small and the biggest problem was an early waking....
Looking back - I'd probably do a lot of things differently, and enjoy more of the simpler joys.

On a practical level - 5am are of course brutal. Is there anything you can do to shift that waking time to make your life easier???? But otherwise - the little one will hopefully start sleeping better soon.

Being a grandparent comes with being old. And this is not necessarily something to look forward to - not the aches and pains, etc.

You might never be a grandparent, so I wouldn’t get too hung up on it.

My DM has managed to become a grandparent without a single moment of stress or worry. Because she does nothing to help! Instead she enjoys receiving occasional photos of the kids via WhatsApp and regales me with stories of her many holidays and hobbies, or of how she has spent a month clearing out the filing cabinet.

YANBU OP. Having young children is exhausting and there is nothing unreasonable about wishing you had some time to yourself.

I don’t think the OP is saying (and neither am I) we want to wake up tomorrow and our children’s childhoods have gone; we’re in our seventies or anything like that. It’s more an expression of how isolated you can become from ‘normal’ life with very young children. I had a similar moment last year with a group of colleagues chatting about a Netflix show but my life at the time couldn’t envision something as normal and everyday as that because literally everything revolved around the children.

I realise not everyone has the same experience of motherhood but if you do, you get it straightaway I think.

The thing is there’s always something, I found the teenage years way harder than the baby years. And then you get older and your back hurts, your hormones go through the roof. You go to more funerals than weddings

I guarantee everyone rocking up with the wrist slapping comments are NOT looking after highly strung toddlers or small children up at 5am every day

5am. Most miserable time of the day. My son did this for over a year. I was so happy when he stopped. Now DD has started it

Our two adult children have decided not to have children so you best enjoy the ones you have in case they decide the same

Yup. I used to envy this exact thing. Now I'm a grandmother, it's pretty much what you think it is and it is great. However, bare in mind it comes with having 30 or so years less ahead of you and the bitter sweet knowledge that you may not get to see those children grow up, settled and with children of their own. Your time will come OP.
In the meantime, could the GPs do some overnights for you? I do this with mine and it works well for everyone.

Do you have any Grandparents that are offering to have them for a sleepover so you can have a night off?

Totally understand what you're meaning but it does get easier, you're in the thick of it just now.