Are you how you thought you'd be as a parent?

[bigbanana]

another thought for the day...

Definitely not. I used to be a midwife and after 10 years in the job thought I knew all there was to know about babies. Foolishly I thought that while it would be hard work I'd have a head start in that I'd know what my baby wanted. I could recognise the cries - knew a hungry cry from a tired cry. Hard work but it was going to be easy.

Yeah right. What nobody told me (and I wouldn't have believed them even if they did) was that where my baby was concerned I was going to be as irrational as every other new mother. Much to my surprise I couldn't interpret my baby's cries at all. Is he hungry or is it colic? If it's colic I mustn't feed him any extra. Oh but he might be hungry. So I'd feed him - he'd shriek even more with colic and then as likely as not bring the whole lot up over me. Ah yes! It's all been so easy!
On the other hand he'll be 2 on December 20th and I never knew it was possible to feel such love for another human. Very biased but he's gorgeous.

It is reassuring to see we're all pretty much saying the same thing

Good thread bigbanana

I'm worse. I'm more like my mother than I would ever have dreamed possible and would like to be. At the same time I'm a lot more flexible and so far I'm doing ok

Message withdrawn

Did anyone see This Morning today? They had a lady on who had a medical condition which had reduced her voice to a whisper, so she had to deal with her kids without shouting. All very interesting (and of course, made a lot of sense, meanwhile back in RL....) but then another woman who I think must have been a child psychologist said "if you want your kids to have any friends in school, you must never shout at them".

Have squeezed that one into my rucksack of guilt - if my kids are Billy No Mates, it's all my fault!

I'm more laidback and patient than I thought I would be (except at 3am), and maybe even more affectionate. But I did find it so hard at the start, much harder than I ever believed it would be.

And I still worry that perhaps some days 'laidback' could be a euphemism for 'lazy'... I do go to bed some nights thinking 'Right, tomorrow I will not switch the tv on, we'll paint or glue eggboxes, etc etc' - I'm just not very good at that crafty stuff!

I never thought I'd be soooo clucky - I could spend hours just breathing in DS's smell. But this has crept up on me; the first few months I was just trying to survive.

I didn't think I'd become as soppy and emotional as I am now. Pre-dd I rarely cried but now, even 2 years in, I'm way more emotional than I used to be. Also all my ideas about kids have changed massively, I love kids in a way I wouldn't have imagined, I mean kids I see on the bus / babies i prams etc. Before I wasn't that interested. And yes, feeling much more love than I imagined, and masses, just masses, of frustration and stupidity every day that I don't feel 'in control' as a mum in a way I could in my previous career. However, I wouldn't swap these helter skelter years with dd for anything else I've ever known. Not a second of it.

no - in two ways - I thought I'd want to go back to work within weeks and didn't. I LOVED my first maternity leave tonnes more than I ever imagined I could. And I'm much stricter than I thought I would be, I really never saw myself as someone who would bellow at my kids (as they fall of their chair for the fourth time) SIT PROPERLY. I thought the kids would be happy little hippies with wild hair who said please and thank you coz it came from the heart. But they're actually quite clean and tidy and the only reason they say please and thank you is years of drumming it into them.

Its not so much that I'm not the parent I expected, ds isn't how I expected kids to be...only in that I really didn't realise how long they take to grow up and do things like riding bikes etc. Plus, although dh and me are fairly talkative, ds doesn't speak yet, just gestures really. No interest in sitting quietly with a book or playing with us particularly. So I think I really did just expect more feedback from him...

He is lovely though and I wouldn't change him.

...and I'm a lot more laid back. I don't really worry about ds at all and I never shout. I really didn't think I'd be like that. Its not that I don't care but I do think he's bascially going to be alright.

im more crap than i thought i would be? not sure really. i do all the things that i always said i would and bring ds up how i said i would. i think really im perhaps better with toddlers than babies but then again...ds is 7 and is a wonderfully behaved child. he actually is as perfect as i imagined (no im not taking the piss) so did i do everything right or was i just lucky? well im sure i'll find out when dd grows up a bit..shes a little thug at the mo...time will tell no doubt and all my theories will go out the window

I thought I'd be more of a Fun Mum than I actually am

Seem to have fallen into that classic pattern of playing straight guy against dh's funny guy! I'm the sensible parent - I'm the one who's always saying "stop now, before someone gets hurt/it's bedtime/it's bathtime" while dh is the wild and wacky one.

And I shout so much more than I anticipated. And "playing" bores me rigid. Earth Mother I ain't!

But I could never have anticipated or imagined the sheer, bottomless depth of the love I feel for my children - or how utterly fascinating and enchanting I find them. I can't imagine ever getting used to having them around - they astonish me on a daily basis.

i thought i would be more imaginative tbh

I didn't think I'd ever spend so much time on a parenting website...

I thought I would love playing endless make believe games with my toddler. We would invent this little fantasy world of fun. How wrong I was.

I thought I would limit TV watching to half an hour of "educational" programmes a day.

LOL MMMoo!!!

lol MMMOO. i thought id never whinge never nag nevershout be more laid back be more fun who was i kidding...glad to see we all feel the same ,yet we all adore our kiddies dont know what i did with my life before i had them or imagine my life without them.

I think I'm doing great and would like a massive pat on the back for it thank you very much

DD has been very easy though

I thought we would be backpacking around the world with charming well behaved babies and toddlers in tow. in fact can hardly be bothered to take all 3 out of the house most days! (those books on travelling with children - have they actually tried it?

My sis has 2 boys aged 2 + 3 and she told me the other day that she thought she'd be lying on the settee reading Heat and drinking tea while they played nicely at her feet!!!!!!!

Oh how we laughed!

I always thought I would be an appalling mother, cold and harsh - which is exactly how I feel whenever I make a stand, and don't allow ds to squirt milk on the floor. He looks at me as if to say "Mum, where's your sense of fun?", and generally makes me feel like Cruella de Ville.

But I am surprisingly accepting of the fact that nearly everything I own has crayon on it.....

same as most of you, I was determined to be a fun mother, not just the one to set teh rules (and guess what??), I thought I'd be more patient, and more playful with dd1, but she has been quite a challenge, must say.
I thought kids would do what you say as soon as they could tell you were really angry but she is not having it!!!