Identity crisis: How long does it take to get used to being a 'parent'?

[dragonbutter]

Yesterday on Radio 4 they were talking about the causes of post-natal depression. Along with hormonal changes, predisposition to depression and other psychosocial causes they discussed the effect of identity crisis, and it got me thinking.
Five years ago I was single, living alone, had a good job with plenty enough salary for one, a social life, a gym membership and hobbies. I've travelled and been fairly adventurous and lived abroad for a while.
Now i'm married with 2 LO's aged 3.5 and 9 months. We have a house, I've chosen to be a SAHM so money's tight so not much social life outside of the usual mother and toddler meet ups and holiday's are scarce. Our marriage is happy although the kids seem to take up all our time, money and energy and while I'm happy and grateful to have everything we have and don't regret my decisions I've found it hard to figure out who I am anymore.
I wondered if anybody else has found the transition difficult and want to know the best way to deal with this.
Should I just buy a sportscar and get a boob job?

Monkeybird I think the prob for me is I live in a very well to do but standoffish suburb/village (moved there in a rush from Hulme when fell preg, we're in one of the peasant dwellings)

And I work on the biggest council estate in Europe allegedly where everyone is LAIR!

In hindsight wish we'd moved 2 miles up the road to still lovely suburb but with a slightly hippier more raw vibe if you know where I mean!

I did go around being outrageousy brave and chatting to Mums here there and everywhere but I'm getting abit fed up with it now as I haven't met anyone on my wave length and most of the things I go to are ALL nannys and NO Mums; how dull. An planning a move out of London but totally up in the air as to where. There must be a cluster of fun Mums somewhere I can gate crash.

I think I know exactly where you mean for all 3 since I grew up in one, went to school in the other and have lots of connections with the 3rd...!

Do you think there exists somewhere a fun group of mums who are all supportive and lovely and are all secure enough that they can all do things differently without upsetting each other???? Where do we have to move to find them?

Let's set up a commune/alternative community!!!

Yes I think that's the solution to this identity crisis, set up home with people we met online.

I didn't mean that in a mean way, btw.

Oh, now you put it like that perhaps it's slightly reckless to set up home with folks we've only met online! You're probably all big hairy truckers anyway, not Mums at all

exactly

Live dangerously!

i think that's part of the problem, i walked shockingly slow past the tattoo shop the other day. quite shocked myself how much i crave something interesting to happen.

while i would love to stay and chat and be recruited into your mum-cult, i really must get on with making dinner.
catch you later.

I'll have to drag myself away from the computor in 10 minutes. Someone else is makin dinner while i pretend to get on with some work , but I have to take over at 6. Will outline my plan for Mummy cult and get on with bidding for land at the side of a loch and applying for planning permission for little wooden huts, yurts etc. Will try and spend tomorrow (DH works Saturdays) lookin for Mums who are a little bit cheeky and naughty that I can bond with- haven't managed to find any yet and been livin here 2 years!!!! Catch ya later

I think about this all time - my dds are 3 and 9 months and there are so many things i miss about my "old" life, especially never ever having a lie in again and having to do everything in a tearing hurry or not at all.I've got two days coming up with just me and the dds as dh is away and I'm dreading it, the knowledge that even popping out to the shops for a newspaper will be impossible without getting them both dressed, in the buggy etc.
To keep myself sane, I work four days a week which is exhausting and I basically pay to work as all I earn goes on childcare but it keeps me sane and I think is a very worthwhile investment, I think having a good social life helps but that is very, very hard when you're exhausted and I fail here. I try constantly to dwell on how adorable both dds are and what a short period this is, how sad I would have been without children and how superficial life would have seemed if it had only been about going to nice restaurants and the cinema and holidays, like in my twenties. But being with little people all day long is TOUGH. There is a reason why women in the 60s burned their bras you know - because being a mum and a housewife is pretty dire, no matter what images of domestic bliss the media may peddle.

I find chocolate cake helps

LOL at some of the comments on this thread esp Eaglebird's fanny and dragonbutter, who lives in boringland.
I'm not sure how to fuse the two parts of me-the part that wants the family and wants to be a SAHM and do all of that, and the part of me that is lost:the sexy young profesional who travelled and dined around the world... Well my career never got off the ground so that really is just a dream, but still, I did travel and I did have prospects once.

But here I have to mention my MIL. SHe is an EMIL and not a nice woman BUT she is an interesting case.She was a SAHM all her life, but then the family business went bust a few years ago. SHe was in her late 50ies when it happened.
She jumped in after all those years of not working and now she is a very powerful person in that company. SHe has a talent for sales and she has the same role as my husband in the company except she is paid more. THis is in a very mail dominated society (JApan). I am in awe of her confidence in the business enviroment. SHe flies around the country representing the company. Its pretty amazing.
She kept her hand in all these years by being involved in many organizations (I suppose the equivalent of the WI here, and charities and things) and when it came down to it, she just had the skills, even at that late stage in her life.
So I have to take my hat off to her in all fairness, at least regarding this aspect of her life. And she always looks stunning, elegantly made-up and well-turned out.
All she needs to do now is work on her inter-personal skills and the way she treats her own family

oh god this thread is pressing too many buttons for me, i cant bear to look.

I have read this thread word for word and it has been like reading all my own thoughts that have been swirling round my head in pent up frustration for a long time.

I'm going to say it too: "My name's G&T and I find life as a SAHM hard"

I had a high-flying professional, dress up in glam suits, meet friends in wine bars, blow £hundreds on clothes etc at weekends type lifestyle before. Now I am stuck in groundhog day of whiny children, inane chat with other mums I feel I have little in common with, constant wiping up of poo/snot/sick etc etc.............blimey it's hard. HOWEVER, I have to remind myself that I was fed up with the old life and loooooooooonged for children, and the old me would have been so jealous of the new me. So I guess I have to take the rough with the smooth and get on with it

Sometimes I gaze at my car out of the kitchen window and fantasise about jumping into it and driving off, leaving the housework and kids to get on with it without me! (of course I never would....)

Can we have some more "it gets better when they're older" replies please?!!

In the meantime, I'm off to pour myself a glass of wine..........

I know, Hooray for mumsnet.This thread is soooo helpful. I can't believe I didn't have mumsnet back in the early days.
Boysontoast, go on, here's how you join in...
Hi my name's boysontoast and I don't know who the fuck i am anymore.
It's been 3 years since I last did anything interesting.....etc etc

Message withdrawn

I feel for you Dragonbutter, Im sure it will all improve with time just through things moving on, random changes and your DDs getting bigger. Cant totally relate because have only one DD and thats much easier.

Heres where I stand on it all! My DD is 8 months old. DH and I would like more soon. I am currently a SAHM. We are totally broke because of that, but both me and DH are happy with that, including being tenants in the Land of the Homeowner. I have days, mostly when Im tired, pre-menstrual, and the weather is grey, when my head spins full backwards and forwards with who am I, what am I doing with myself type questions, and images of pre-baby me. ( good job, obsession with jigsaw clothes, sporty, busy, travel mad, bantering with colleagues). Although by the time I have had my baby I have boxed myself into a corner at work and was self employed in stressful unpleasant branch of work offering no social stuff- cant get back to work I did when younger without doing the hours I did when young. Anyway- bad horrible thoughts type days happen, but not that often. More often I just feel bloody lucky to be taking life slowly. I am sure life would be much much harder with more than one DD. But I guess what I am trying to say I wonder if there is something lazy bones no ambition whatsoever wrong with me!! I am perfectly happy most days pottering around with the radio on, cuddling my DD, taking us for a good walk, doing everying v slowly baby pace, chatting to the local fishmongers, going to the odd baby group. (some of them are quite odd too). Actually I have had guilty thoughts lately that I may be slowing my babies development down by loving lounging around so much!! Am I 32 going on 62? Do I need a rocket up my arse to get me moving? I look at youtube vids sometimes over brekkie and my husband was shocked when I tried to make him watch a LOST take the piss. 'Is that what you do all day?" Ahem. Not ALL day.

Anyway, I guess I feel like a throwback, born in the wrong era or something. I am happier these days hanging out with 'the boys', childless bloke friends of DH's- it seems like they are the only people who think its normal to be just being a mum for now. Women friends, men with kids whose wives inevitably work and are all up at 5 for the drive to the creche pre work etc, I do feel sensitive to what I percieve as their disapproval.

I wonder how much of your feelings about having a lack of identity are to do with the current freakish outsider status society seems to have given SAHM's. Because you do inevitably have an evolving identiy, you are still partly the old you but you have moved forward to new territories from your former self, and is there some way of seeing all the positives to your new identity, not just the lack of former stuff. Sorry. Dont really know what Im trying to say. But when you have days when your thoughts spin out of control - well I try not to make any big decisions on those days and let it pass!!

Great thread. I suppose I am trying to have my cake and eat it these days but the price is so high - I just don't know if I can keep this up.

I had dd at the end of my second year of a PhD, took 2 years out, and I'm now in my final year. There are only 2 other people in my dept with young children - one has a SAHD and the other has a nanny. I have a dh with a very heavy professinal job with a lot of travel, and dd goes to nursery 3/days week. I planned this very carefully so that I could manage with just 3/days per week (which take up my grant) but alas it not working out as I hoped and I am realy struggling to keep it all going.

The conflict of interests is absolutely brutal. This is not the kind of work people do part-time but the thought of putting dd in full-time daycare, even when she starts school, makes me feel sick. But the thought of giving this up, when I have worked SO hard for SO long and wanted it SO much also makes me feel sick. It just doesn't compute and it's hard to keep the motivation going when I can't see a professional future.

Pre-dd I lived overseas, travelled alot, went out a lot and I do feel stuck in doors (we've never had a babysitter - hoping to fix that this year). But worringly - I don't seem to hae the nerve for things that I used to. I don't know if I could actually do some of the travelling or other stuff I used to do - I've become so much more anxious and risk-averse since being a mother. Dd wil never know the coourful, adventurous person I was - just this exhausted, anxious, stressed, moaning old bat.

I have been very lucky though, with my mom-toddler group which is just a self-organised group from NCT and another class. I would go MAD, without them - as theya re also juggling scaling back professional careers with childcare.

We can't have another child and although I am sad about that - I know it would have been the end of my professional hopes. I can barely manage as it is.

I'm just so anxious and worn out and feel I'm trying to be two different people and neither of them are satisfied or fulfilling their role.

Is it OK to spend the family allowance (or whatever they call it now) on gin in an effort to regain my youth?

Honeydew - I'm also a teacher and I stay away from M&T type groups now because I can't face another 'do you work and what do you do' question. I do work and I'm lucky to have found a part time job (temporary unfortunately). However, as soon as the word 'teacher' has left my lips tumbleweed rolls and the chuchbell tolls. Excuses are made and my efforts to talk to anyone rebuffed.

Or maybe I'm just really dull these days !