For those who enjoyed motherhood - advice

[Jelllytot]

I'm a first time mum to a 7 month old. She is the sweetest funniest little baby, and I feel very lucky to be her mum. That said, motherhood has hit me like a bus. I am constantly finding myself feeling like "my mum never mentioned it was this tough".

Since giving birth I am just so tired and exhausted. It's neverending . I wonder if I just had things so cushy or maybe I was lazy(!?) but I just want a day of doing absolutely nothing (and yet when given the opportunity to have a day to myself, all I do it think about DC and want to hang out with her).

My body has changed for the worse. I have so many aches and pains that make doing things so much harder eg. giving DC a bath hurts my back, I struggle to sit on the floor, because my coccyx has been impacted so playing on the floor with DC is painful. I'm doing physio and so hopefully it will all heal soon.

I am suddenly cooking so much more because I want DC to have a positive weaning experience but I find it tiring doing it everyday.

Anyway, for mums who genuinely found the entire experience a pleasure, please give me some advice. I want to LOVE it. But I can't help but feel how easy life used to be. I feel ungrateful but I owe my DC a happy and present mum (and my DH too tbh. He is so very happy to be a dad and I find most of my conversations every evening are just whinging to DH about things I find hard. And I don't want to be such a negative person when he's enjoying it so much)

Well done OP for getting out and about! I also found that stressful, mostly worrying a lot about whether there'd be space for the pram on the bus when it came, or worrying about the faff of getting the pram in lifts to get to the train platform etc. I did have a sling but that didn't work for me for days out because there's so much other stuff you have to carry too. I don't have solutions other than to say I still went out, and it was always fine.
I also really lowered my expectations for chores and a sparkling home. It isn't forever, one day you'll have an older child, and more time, and you can pick things back up again, should you wish x

I used flylady techniques to keep on top of housework. these days I think people prefer the Organised mum method but both are similar, I think. You just do one room very thoroughly each week and spend 5-10 mins every where else each day just tidying and doing surface clean. I was amazed what a difference a 5 minute tidy up does to a room.

For food, I just cooked very easy things - tray bakes, stir fries, pasta dishes etc and a couple of nights a week either ready meal curries (way cheaper and healthier than take away) or oven baked fish and chips - that sort of thing. If I wanted to make something more complicated, I'd put DC in baby bouncers, or once they were toddlers, just outside the kitchen door with a toy bath or warm water to do water play (completely clean to tidy up afterwards and they loved it) while I peeled veg or made a pie or whatever.