this is the only thread where I can be really truthful about my feelings. I could spend all day saying what I really think but it would get far too boring!
I had 3 DC's in three years. Horrible pregnacies,one natural assisted birth, on emergency Section and one elective.
The whole experience has been a fucking nightmare and although I love my kids dearly, the work load the three of them generate is beyond belief.
I have no parental help, only a few close friends who all have young children and no money for a cleaner or mother's help.
I gave up my job as a Head of Department in a secondary school once my second child as born.
Becoming a mother for me has been such a transformation of everything that I used to be that I barely know who I am now. I am just a robot -a skivvy to my whole family.
My husband does take the kids off my hands here and there but does no housework.
I have had huge pregnancy complications. I now have a condition called Diastasis Recti. My abdomen has separated after the birth of my third child and I have an umbilical hernia. I have to have major surgery next month and abdominoplasty to put me back together again otherwise I am disfigured for life as I look about 7 months pregnant on a size 10 frame. Not only that I am always in pain.
Had I known the true life I was going to face as a dull housewife and mother with the never ending repetitive, unpaid, unrewarding monotony of housework, I would run to the hills!
My DH and I never get a moment's peace spend time out together or have an time for intimacy as a couple. Having children has placed a huge strain on our relationship and our lives are a;most like housemates, rather than a couple.
I am a well educated woman, who had a full career and an independent life. I am now for various and legitimate finacial reasons, dependent on my husband for money and my home. No different to being a kid really!
I fee I've lost everything of my former self and am left now as a generic term-' mum'
My mother never prepared me for motherhood in the slightest, I was an only child and my mother always worked. I never held a baby until I had my own and new nothing of what mother hood really involved, apart from that babies keep you awake.
As I said, i do really love my brood and in themselves they are wonderful children who light up my life. But the maternal role is just sheer drudgery and I know realise how I was very very foolish I was to have 3 so quickly and without a proper support network, just a few close friends and my church.
It's the housework and the lack of money that gets me the most. Every day I'm cooking, cleaning, washing, tidying and ironing like a prisoner, trapped in my little cell - the house. I do hope to write a book which I have been working on for a few years now but I'm always too tired to fucking concentrate!
I so often think what was the point of getting a master degree and teaching for 10 years ( so I spent 5 years at uni altogether just to give it up to be a cleaner and cook and wash all day? I've never had postnatal depression - I've experienced a kind of schism of identity I feel so lost in the motherhood role.
Do I regret having kids? Hmm... I've paid such a huge price- lost my career because we can't afford childcare for 3, got no money for anything apart form the basics because we have to cope on one salary and my guts had come apart and fallen out- so most of the time I feel totally overwhelmed and exhausted.
I don't regret the children but I believe women espeically should be better informed at school on the implications of motherhood for their jobs, careers and lifestyles. Men in general do NOT pay the same penalties for having children what women do; there seems such a lack of awareness by young girls about how having children will change you life.
I just wish good quality affordable childcare was available so that I could work part -time for the good of my family. I would be able to keep working, have a break from the kids ( and them me) and feel more worthwhile. Motherhood is such a thankless role most of the time, yet if you do it badly, you are considered an outcast.
I hate hate hate the school run and the yummy mummies at my DD's primary school are the most staid, dull and self obsessed group of people. All they talk about is their kids.
I also dislike the fact that I'm now judged by people not on my academic performance, my skills as a teacher, my looks or my personality but now that I am first and foremost now- 'a mum' of three.
Many mothers I think suffer a chronic lack of support both from partners, their local community and society. Motherhood destroys your value as a woman in your own right and unles you are rich enough to afford help or have parents who are very supportive, then you may as well be living in the fifties.
I could just go on and on so I'll stop there. Thank you for listening to my negative rant.