The Motherhood Delusion

[SantaLucia]

A thread to safely house all the thoughts that you are ashamed to admit. Example:

Why did we have children?

When does it all become worth it?

The day my child was born was NOT the best day of my life (it was my wedding) and I absolutely remember the pain and the boredom of being in hospital.

I can't be bothered reading about child development.

The health visitor is not worth a trip in the rain with a sleeping baby.

Thank goodness I'm over that "newborn" stage. Roll on year 5!

I know Orm, right now DS is asleep and DH is out. I have MN and wine. Yay!!!

I want to live alone but still have DH hand over his pay packet . Oh, should have posted that on AIBU.

Oh yes - the marriage delusion.
I love having the bed to myself now and then, so I can stretch out without a big hairy man next to me hogging the duvet and snoring in my earhole. And I dream of a parallell universe where I have an apartment of my own overlloking the Thames, where I can escape to do decadent things like lie around on my chaise longue gazing wistfully out of the window, writing in my journal (if i had one), reading endless novels and sleeping loads. Oh. Oh. Oh.

And the farting. I hate sharing a bed with someone who farts in his sleep. And eats curries before turning in.

Please remind me, what film is "My, he was yar" from or where does the quote come from?

I used to use facepacks! I used to lock the bathroom door and wallow in the bath for hours! ... what scares me is that when I do get my freedom back I'll be too blooming OLD and KNACKERED to use it!
Even now on the rare occasion I go out without childless I feel like an escaped prisoner, all shell shocked

You know whenever someone posts about a problem their child is going through, they always say that their child is loving, gorgeous, caring, kind, articulate, clever etc. (apart from whatever nightmarish problem they happen to be posting about) ?
Well mine isn't. (lucky I love him, no-one else would put up with him)

I think a lot of you have young kids maybe under 6? It does get easier and more enjoyable the older they get! Don't listen to the mums saying "oh it gets harder the older they get", thats crap (although mine aren't teenagers)

although the never ending housework just goes on and on..........

tmmj I think there's something in that - then again it may also be a lot to do with how much support/friends you've got around you. It can feel a lot harder than it is when you know there's no chance of anyone else having 'em for an hour or so, ever. These days I can just about leave ds with dh for that long, but we are only just getting to that stage now, and in that sense it's been a long 15 months.

I suppose that's another one of those things - "common sense" child-rearing is spouted at you so frequently by so many people, it's hard to remember it's not your fault if it doesn't work like that for your child.

MMJ I agree to an extent, I was so desperate for DS, but I also think for some people the idea of having kids gets idealised and it is pretty hard to cope with when it does happen!

My brother was apparently a nightmare (a bit like my DS by all accounts) and my mum told me that whenever he woke her up crying she would think "thank God he isn't twins" and "there are thousands of women who would give anything to hear their baby cry". It got her through and the same thoughts got me through, remembering how many tears I shed before he was born.

I LOVE this thread!
Yes, yes, yes, so agree with expressed sentiments! Love DSs but, omg, it can be sooo boring and stressful simultaneously looking after them all day, every day! Currently on mat leave with DS3 and actually looking forward to going back to work. So why did I agree to have 3 [hmm[? And considering No4 ...
Must be v strong biological imperative to pass on own precious genes .
Janitor, strange, but we strugglesd (a lot) to have kids and I am delighted to have them and love them to bits, however do not love every second of dealing with them - I suppose what PhD is saying: no help, no respite, NO time to myself (not even at night as currently BFing and co-sleeping as otherwise would have no sleep at all - so why, oh why am I BFing???). Maybe I have ishoos and need therapy : that would be time to myself, must persue that train of thought...

I am tired of telling well-meaning ladies that 2 children IS enough for me, that NO I'm sure I won't want any more in the future, and that I really DO want hubby to get the SNIP!

High Society. Tracy Lord says it of the True Love boat.

@ Redfox, I remember it from The Philadelphia Story (Katharine Hepburn) and the equally gorgeous musical remake High Society (Grace Kelly). Hope you remember them!

The day dd2 was born was the best day of my life, feel very guilty it wasn't the day dd1 was born.

I've been at home with the kids for 7 years, I'm bored. Very bored. I'm not cut out to look after kids full time. I am really not a kid person. I dread playing with them. I'm starting a full time college course next month and I can't wait.

I prefer the bathing and putting them to bed part of the day than the playing with them part.

No one told me it was going to be this hard, sometimes I long for my childless days.

I try really hard but I just can't love DSD as much as I love my own dds. Feel very guilty about that one.

I love this thread! Maybe we should keep it going as it is doing my PND wonders!

I used to be a size 8, could pull fit men on nights out, could have sex in taxis and not care- could eat whatever liked, drink what ever I liked, smoked loads, earned loads of money, buy denim skirts because you could see my knickers, go braless, speed in my car, listen to the radio so my car shook... loads of things!!!!

Now I am a SAHM- I haven't got the size 8 figure anymore, fit men would play 'pull a pig' using me on a night out, I would NEVER have sex in a taxi now, or sex generally full stop without being drunk and the lights being off, I starve myself on a friday so I can have a dial a pizza (a dial a fucking pizza!), I smoke 15 fags when dd has gone to bed rocking in the garden, I couldn't go braless unless I wanted to be mistaken as a tribe woman, I drive at a respectful 30 now, sometimes even 20 miles per hour if there is a cock behind me thats reminds me of me when I was pre-child just to piss them off....

I am watching Jeremy Kyle now shamelessly with my dd on the sofa, she needs to know about the world outside our 'jolly' home!!!!!

I was never very maternal, my friends say that I am a 'natural' mother, that means to me that they see me like their own mothers, fat and old with facial hair!11

Hormones made me do it. Bloody hormones. I quite liked the baby stage. And the toddler stage. It's the incessant fighting and arguing which I can't stand.

I feel like I've spent the past 8 years neglecting my life, and now the kids are old enough, I don't have the energy to go out and get another one.

This is a great thread. My best day was my wedding as well, the day DS was born was fairly shitty, particularly at the point when I was still shaking violently after my Emergency C-section, felt fairly traumatised and all DH was interested in was getting DS to latch on to my boobs because thats what we had been told to do at the NCT classes.

At that point I realised that I would never ever come first again in the priority list and much as I was delighted about our wonderful baby, couldn't help but feel a bit miffed after all the pampered princess treatment I got when pregnant.

I look forward to Fridays when I work from home but DS is in nursery - it's the one day a week I get any peace.

I am a SAHM 2 days a week and on Wednesday going to work seems like a huge luxury. I can eat lunch properly and not do 3 loads of washing up.

Oh yes, the wipe-wash-dress-wipe-clean cycle, what fun

I'm fed up of being the 'other child' that dd plays with.

I'm fed up of my DH sleeping downstairs because dd suddenly 'doesn't like sleeping on my own mummy'

I'm fed up that I cant have a telephone conversation with my mum, who I miss terribly now we have moved, without dd desperate to tell me something (and I'm fed up that when I do give in and ask her what she wants she always comes out with something like "Did you know, when I was a baby, I used to crawl on the roof".....I mean WTF?!)

I'm fed up with having dd handed over to me, lock stock and barrel, when I get home from work and dh not doing anything for the rest of the day.

I'm fed up of Dora, Peppa, Polly Pocket and Baby TV.

She's great, she's clever and funny and facinating - but bloody boring at times!

......AND I WANT TO READ A BOOK IN BED - NOT BE TOO BLOODY TIRED TO KEEP MY EYES OPEN!!!!

Cause I wanted one!

At around 6 months for me, that is when he became FUN.

I have been fortunate enough in my life to have lots of "best" days. Wedding was one, as was when I had the boy.

I read "Kid Wrangling" by Kaz Cooke and still occassionally refer to it when the boy does something unexpected.

Never had a health visitor, didn't seem necessary.

I don't know I kind of miss a snuggly little newborn.

3 year olds are infinitely more fun than under 3s, but I still can't wait until they're old enough to make their own breakfast.

Sometimes I want my old life back for a day.

I would like to throw all the plastic tat in the dustbin and live in a minimal white palace.

The woman writing in the paper the other day who said "I treasure those early morning starts when ds wakes at 5.30am and it's just him and me playing quietly" was a blardy lunatic.