If you’re a mum, tell me the hard things about? I’m faced with all the Facebook highlights and it is making my longing for a baby even worse

[Hollyboat]

I desperately want a baby but haven’t even met anyone yet.

Guess I am looking for the things the Facebook highlights don’t tell you, to try and get some perspective

Another vote here for sleep deprivation. I didn't really enjoy the early years much because all I wanted to do was sleep. I didn't sleep more than 90 mins in a row for YEARS. It made me the worst version of myself.

Other parents can be total dicks, you have to be around people you have nothing in common with other than having kids the same age.

Becoming invisible as a person in your own right.

The screeching.

The fighting if you have more than one.

Constant guilt.

Looking after them when you're ill.

Feeling judged no matter what you do.

Ruined body, haggard face.

Also got young kids? Think you have no couple time together?

Wait till their teenagers who are up and about the house asking for this and that for the next day till after you go to bed.

At least they sleep through the night though... o wait except when they want picking up from their friends at 1am

Nobody knows why it takes so long, but it does.

Even when they’re older everything takes forever - my twelve year old can literally forget what he is doing whilst actually doing it.

Kids get ill - a lot. Especially if you have more than one. The first few years are constant coughs, colds, stomach bugs and the like. A cold doesn’t sound like a big thing but when it’s a baby or a toddler they can’t work out how to sleep with it so they are up crying, sometimes until they puke everywhere and then if they finally fall asleep you can’t because your adrenaline is running and you’re waiting on them waking up again.

And yes, the worry. Right now I can think of all these worries whirring in my head :

Dd’s Friends leaving her out
Dd’s Cough - does she need to see a GP?
Dd’s getting upset every bedtime - why?
Dd’s Reading

Ds’ school work - am I helping enough? Too much?
Ds’ dyspraxia - does he need more help?
Ds’ football team - is it going to disband and he’ll be devastated?
Ds’ school trip might be being cancelled - he has been so looking forward to it.
Ds’ time on PlayStation - too much? Am I too strict?
Ds entering teen years and attitude. What’s normal?

Plus all the thinking about everything that needs done and who needs to be where when with what uniform / kit / shoes / equipment.

Yep total lack of sex life.

I always thought our sex life would improve as the kids got older and we had more free time and no getting up to settle little ones.

NOPE!

What we have now is a teenager who is awake until late at night and can hear EVERYTHING. We have actually snuck into the garage for a shag before now Cos it's the only place we won't be seen or heard!!! We live for weekends when he sleeps out for the night.

Thank you for all these posts. I’m no longer looking at all these pictures and posts thinking that’s the full story!

I love this thread, as I watch my 2.5 year old and 4 year old boys fight.....at least we re all in the same boat!

It’s very hard OP when you really want something, but yes the Facebook posts are a load of rubbish that totally do not represent what it’s really like.

My friend who is beautiful and charming never met a man she wanted to be with so she went ahead and had a baby on her own through artificial insemination by donor. She doesn't know who the donor is.
I wouldn't want a man just to have a baby with it's way too much pressure. So that's always an option.
I brought up my son alone, he is an adult now and I simply would not be without him, ever.
Ok it was hard scrimping and saving for years, the responsibility, the worry, above all the awful cost of childcare but it was all worth it and I'd do it again.
Actually I found it far easier to look after my child without a man.
You do need a good support network of friends and family (I didn't and really suffered).

Oh, don't forget having them with a partner who thinks by becoming a mother you should be his mother too. I wonder how I got signed up to this dream (too much Romantic Fiction and shitty women's magazines on my teenage years I think) and the reality is crushingly not romantic, it is just drudgery.

DS has brought norovirus back from preschool, or something very similar so since Wednesday night, when he woke up having projectile vomited all over his bed, we have all been ill. At one point DH was upstairs being sick, I was in the downstairs loo exploding from both ends and DS was screaming in the living room because he thought he'd been abandoned and his tummy hurt. We were all on the mend then last night DS woke up wailing again and had multiple attacks of diarrhoea. Then today DH is working (from home) so I'm on my own with a cross child who can't eat any of his favourite foods, no appetite and no idea when it will end. It's miserable and there's no one to help. All I want to do is lie down but I can't because I have to keep going to look after everyone.

It is definitely not like all the Instagram posts!

I just read this and thought of this thread www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.smh.com.au/lifestyle/life-and-relationships/looking-after-young-children-is-boring-and-more-of-us-should-admit-it-20170717-gxczoi.htmlI

My toddler has never slept more than 3 hours in one go. She won’t sleep in her own bed so dh sleeps in the conservatory. I’ve had more human excrement wiped on me than I had thought possible and I’ve aged visibly. This is without going into the never ending mountain of washing and makeup borrowing from the teenager. Motherhood has wonderful moments but it’s lonely, tiring repetitive and restrictive. And your body will never be the same after pregnancy

My DD is about as easy as they come. No SEN, manners, well-behaved, happy to be around adults, only child, sleeps and eats properly...

And yet I am still a walking zombie some days. She's incredible but she literally sucks the life out of me. Until I have nothing left to give. All it takes is a bad day or week at work and her being a bit full on one evening and I feel like I've been smacked in the face and could sleep for 100years.

They ask questions constantly, they shout a lot, they climb all over you, they want everything their way, they say no to EVERYTHING, getting out of the house is like one of those team building exercises on Crystal Maze against the clock.

It's seriously hard being a parent. If I went back in time and knowing the amount required of me from the moment I fell pregnant, but nobody showed me what a little legend DD was, I would tell DH no kids for me.

No sleep
No sex
No travel
No trips to the cinema without long term plans for a night off involving competitions over who deserves it most
No silence due to constant toddler chatter
No time to just chill in the evening

Post natal depression and general mum guilt

Wouldn't change it for the world but it is the hardest work I've ever done and I've had a varied career working with some of the most egotistical people you can meet.

I haven't read the full thread so bound to repeat things but the sleep deprivation is torture and the touching, the constant touching, oh my god I have been touched out! Oh and being .....'s mum not my name. I love them but I am also weary