Learning the Rules of Motherhood
So, I have become the cliché. The cliché mother who can’t remember the last time she washed her hair… wearing yesterday’s leggings with a side splash of spew; sporting the glazed half-dead look. When did I stop wearing make-up? When did I stop caring about the bags under my eyes? Do I like people seeing how tired I am? Perhaps I secretly want to look like shit so that people will feel sorry for me, or for once that the other half might notice and accept that just because I don’t go to work he doesn’t have the monopoly on being tired.
We are seven months in with a reflux baby. It has been hard. It is hard and I’m only just beginning. The amount of times I have wished I was at work, almost convinced myself that going back is a good idea. I have left a career that I had great control over for a new career that is completely unstable, with no certainties and no security. No sick pay, limited breaks, ungrateful staff and, all in all, hours that are beyond unsociable. I never made the Motherhood v Career choice. I didn’t purposely leave motherhood until my late thirties. I was 36 when I had my baby girl, but that was never a conscious decision. I wanted a baby. I just never found the right time, place, and person.
Now I have and all I do is moan? Really? No, it may seem like that, but I am in fact the happiest I have ever been. My boyfriend disagrees. Recently I ruminated that this had been the best year of my life. His response dumbfounded me. Well you could have fooled me, you’ve been a miserable bitch most of the time. Ouch. That hurt. Was I really that bad? Sleep deprivation is a bitch and it turns us into arseholes. But miserable? I didn’t think so.
Motherhood isn’t just about getting used to looking after this small human, it is about living with someone who annoys the hell out of you, that makes you want to hide in the toilet and cry tears of anger and frustration but who you love so much that if they ever left you’d crumble.
Yeah Motherhood is a bitch. No one prepares you for the tsunami that rips through your relationship. I am surprised that any couples stay together. I am a modern woman and a feminist and I have honestly begun to think that the reason that marriages in the past lasted is that with clear gender divides everyone knew what they were supposed to do. Father worked, Mother looked after house and children. Now there is such a blur that everyone wants or feels obliged to do a bit of everything and so mum and dad end up resenting each other. I hate it.
We seem to have been locked in a two player game of ‘Sleep and Ladders’ I never win as he gets dealt bonus cards as he is at work and after all it doesn’t matter if I look like a zombie as all I have to do is stay at home all day. So I’ve given up trying to win. I’m quite happy to be a martyr and slide down my sleep-snake and accept that for a long while yet I’m not going to make it up the ladder and into the bed!
I don’t know if I should ask for help with the night feeds. If I don’t I am titled a martyr. If I do I have to put up with the niggly, tired (but smug) boyfriend as he did one night feed! If I cry I am an emotional freak, if I hold it in it secretes out in other ways, usually in the form of sarcastic jibes. If I say, I can’t cope I don’t want to do this anymore, I get told Well go back to work. If only it was that simple!
How the hell do women cope? How do relationships survive?
Part of me feels complete. After years of wanting a baby I have her. I now have that final jigsaw piece in place, but it seems that I have simultaneously trodden on and messed up all of the other jigsaw pieces and I haven’t a fucking clue how to put it all back together.
I am not going back to my job as Head of English. Not going back. People recoil in shock when I tell them… people must assume that I chose not to have a baby and to focus on my career. This was never the case. After the breakdown of my marriage three years ago, my career filled the void. The baby shaped whole in my life: that was left gaping when my marriage was destroyed. My jigsaw has changed over time. That missing piece is now here, I just have to get all the others to fit back into place too. Starting with the career piece. Now that is a difficult one to work out. Where do I go from here? Write a book? Supply? Not teach at all? My anxious brain is on over-drive with worry.
My job is no longer my life. From the moment I saw that positive reading my brain shifted. No matter how feminist, headstrong or independent I am… I’d be a liar if I said that it didn’t change me, it didn’t change my ability to do the job and to do it well; it changed by desires and the fact that I don’t want to right now.
So for now there are lots of new pieces to play with and together they are going to make it much easier to keep the Motherhood piece in place and give me the time to sit back and look at the jigsaw of my life and actually enjoy it without the pressure of work.
Well that’s the plan any way.
(Note from The Editor: Louise Herridge is a 36 year old newish Mum and step-mum to a fun-filled 8 year old as well as an English teacher currently venturing back after Maternity leave. Her blog, A little Book of Sick chronicles her journey through life with a reflux baby – but don’t worry, not all her writing is about being sick! Take a look at her other work on her author page, her own blog or join her on Facebook to hear more of her escapades.)
