You're doing ok - Happy MAMA's Day

A blog post for Mothers Day by The madhouse for cats and babies…..

I write this, as a mother of two children. One is nine years old, and one is almost six. I am not an expert in parenting, but I do have a bit of experience under my belt, and a lot of “been there done that”.

Parenting is a bit of a rollercoaster. It comes with so many amazing highs, but also some challenging lows. I always say that parenting is the only job in the world where you go in, pretty much untrained, with very little experience, you learn on the job, with no pay. It’s incredibly challenging and exhausting but also rewarding beyond words.

When we came home from the hospital, with a brand new baby, still riding the adrenaline high of “we made and gave birth to another human”, we pretty quickly realised that we really didn’t know what we were doing. In fact, I remember sitting on the bed, with the baby in her bassinet, asleep, with my husband standing there looking at her, and we both pretty much said to each other “now what do we do?” and laughed a little nervously. It was all strange, and new and a bit scary.

My first solo trip out, with the baby, was when she was about 4 weeks old (I was recovering from surgery, so hadn’t been out much, trying to rest when I could, with my husband home and family to help me) and I took myself to the supermarket to get some groceries. I got there and managed to get a few bits of shopping in my basket, when she started to wail loudly. She had been fed just before we left the house, and I had a brief poke in her nappy, and it seemed clean, so I picked her up and put her in the baby carrier I had with me, and decided that I really needed to get just a few more bits, and hopefully walking around with me would calm her down. It didn’t but I needed milk, bread, toilet rolls and coffee and I didn’t want to have to phone my husband and admit that I couldn’t even manage a simple task like that, with baby in tow and ask him to go shopping instead, so I kept going, gently sway walking in only that way that you do when you are trying to soothe a baby, and patting her bottom and shsshing her.

I am standing in the bread aisle, with a wailing baby, my slightly sleep deprived brain is trying to remember if we needed bread or rolls or both, and I am close to tears. I am tired, and I actually just want to run away, go home, and I feel utterly useless, that I cannot even get basic groceries. I stood there, eyes closed, wishing I knew what I was doing. I felt like a failure.

Suddenly, I feel a pat on my shoulder. An elderly lady is standing next to me. My first thought, is that she was going to give me a lecture on why my baby was crying and tell me off. I tried to pull out a polite smile and braced myself.

She asked me “is this your first baby?” I told her it was. “How old?” she asked. “four weeks tomorrow” I replied.

She smiled at me, and said “you look a bit tired, I remember those days. It’s exhausting, I know”.

“Yes” I said, “and I seem to be making a mess of even the basic things today, like trying to buy bread”.

She patted me on the shoulder again, and said “you know, it is going to be ok, and you are doing ok, and you need to remember that even when the day is a bad one, that you are doing a good job, being a mum is hard but you can do this”.

She cooed over the baby, and gave me a smile, and said goodbye and walked off. I stood there with tears pouring down my face. I wish now I could have hugged her, because she had no idea how much she had helped me and reassured me that I wasn’t a failure. I don’t know who she was, but she taught me something very important in those few moments in the supermarket. I would love to meet her again and tell her.

I now make a point of reminding myself, on the days when parenthood seems like a bit of a nightmare, or that I am not doing the right thing. When I question myself, or wonder if I will ever know what I am doing, that I am actually doing ok. That it will be ok. That bad days or challenging tines will come, and go, and things might be hard, but that I need to remember that it will be ok.

What I would say to any new mum, or even a not so new mum, who is having one of those moments where she wonders what on earth she is doing and feels like she is failing or not doing a good job, is just that. In fact, I have on many occasions said it. We need to hear it. Sometimes all it takes is someone else to remind us that we can do this, that we are worthy of the task and that it is hard but we will make it. We need to be able to tell ourselves and also other mothers around us, and hold each other up, as we walk through this parenting journey.

Always know:

“You are ok. Remember that this is the hardest job in the world. You are raising another human being, and whilst you may not always get it perfectly right, you will make mistakes, you will worry and not always know what you are doing, but you are doing ok”.

From one mum to another, to all those mums out there. Happy Mother’s Day.

Karen Reekie