Why do parent’s always sugar coat it?

I’ll never forget the first time I felt like the worst parent on earth because someone said to me, ‘but isn’t she worth it’ and in my mind all I could think of was a big fat NO.

Miller, my first baby, was 6 days old. I had wanted parenthood so badly and here I was 6 days in thinking maybe this gig wasn’t for me. I was sitting on the loo, constipated + episiotomy (nice mental picture right!?). I had been in hospital the night before with mastitis, I had severely damaged nipples and basically no will to live. I mean I wasn’t even capable of completing a basic human function!

It was that moment, sitting on my loo, crying and regretting every decision I had made in my life up until that point that my husband says, ‘But isn’t she worth it’ holding my daughter up to his cheek in delight.

I sobbed, said the obligatory ‘yes of course’ and shut the toilet door.

But in actual fact I didn’t think she was worth. It wasn’t just the really, really sore front bottom and inability to sit on my actual bottom. Or the constant breast feeding that felt more like a piranha gnawing on my nipple rather than feeding a delicate baby girl. It was the tiredness like I never knew was humanly possible (and still don’t think it is). The fear and confusion. The inability to make a decision about what pyjamas to wear, let alone if I should change her nappy after the 3am feed and the stark realisation that pregnancy hormones were the least of my worries.

But, like every good mum I put the pretty little bow on parenthood and smiled and nodded.

The problem with the parenting bow is that it only makes you feel worse. Your feelings of isolation, inadequacy, incompetence and failure are amplified a million times when we let people think we are ok. Or even worse, when we presume that no one else is suffering or has suffered the same feelings, we feel like even more of a failure, yet chances are they just have a draw full of pretty bows too.

6 years down the parenting roller-coaster, a lot of (unwanted) growing up, a shit load of therapy and a million bad parenting moments I sit back and say to my younger, constipated self, crying on the toilet, hubby please piss off, do you think pushing a watermelon out your willy is worth it…

So today I am going to leave the pretty parenting bow behind and not talk about anything other than the shitty stuff because sometimes being a parent is only the shitty stuff and that doesn’t make you a bad parent.

Sometimes I stay at work 30 minutes extra because I know that means they’ll be tucked in bed and sometimes I pretend to be on the toilet so I can sit my phone and that doesn’t make me a bad parent. Sometimes I literally want to punch my kids in the face, but that doesn’t make me a bad parent (OK maybe that one does make me a bad parent). Sometimes I play the ‘no talking game’ in the car and don’t let my kids talk the whole car trip and that’s fine too.

And sometimes, just sometimes, I wish I was on my own again, free to explore the world and do as I pleased and that doesn’t make me a bad parent, I’m pretty sure it just means I’m a person.

Cheers, love and survival,

Stace xxoo