Do you ever find yourself thinking about something completely random and then wondering if other people have the same kinds of thoughts?
I do this often - usually it will be in relation to one of the many completely obscure thoughts that pops into my peculiar mind at any given moment of the day - such as "I wonder if the Queen ever makes her own cup of tea" or "I wonder if aliens will actually land on Earth in my lifetime" (Anybody else wonder these things? No? Just me?!)
But sometimes it will be something a little bit more serious, something relating to my life as a mother - and usually something that makes me feel ALL OF THE GUILT.
As mothers we often have a tendency to only talk about the happiest moments - the rush of love we feel for our children, the pride we feel when they learn something new, the way we could stare at them sleeping for hours in awe of their beauty and innocence....and as lovely as all of those things are, it's the not-so-lovely thoughts I have (and the frequency with which I have them!) that make me worry.
That make me wonder if I'm actually normal for thinking them, and if anybody else out there feels them too.
This afternoon was one of those occasions.
As I sat on the loo, where I had been for the past 10 minutes, I listened to the situation downstairs getting more and more out of control - my 2 and 4 year olds were terrorising their poor Dad who was obviously struggling to hold it all together whilst my 12 month old was crying at all of the noise and fuss going on around him.
I knew I should go downstairs to help calm them all down and restore some order and just do the "mum" thing...I do hate to stereotype but in our house Dad just isn't very good at keeping the situation calm, if anything he tends to make it worse and more chaotic! - but I also just honestly didn't want to go down there.
I wanted five more minutes of peace, distance, space to breathe without someone climbing all over me.
And so instead, I texted my partner from the loo and said "Sorry, got a bit of a dicky tummy! I might be up here for a while!"
A blatant lie.
One I'd have to keep up for the rest of the evening when my concerned partner kept asking how I was feeling.
But one I regretted?
Hell no.
I spent 15 minutes sitting alone in the bathroom, scrolling through Instagram in peace and quiet...it was bliss. After a day of refereeing the kids fights, those 10 minutes honestly felt like the equivalent to my mental state of an afternoon at the spa.
But while I was sitting there, I did wonder...am I normal for doing this?!
You hear jokes all the time about Dads pretending they need the loo to get out of helping with the kids, but you never really hear about Mums doing it...because Mums all love and dote on their children too much to do that don't they? Mums all take their responsibilities too seriously to try to get out of them for 10 minutes for a quick Facebook fix on the loo?!
And for a moment, I felt that all too familiar mom guilt.
But then I wondered...IS it really just me?! Or do other Mums do and think these things too?!
Well I hate to leave a question unanswered so in the name of research, I've decided to share my Mum Confessions with you all - in the hope that if any one of you does or thinks the same things, you'll let me know...so that I know I'm not just a terrible mother.
And while we're here, if you want to share some of your mom confessions too...I would love that! Maybe someone else will relate to yours.
My Mum Confessions
1) On a fair few occasions since the kids were born, I have pretended to be poorly
Purely so that I could spend the majority of the day in bed reading books while my partner looks after the little ones.
I've always been a cow for faking illness to be honest...I used to fake illness for a day off school all the time and my poor mother could never tell the real illnesses from the fake (I should have been an actress...), and even as a working adult I was rather partial to the odd sick day too (definitely not a model employee!).
So whilst I'm always reading memes about how mums don't get sick days while Dads do, jokes about Man flu and so on.... I have to admit...I have definitely had more "sick days" as a parent than my partner has. And the vast majority of them? Have been faked.
2) Sometimes...I do have a favorite child.
*Shock horror* Surely NO parent is supposed to have a favorite child!!! But I do.
It's never the same one for very long though. Usually it's whichever one is sharing/being well behaved/not throwing monster tantrums and drawing on the walls on that particular day. That one is, at that moment in time, definitely my favorite.
3) Sometimes...I feel as though I almost miss the One Child days.
Now this is the one that makes me feel the most guilty and makes me worry that I'm not normal.
And it's a hard one to explain, because even when they're all driving me mad...I would never ACTUALLY wish them away or wish they hadn't been born or wish that they were anything less than right here with me driving me to distraction.
But at the same time, sometimes I think back to the days of having only one child and feel as though I miss it...not that I miss the others not being here, but that I miss the ease of having only one. How much more straight forward things were, how much more freedom we had, how much more affordable things were, how easy bedtime was with one, how easy EVERYTHING was with one compared to now with three.
And even as I'm thinking it, I KNOW I wouldn't change it and I KNOW how lucky I am to have the kids I do - but still, that wistful feeling of "Wow wasn't it all so much simper back in the one child days, why didn't we enjoy that more?!" is there. And it makes me feel bloody terrible!
4) I absolutely frigging HATE playing with my kids!
There. I said it! I hate it.
I HATE playing.
Now before the Perfect Parent Brigade jump all over me and declare me evil for not savouring every joyful moment with my child, let me just explain something - I TRY.
I really do! I play with them, I come up with alternative activities so we don't have to play the games that drive me nuts, I try my absolute best - but my kids? Are BOSSY.
And at the moment, their idea of "playing" is to basically direct me in some sort of Theatre Of Madness & Cruelty as they tell me exactly which figure I can play with (The shittest one. Always the shittest one), what exactly that figure can say and what sort of voice to say it in (NEVER DEVIATE FROM THE SCRIPT!) and how long the game will last for (FOREVER!!!!!!!)
So excuse me if I find it difficult to enjoy every #blessed second of that crap!
NOW ITS YOUR TURN!
So there they are, my top Motherhood confessions - please share yours too, help me to feel less alone!
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