fatherhood Archives : Me, Annie Bee.

The hardest thing about being a parent..IMO

Anna — Tue, 03 Jan 2017 21:29:49 +0000

Order is restored! Or at least something resembling order is restored. Aoife is back at school, Rory is back at work and Seth is watching Toy Story 2 back to back whilst dressed as Buzz Lightyear. Standard. Having been a lazy bum and taking a couple of weeks away from blogging and shameless self promotion I’m a bit tired so I decided to ease myself back into it gently and go for a Top Ten. Here’s the Top Ten things I found hardest about becoming a parent, or more specifically a Mummy for that’s what I am. Child Birth Yes, I know this is obvious but I didn’t read past week 33 in my ‘How to be pregnant’ book. It wasn’t all “oh my gosh, I peed myself…no wait my waters broke”…*scream like a banshee*….baby after 30 mins. It took days, neither child was in a hurry. It was painful, I sparkled, I cried, I was rude to the midwife, it was undignified, it was exhausting! Shitty Nappies Again yes, I’d HEARD about them but nothing. NOTHING can prepare you for an explosive, up the back, out the sides shitty nappy. The one where you have to hold legs in the air, cut baby out of the vest and wipe all at the same time.It’s on their hands, it’s on their feet, at least it’s not on….no way, how did it get there? IT’S ON THEIR HEAD. IT’S IMPOSSIBLE. Not laughing at ‘not good’ behaviour Obviously the biting and wall drawing isn’t a laughing matter, but the sass. Well, as much as I don’t admit it to Aoife, it’s HILARIOUS. Like the time Rory asked her to pick something up, she replied “Give me a minute woman”. Or the time I put her on the naughty step and took away her treats. “Will I still have food & water?” “Yes” “Oh I’ll be fine then”. Sometimes you just have to walk away and laugh. Without them knowing of course. Sneezing Coughing, laughing, crying, sparkling, running, dancing, jumping. All not just hard, almost impossible! Appreciating the things that are important to them Instead of being a destroyer of dreams and imagination, you have to appreciate every leaf/pine cone/stone/receipt placed into your bag because it’s “really beautiful” or “magic” or “stone”. It’s so hard to not point out your dismay at your handbag or pocket being full of snotty tissues and detritus. Being a parent ALL THE TIME. It’s nonstop! Even if you get some time away you think about them and talk about them. If you don’t think about them then you think how you should take it easy as you’re going to have to go home and be up with them in the night. If you have the kind of children that sleep through then you’re still thinking about looking after them with a hangover. The parenting just doesn’t stop! Finding a babysitter. When you announce you’re pregnant with your first child all your friends will tell you how excited they are and how they’ll babysit. LIES. As soon as baby arrives it becomes “I’ll babysit when they sleep through” then “I’ll take them to the pub at 18”. It’s not like the Babysitter Club books I read as a child!! Guilt Mummy Guilt/Daddy Guilt, call it what you want. It’s intense! Before children I didn’t do guilt but childbirth brings this whole new emotion. Every decision you make leads to a feeling of guilt. Everything you say leads to a feeling of guilt. Every time you leave them, every time you don’t. Every time you tell them off, every time you don’t. “I am too hard on them, I’m too soft on them, I’m abandoning them , I mollycoddle them” OH MY GOSH. I will also put crying in here. I have cried so much more in the last 6 years than I ever did in my previous 32! I have even cried at Four Weddings and CSI. Dealing with your body and mind It changes so much, at first it feels like it’s not your own. It gets big, it starts to behave differently. If you’re breast feeding it can feel like it’s completely someone else’s. It gets fatter due to ‘baby weight’, loneliness, sadness, boredom, habit. Your mind can be vicious, making you question everything. Making you paranoid. Making you feel bad about you and your parenting. Mix the two together and it’s a pretty rough time. I’d love to say you deal with it like this….but I still don’t have an answer. Baby groups/School playgrounds URGH. All these other Mummy’s just being amazing, looking fantastic and coping. They breastfeed so well, they look amazing, their children behave, some of them have actual jobs as well as being a mum. Their children love Baby Einstein and only listen to Beethoven, in fact, give Sebastian a toy piano and he can compose a tune, HE’S ONLY 8 MONTHS OLD! They never look harassed and have never dropped the F-Bomb in front of their children. When you’re tired, feeling fat and lonely THIS is one of the hardest things, this leads me to Pretending OK, I know I said Top Ten but I don’t like to conform. Being a parent is pretending all the time. We pretend we’re coping, we pretend we know what we’re doing, we pretend we’re happy with our smock dress, we pretend we’re not comparing ourselves to every other parent we see, we pretend every single minute of parenting is a breeze. It’s a tough act to keep up. We should all probably drop the pretending and then my Top Ten would be a legit Top Ten. Aside from all that, this parenting lark is a piece of cake.

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Hey Wills, you’re not alone.

Anna — Mon, 21 Nov 2016 12:21:28 +0000

Last week, during a visit to Vietnam, Prince William admitted he struggled with parenthood. The internet was vicious! HOW VERY DARE HE? cried Twitter. “U don’t know meaning of struggle”* “This man has no idea what it means to struggle in life” *SLOW HAND CLAP* Well done the internet. You completely missed the point. I don’t for one minute believe that when William said he struggled he meant that he was strapped for cash or he was weighed down with laundry. He wasn’t admitting he found it a struggle because they need a new boiler but the kids need new shoes. He isn’t talking about a materialistic struggle. He is talking about a mental struggle. The one many of us go through when we question every little decision we make and action we take. When we second guess the impact the words we say will have on our children in years to come. The struggle of feeling like your wading through treacle rather than frolicking in leaves. The struggle of making decisions based on the impact it will have on a whole family unit rather than the impact it will have on yourself. The struggle of trying to encourage your children to be thankful, thoughtful, caring and kind little humans. It’s bloody hard work. The struggle of parenthood isn’t a working class/upper-class argument. It doesn’t matter how much money we have. It doesn’t matter how big or small a support network we have surrounding us. We can all find ourselves struggling for one reason or another. I’ve said it before, none of us go into parenthood thinking it will be a breeze but we can’t truly prepare for the impact on our lives whether it be our first, second or third (I assume). To sit behind a keyboard telling someone they aren’t allowed to declare parenting a struggle is a cop out. None of us have the right to decide that someone else can’t find things difficult because they have more money than us or a bigger house. It’s not for us to decide who is allowed to struggle and who isn’t. It’s also not for us to decide whose struggles are worse than others. It’s for us to support others who are struggling, if we can. Parenting levels the field. No matter how rich or poor we are we’ve all been sicked on. We’ve all discovered that questionable mark on our top once we enter polite company. We’ve all had pasta thrown at us. We’ve all questioned whether it’s a freckle or a speck of shit on our arm Give the man a break. He may be heir to the throne but he’s still a parent like the rest of us and I applaud him for admitting this. Wills, if you’re reading this, if you ever need a chat about this whole family/parenting malarky just drop me a line. You, Catherine and the children can pop round for tea and a chat. *No one is actually going to take offence at something written by someone who can’t even be bothered to write the whole word ‘you’.

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The lives of others.

Anna — Mon, 31 Oct 2016 12:33:16 +0000

At a recent, child free wedding (not ours) we found ourselves sat at the grown up equivalent of the children’s table. That is the table of people who all have small children/are pregnant. Obviously, as happens when you have freedom from children, the conversation quickly turned to children (including a lengthy section on ‘pooey nappies’) all of us regaling the soon to be parents with the humorous tales of parenting. Yes, reusable nappies and cleaning with cotton wool alone are lovely ideas but once you’ve cut baby out of a shitty vest thrice, the idea of scraping out poo, soaking and putting said item in your washing machine loses its appeal pretty quickly. Respect to those who persist! Interestingly it is Dad to be who wants the reusable nappies, the one who will be out at work and not having to include washing nappies in his daily, baby looking after routine! Talk then moved on to bedtime and the first few months of sleepless nights. Now, THIS was an eye opener. One of the dads spent six months sleeping in the spare room so that his sleep wasn’t disturbed in the night. One dad only does night-time bum changes on a weekend but sleeps with ear plugs in on weekdays. Another dad pops his eye mask on, drips some essential oils on his pillow and sticks his ear plugs in so as to enjoy a full nights sleep… I was stunned. I felt awful and I said to Rory “Wow, you had it tough. Sorry” See, Rory did every alternate night feed or nappy change no matter what the day. Sometimes, if I was exhausted he would do a whole night. Even if he had work the next day. We just thought this was how parenting worked. As a couple we decided to have a baby and so as a couple we did the parenting as equally as possible. Rory believed I needed to be as well rested for my day in order to look after baby properly as much as he needed to be refreshed to go to work. He knew that if I was exhausted my day would be difficult, baby would pick up on it and no one would have a good day. We didn’t realise that we were an anomaly. All of the other women around that table are strong, independent, career women – lawyers, social workers, accountants. Of all the women around that table I was the only one without a career, the only one who doesn’t work so arguably I should be the one living the more ‘traditional’ set up of woman looks after baby while man sleeps. Luckily, Rory doesn’t feel like he’s been done over. He doesn’t feel like he’s been conned into sleepless nights and brain meltingly tired days when he could have had bubble baths, eye masks and peaceful slumber. Even if he does it’s a bit late now. I’d quite like a bubblebath and a full nights sleep though. Disclaimer, this isn’t intended to be a ‘we do it right, they do it wrong’ type post. It’s a ‘everyone does it differently and sometimes I don’t get it (especially the no snacks thing) but that’s OK’ type of post. Though clearly I’m the most right…..

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Check your Dadding skills…

Anna — Wed, 26 Oct 2016 06:00:39 +0000

A few months ago an article was published about what makes a Supermum. I got myself rather cross, as oft I do,and wrote a post about Supermums (I get cross enough to blog not quite cross enough to declare myself ‘Livid from Leeds’ in a Daily Mail article with my very angry face on). The list comprised of ‘important’ Mummy tasks like Not being late for school drop off or pick up Baking cakes Ensuring the children had clean school uniforms Encouraging good manners Reading to your children See, I thought these were just ‘things you did as a parent’ but apparently not…. Today an equally patronising list was released. The Top 50 Dad Skills (with a Dad they’re skills, with a Mum they’re ‘things we do to show off’). The list was created after polling 2000, yes two whole thousand Daddies. I don’t know how these Dads were chosen, maybe they’re just REALLY good at Dadding. This “…huge list of ‘Dad Skills’ show just how many roles dads have to fill in the upbringing of their children. They’re fixers, builders, comedians, sportsmen, the list is endless” Well, not quite endless, it’s a Top 50 after all. The list comprises all the ‘important’ Daddy skills like Blowing up balloons Role play Anything to do with tech. DIY Flipping pancakes Barbecuing. Again I got rather cross, it’s another list of not fantastically important skills in the nurturing and development of our children. Rather it’s a list of what men think make them rather manly. I don’t understand why, in the 21st century, some people still feel the need to define themselves as good parents by how feminine or masculine they are. Our children love us regardless. They love us because of tickles and silly faces. They love us because we carry them if they’re tired. They love us because we love them. They don’t care if we buy a cake or make a cake. They don’t care if we fix a hole or pay a person to do it. They only care that we are there when they need us to be and sometimes when they don’t. As parents we have an important role to play and the only people we should be trying to impress are our children. As parents we (I) spend a lot of time doubting ourselves, we don’t need to be encouraged to compare ourselves to others. HOWEVER Just out of interest both Rory and I checked ourselves against the lists. I scored 57.5% on the ‘Supermum’ list and 58% on the Top 50 Dad skills list. Rory scored 47.5% on the ‘Supermum’ list and 58% on the Top 50 Dad skills list. Therefore, I have deduced that I am Bi-parent. I am equal part Mummy and Daddy. What about you?

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