I remember a hearing once that any man can be a father, but it takes a special man to be a Daddy.
I remember thinking that’s true.
And now I think there’s a missing second line to that:
Many a woman can be a mother, but it takes a special one to be a good mother.
Yeah, okay, I won’t win accolades, but it is true.
This has been a particularly trying few weeks in our home, and my patience is running very, very short. The disturbed and broken sleep of the last three nights certainly doesn’t help, and the fact that our lives are a little up in the air, we’ve just found out we're having another baby a lot sonner than I thought it would happen. Moving around this tiny flat, not knowing what to do about work, carry on or give up and the fact that my mum has been stressing the hell out of me about nearly everything doesn't help on abit neither. All add up to me being – well… not the best.
Being a mother isn’t that hard. Get pregnant, have a baby, get the baby to adulthood alive and with as little scarring as possible. But everything beyond that basic baseline instruction takes effort. Time, energy, motivation. Effort.
Of course it’s not always tough, and sometimes it’s downright fantastic, but even in the worst job you have good days. What differentiates motherhood from a ‘real job’ is that you don’t get to go home, you don’t get to take days off, and there’s no changing jobs to get away from a bad situation. Oh, and in a ‘real job’ you get to hand over to someone else when you need to.
As a mother, however, you’re on call all the time. Even ‘scheduled’ me time falls away when something else comes up. There’s no explaining ‘me time’ to a frantic, "BUSY" {as we like to call her} toddler.
Engaging young minds is hard work. Enthusiastic work. Energy consuming work. Whether you slept or not. Going on outings, for walks, teaching, drawing, singing, reading. Sleep is irrelevant. But keeping a child active and engaged is definitely the lesser evil – a bored and frustrated toddler is just plain scary.
Not snapping and getting irritable at the ‘Mummy, mummy, mummy, mummmy, what's this? what's this? what's this?’ that follows you around the house, or currently for us, ‘up, up, up’ is really hard. Especially when you haven’t slept.
Being a mother might be the most rewarding thing I have ever ever done. It might be the thing that’s made me grow more than anything else, and it might be the biggest thing that I would never ‘undo’ given the chance, but being good at it… well… it’s undervalued.
If I put this much energy, effort, emotion, thought, passion, self and time into a ‘real job’, I’d own the company by now.
* We do still cosleep, some what,the fact I have been trying to get Tula to sleep in her own bed through the nightis stressing me out. I think the fact I feel so stressed and unsettled, are making for an unsettled little one who wakes up moaning a lot.which means I don’t sleep much or well when I do.
*This makes me cranky. This makes Tula cranky. Two crankies don’t make a happy. Or something like that.
