Yesterday was a two lots of swimming, History club, two lots of karate, on-the-run picnic tea, essential groceries pick up, losing a diamond earring in M&S car park, feeding my two youngest sticky plums to keep them still whilst I searched for aforementioned lost (now, very thankfully found) diamond earring, exploding baby ((again thankfully), not literally but we all know what I mean!), get home from school pick up at 7.45pm type of evening. The same Thursday (minus the lost earring moment) that I do every week with my team. And as I woke up this morning (I use the term loosely seeing as the baby has had me up since around 4am) to get ready for work, I am struck by my own ‘mama strength’.
We are strong enough to grow an entire human being in our bodies...and then, one way or another, get them out! We keep them safe, nurture them, worry about them, feed them and unconditionally love them, all before we have even met them.
The sleeping patterns we have developed for the last 20 or 30 years of our lives are turned on their heads and we are strong enough to readily accept, survive and even flourish on broken, deprived sleep for months and even years, carrying on with the rest of our lives, often excited about the fact that we got four whole hours without being disturbed!
We are strong enough to deal with the things that we once thought would turn our stomachs (diarrhoea, vomit, blood, nits and my personal phobia...wobbly teeth!). We mop up, clean up, dispose of and deal with it all with less fuss than slug crawling across our pathway would have evoked in our pre-baby life. We recently had a 3-way sickness bug in our house. I held the bowl for one child, held the hair back of another whilst simultaneously spewing up myself....not at all pretty but very impressive parenting skills!
We are strong enough to pick them up, brush them down and make all the right noises whilst our own hearts race at the near miss we have just witnessed, swapping out our need to bundle them up and hold them close with a brisk ‘All better, off you go play again’ reassuring comment.
We worry about....well, everything, whilst being strong enough to do our darndest not to let them see our concerns. Yes she can climb that tree without falling, he will pass his exam, she won’t fall down the concrete steps, he will catch up...it will all be fine.
Us mamas are made of pretty darn strong stuff. A strength that comes from nowhere but is everything in getting us, and them, through this parenting journey.
Now don’t get me wrong, being a mum is the biggest joy I never knew until it happened to me. It redefined me as a person and brings out the very best in who I am. It is my privilege and pleasure to have been given the title Mummy....but is bloody hard work! It is a role that we can never underestimate as it is continually changing and developing as our children do. Just as we think we have got a handle on something, it gets flipped on his head or along comes something new for us to try and get to grips with. And whilst we all have our moments of ‘Bloody hell, I can’t do this’ (or often slightly stronger terminology!), we still get on and do it...sometimes better than other times but we get it done. No matter what, we dig deep and find our inner strength to see us, and them through.
By p.m. tonight, I will be so ready for a very large glass of wine. (By 10pm I will probably be passed out on the couch!). But until then, today, like any other, I will silence my exhausted brain, dig deep and get on with it, and I will even plaster a smile on my face in the process. Because that is what us mums do. We are strong and we will rise to any fight that our parenting role chooses to give us. But with the weekend approaching, I would like to publically put out a plea for my little ones to not fall over, no tears, no stress and definitely no new challenges for me to deal with...just for a day or two...please?!
