The Unmumsy Mum

by The Unmumsy Mum

  About the Book

  THIS IS NOT A PARENTING MANUAL. THIS IS REAL LIFE!

  The Unmumsy Mum is a blogging and Facebook sensation! Her posts are adored by thousands of fans for delivering a hilarious, unapologetically honest account of motherhood. From the soaring highs of life as a parent to the emotional lows of feeling like you might not be cut out for the job, this uncensored portrayal of what it’s really like to be a mum has won a place in the hearts of parents everywhere.

  No subject is off limits for the Unmumsy Mum – from distinctly unglowing pregnancies to seemingly endless night feeds; from finding your feet at baby group to the reality of returning to work; from dealing with toddler tantrums to navigating around soft-play hellholes.

  This book won’t tell you how to parent, what to buy or how you should feel. Its refreshing frankness is guaranteed to make you laugh, may well make you cry, and will no doubt leave you breathing a sigh of relief that it is definitely not just you . . .

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Meet the Turners

  About Mummy’s Book: A Letter to My Boys

  Introduction: The Unmumsy One

  1. What Have We Done?

  Just the Two of Us; Am I Glowing Yet?; I Am Pushing!; He Can’t Be F***ing Hungry!; The Good, the Bad and the Lumpy; Shit, I Need Some Mum Friends; Mum Appearances Can Be Deceptive; My Babywearing Incompetence

  2. Life, but Not as We Knew It

  Your Day versus His Day; Let’s Talk about Sex, Baby; Slack Pelvic Floor and Empty Boobs; Nights Out: The Baby Years; Soft-play Hellholes; What a Mess (I Blame the Toys); Things I Swore I Wouldn’t Do as a Parent (but Do); Why It’s Fine to Reminisce about Before

  3. In for a Penny . . .

  Having Another One; One to Two: What’s the Deal?; Girl or Boy?; Second-child Shortcuts

  4. The Daily Grind

  SAHMs, I Salute You; Sod’s Law for Parents; Get Out, Get Out, Wherever You Are; The Frustration of Toddlers; Mum Rage; The Sugar-coating of Social Media; Having Kids: The Best and Worst Bits

  5. Cut Yourself Some Slack

  An Open Letter to the Mum with the Red Coat; Just One of Those Days; F**k You, Supermum; Mum Guilt; You Don’t Have to Explain Yourself to Anyone; It’s Okay to Lose Your Shit; Spinning Plates; For You, Mum

  6. Wouldn’t Change It for the World?

  Before You Know It . . . ; Does Being a Parent Change Who You Are?; ‘You Don’t Know How Lucky You Are’; The Parenting Rollercoaster

  Resources

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Copyright

  For Debbie Sheppard,

  the greatest mum of all

  (1954–2002)

  Meet the Turners

  About Mummy’s Book: A Letter to My Boys

  Dearest Henry and Jude,

  My wonderful boys, my Henry Bear and my Judy Pops.

  If you are reading this, the chances are you are about to make your way through the rest of the book. I’m not sure how I feel about you delving into your mother’s deepest thoughts from years gone by, but it was probably inevitable, so here we are.

  First things first: I hope you are reading this as teenagers (and not before), because you will notice I occasionally use words I discourage you from using at home. I have always felt that writing down the words in my head, exactly as I think them, adds a certain authenticity to my writing, and it is unfortunate that, sometimes, the first word in my head is ‘cockwomble’. Or ‘twat’. These are still not appropriate words to call each other at home – you are never too old for that time-out chair.

  Back when I was a teenager I wrote diaries. With a pen and paper. I’m aware that makes me sound ancient, and I guess I am ancient in your eyes. I was born in a different millennium to you two. I grew up in the 1990s, with the Spice Girls, Tamagotchis, hair mascara and taping the Top 40 off the radio (remind me to show you what tapes are). I’m not going to tell you what was in those diaries because, post-school years, they mainly detailed nightclub flirting with your father (you can stop cringing; I burnt them).

  I stopped writing diaries soon after I met your dad, and it wasn’t until I became a mum that I felt inspired to start jotting down my thoughts once more. Only this time, rather than writing in scented gel pens on carefully selected notepads from WHSmith (which I hid under my pillow), I started writing an online blog and, before I had really considered the implications of letting those thoughts loose on the world, they had already escaped my clutches. The internet is scary like that.

  So I would like to set a few things straight. Right here, right now. Not because I have to, but because I want you to understand why I have written so openly about being your mummy. I need you to understand what was going on in my head at the time, because you two, my little pudding heads, have always been at the very heart of it.

  Being a mummy is really hard.

  Whatever age you are when you read this, I have no doubt I will still be finding motherhood hard, but those early years were something else. On the darkest of sleep-deprived days – when one of you was screaming, I was irritable and the house looked like a war zone – I wanted to read about somebody who was having a dark day too. Somebody who would reassure me I wasn’t going completely mad. Somebody who would tell me there was no need to poke my own eyes out in despair because it would all be okay (but that, in the meantime, it was okay not to be okay). That was what I needed to hear. Instead, most of what I stumbled upon offered practical tips about sleep training or told me I should be treasuring every moment with you. There was always a bloody exclamation mark at the end of everything. Your baby is now four months old! So much to look forward to this month! You might want to start thinking about weaning! (I didn’t want to think about weaning, I wanted a hot cup of tea and some sleep and to feel like myself again.)

  There were blogs where motherhood looked amazing and glossy – just how I’d hoped it would be. Where everybody wore a Christmas jumper, nobody shat through their sleepsuit and everybody smiled all the time. They didn’t help me.

  I made a snap decision to start scribbling something of my own, and the blog was born. I frantically typed post after post about life at home with toddler Henry, about being pregnant with baby Jude, about baby groups, about trips out with you and all that came in between. It wasn’t very glossy, and at times it was probably a bit ranty, but those non-glossy rantings were the reality for me at the time. I suppose the blog had become my modern-day diary.

  It was never really for anyone, but people started to read it. Just a handful of people at first, and then a handful became hundreds, and hundreds became thousands, until millions of people had read my ramblings and I realised it was very much out there.

  That realisation came with a massive wobble, and I started to have doubts about baring my parenting soul. I really wanted to share my thoughts – the true ones. Yet as more people started to read those thoughts I began to have this niggling worry about what those thoughts would look like in black and white, forever etched on the World Wide Web. At some time or another, we all have thoughts we would rather forget. Sometimes those thoughts scare us, sometimes we are ashamed of them, sometimes they are embarrassing and we burn the diaries that housed them. Often these thoughts are personal to us and the last thing we want to do is immortalise them on the bloody internet. What had I done?

  But then I started taking stock of all the messages, all the comments, all the tweets and all the emails and I realised – holy shit! – the blog was doing something.

  ‘Thank you,’ the messages said, ‘for making me feel normal.’

  ‘For making me laugh.’

  ‘For picking me up on
a particularly bad week.’

  ‘For giving me the courage to admit, “This week’s been crap and, no, I’m not enjoying every second.”’

  Some of the messages from other mums (and a fair few dads) reduced me to tears. I have been given insights into their lives, into battles with post-natal depression, into their continual feelings of guilt and failure and their resigning themselves to the fact that they are very much alone. ‘I thought it must just be me,’ they told me.

  I wanted to gather them all in one place and shout, ‘It’s not just you!’ through a megaphone, and that desire spurred me on to continue pouring out my honest assessment of day-to-day motherhood – an assessment which, remarkably, grew legs (and a front cover) and has allowed me to write my first-ever book.

  I will no doubt look back at the blog and this book in years to come and think, ‘Jesus, you never stopped moaning, woman.’ I will no doubt look back and think, ‘But those years were over in a flash.’ I will no doubt look back and discover that I have written things I wish I hadn’t written at all, things that were so very real at the time but which I would set a match to if I had the chance.

  I may have called you slightly offensive things, like arseholes (sorry!), once or twice (I genuinely am sorry about that, though when you have little arseholes of your own, I’m sure you will understand); I may have reflected longingly on days spent working full-time; I may have wondered aloud why it wasn’t all rainbows and cupcakes, why I was bored with park trips and baby groups and why I couldn’t cherish every sodding second.

  But I want you to know that there are so many moments I have cherished. Moments we have all cherished as a family. The cuddles we’ve had, the stories we’ve read, the people we’ve met, the places we’ve been, and the fact that the two of you and your dad have made me laugh every single day. I really wish I could offer you a favourably edited version of your earliest years, an edit where you would never have to find out that your mum swore quite a lot and sometimes cried. I wanted to be the glossy Christmas-jumper mum, I really did. I’m sorry if in any way I have let you down.

  It’s true that I haven’t always felt like I am cut out for motherhood, but I have always known that nobody could love you more. You are beautiful and hilarious and totally bloody bonkers, and I am so very proud to be part of such a lovely family. I am proud to be your mum. Whatever else I achieve in life you two are my masterpieces and I will never have anything more important to my name.

  Here’s to us, my darlings.

  I love you to the moon and back.

  Mum xx

  Introduction: The Unmumsy One

  When I used to think about what my life with children would be like, I think I imagined my existing, child-free life with a couple of small people Photoshopped in: charming, small people with curls and cheeky, jam-smeared chops. It’s not that I was startlingly ignorant – I knew there would be adjustments (less sleep, more nappies, less Jägerbomb-drinking, more pram-pushing). But, aside from maternity leave, the inevitable contact with another human’s snot/sick/shit and the seemingly obligatory requirement to buy a VTech Baby Walker complete with plastic phone, I just didn’t forecast my life changing that much at all.

  I didn’t forecast a hurricane.

  But neither did Michael Fish in 1987, and look what happened there.

  Needless to say, when Hurricane Baby hit in the winter of 2012, I was not prepared. Physically and materially speaking, I was pretty well equipped. Mentally and emotionally speaking, I was not. All the gear and no idea. That was me.

  I have been asked several times what the hardest thing about that first baby hurricane was (and, indeed, what the hardest thing about having kids is now that I am the proud owner of two small humans, of whom only one is curly-haired). I can describe at great length the sleep deprivation, the toddler tantrums in Debenhams and the frustration and boredom of watching Escape to the Country while feeding an insatiably hungry baby when all I really wanted was a shower.

  Yes, those practical challenges were in themselves a test but, over and above all of that, the biggest test by far has been the perpetual self-doubt.

  Why am I not loving every second?

  How come all the other mums are loving every second?

  Is it possible that I’m somehow wired incorrectly, that I’m simply not up to the job?

  This isn’t what I thought it would be like at all.

  When I typed ‘I want my old life back’ into Google during a fraught 3 a.m. feed, I immediately deleted the search history on my phone. I was ashamed of myself because, mostly, I didn’t want my old life back at all. I was head over heels in love with my bald bundle of baby-boy goodness and so very grateful that we had made a family. But there were occasions (like when I had already been up four times and the baby projectile-vomited in the Moses basket) when I couldn’t stop myself from thinking, What have we done? Occasions when I couldn’t stop myself from shouting, ‘I don’t want to do this any more. It’s fucking shit!’ at my husband, whose face told me the baby adventure wasn’t panning out exactly as he had imagined either.

  Several years later, in spite of the moments of magic still being interjected with moments that are just a bit shit, something incredible has happened. Despite flashes of continued self-doubt, I no longer truly believe I am alone in having these feelings. Why? Because it’s impossible to ignore what has been an overwhelming response to my online account of those parenting highs and lows.

  What started as a small handful of comments became hundreds; hundreds became thousands; and now, each and every day, my inbox is flooded with messages from parents whose experiences are not too dissimilar from my own. Parents who are beating themselves up for not loving every second – something they are sure they could do if only it wasn’t all so bloody hard. I once scoffed when I heard parenting being described as ‘the hardest job in the world’, but that was before I had lived it, before I had cut my own maternity leave short in favour of heading back to work part-time because, quite honestly, I couldn’t hack being at home with the baby all day.

  The name of my blog is often misconstrued. Being ‘mumsy’ for me was never a negative concept. ‘Mumsy’ sounded splendidly natural, happy and at ease with being a parent: all the things I wanted to be. So I called the blog ‘The Unmumsy Mum’ because that was how I felt at the time: like a bit of a fraud, like I didn’t belong in the club. Writing down what was in my head and reading other parents commenting, ‘Me, too,’ was truly remarkable and inspired me to keep going (both with the writing and with motherhood, as I’ve since had another child).

  This book is for all those parents who have messaged me, and many more besides. It’s for parents everywhere. Mums, dads,fn1 stepmums, stepdads, foster mums, foster dads, grannies, grandads and everyone in between who is in charge of bringing up a small person.

  I feel it necessary to point out that by no stretch of the imagination is this a parenting manual. If you were hoping for tips on getting your baby to nap in time for Judge Rinder or practical guidance about weaning, you might want to exchange my book for one of those ‘How to Grow a Child Who isn’t a Total Knobhead’ titles.

  This book won’t tell you how to parent, what to buy, how you should feel. But I hope you find it useful, nevertheless. More than anything, I hope it tells you that, whatever you are feeling, you can bet your bottom dollar that somebody else has been there and is feeling the same way, too.

  So here it is. My uncensored account of going from zero to two children in the space of three years. The expectation versus the reality. The emotional highs and the ‘I just sieved a poo out of the bath with my hand’ lows. The unapologetically honest account I wish I had come across when I was desperately scrolling through online baby forums at 3 a.m. I’m trying so hard not to use the word ‘journey’ right now, because I hate it when people bang on about their sodding journeys. But, in the non-X-Factor-montage sense of the word, I suppose this is my journey.

  On we go, then.

  * * *

/>   ‘When I look back to the vision I had of myself as a housewife before I actually had children (1950s-stylee, with my pinny on, my rosy-cheeked kids playing nicely while I had a civilised coffee with a friend who was sampling the freshly baked muffins I had made), I just laugh and wipe the snot smear off my leggings.’

  Lara, Chorley

  * * *

  fn1 Dads more than welcome here, too, though I feel I should probably give you a heads-up that I do talk about blocked milk ducts and fannies.

  ‘Night feeds are something special. By “special”, I mean they are a bit shit.’

  Just the Two of Us

  Allow me to set the pre-baby scene. It’s 2009.

  I’m taking you back to 2009 because that year seems a fair representation of the pre-baby us. It was the year we bought our first house and both had grown-up, serious jobs. James was occupying one of the many Civil Service jobs he’s tried his hand at over the years, and I had just been promoted to Relationship Manager in an asset finance company, which, in practical terms, meant I spent lots of time driving around to farms in Devon financing machinery, and I bloody loved it.

  We worked hard and played sort of hard. We occasionally rolled in drunk at 2 a.m. smelling of vodka and clutching shish kebabs but, with the benefit of hindsight, we should have played harder. (I’m somehow mourning the raving I never did in Ibiza; not that I ever had any urge to get my trance on in an Amnesia foam party, but I could have if I’d wanted to.) I didn’t appreciate the extent of our freedom.

  After an intense week of work, for us, the weekend revolved around a Pizza Hut delivery, bottles of wine and beer, the odd beach walk or excursion to a National Trust house (mainly for the cream tea) and copious amounts of sofa lounging, tea drinking and Jammie Dodger eating to the background hum of Sky Sports News. ‘Chores’ were hoovering out the car (which we could do in peace or while listening to the radio), grocery shopping (we bought what we fancied when we fancied it) and ‘cleaning the place’, which took all of thirty minutes and consisted of sorting out piles of work clothes and tidying an already uncluttered living space.