Loneliness in motherhood

I have wrote about my own experience with loneliness in motherhood previously in a past blog post called another lonely mum. I won’t go into too much detail about what I spoke about as I have attached a link for you if you’d like to have a read for yourself but I did speak openly about how as a first time mum how isolating motherhood can feel and how no-one really talks about it.

Since that last blog post I have become a mum for the second time and whilst some of you may think that I would have made some mum friends since the first time or that it would mean i’d have at least got a bit better at dealing with feeling this way by now, you couldn’t be more wrong. If i’m being totally straight, I felt a hell of a lot lonelier the second time round than I ever did as a first time mum. Being a mum of two means I have even less time for myself than I did before, which means even less time to socialise or even less time for anything else at all to be honest!

I found the transition from one child to two very difficult. In an instance everything changed and it was a lot for me to grasp and at certain times I wasn’t sure whether I was capable of even doing this. During the first few weeks of staying home with both children everything was new, everything was a lot harder and I didn’t really have anyone that I could talk to about how I was feeling. I became engulfed in loneliness and my days started to feel like they were stuck on repeat. I’d wake up, feed both kids, tidy up, play, feed both kids again and play some more until bedtime just to wake up the next morning to do the exact same thing all over again. I felt so unhappy. I would look in the mirror at myself, see the bags under my eyes, the pale skin and greasy hair and I wouldn’t even recognise myself.

‘So why not get out of the house?’ I hear you ask. Well, it’s not like getting out of the house with two kids is exactly easy. I’d have to get everyone ready, pack everything I needed which i’m pretty sure i’d forget something and then when we did eventually get out of the door, where would we even go? As depressing as it was, at the time staying at home seemed to be the easy option.

The loneliness this time round was so much more profound and I felt like I was drowning with the weight of trying to deal with everything all by myself and feeling like this on top of everything else. Having no-one to speak to and to share your troubles with really sucks and the biggest mistake I made in trying to deal with my loneliness was that I didn’t try to deal with it at all, all I did was try to mask how I was feeling and I never expressed it to anyone until one day the overwhelming feeling of loneliness took over me and I just couldn’t keep it to myself anymore. My loneliness was turning to sadness and it was taking me to a dark place.

It was only after speaking to someone that I realised I didn’t have to feel like this and in order to not feel like this, I had to help myself. I have to take time for myself instead of talking myself out of it, I have to take time away from motherhood and I have to spend time speaking to other adults.

My daughter is now 12 weeks old and although I feel like I have come along way since those early days and I’ve got a whole lot better at juggling this whole mum-of-two thing, I still have days when the loneliness creeps back in, when I wonder if it’s just my 3 year old that is capable of screaming the house down or my baby that has episodes of crying no matter what I do to try and settle her, wondering if i’m even any good at being a parent and asking myself if it’s because of me that me and my kids don’t seem to get invited anywhere. Motherhood has a way of doing that to us but now when it does, I try to remind myself that i’m not the only one to have ever felt this way.

So, to all the other mums out there struggling to fit in or make friends or feeling like you’re a million miles away from the rest of the world, just know that you aren’t and while you may be going through what feels a hard time, this too shall pass.

Here are some things you can do to help end this cycle of loneliness:

• Join a baby class.
• Go for a walk.
• Smile. Strike up a conversation.
• Get your hair done.
• Read a book.
• Or even message me! I don’t mind!

I am that mum that will smile at you if i see you in the supermarket with your crying baby because I know what that feels like, I will hold your baby while you eat your food and drink your coffee, you can come round to my house any time and I will always pick up the phone.

So, from one lonely mum to another, I get you and i’m with you.

Kirsti, xo