You can be both

You can love being a mum and feel absolutely shattered at the same time.

You can love being a mum and just want a break from it all.

You can love being a mum and sometimes lose your patience.

You can love being a mum and feel like you just want a good cry.

You can love being a mum and wonder if you’re any good at it.

You can love being a mum and go to bed feeling like you’ve failed.

You can love being a mum and do nothing but watch tv with the kids all day sometimes.

You can love being a mum and not always want to play.

You can love being a mum and order a takeaway if you can’t be bothered to cook.

You can love being a mum and have a messy house.

You can love being a mum and be annoyed about the mess in the house.

You can be both.

Being a mum is hard work. Even on a good day of parenting, there are still difficult moments. It is often the more lovely parenting moments that leave you feeling like supermum or make your heart just want to burst that make it all worthwhile and make us forget about the more difficult parenting moments but other times, on those days when parenting feels a bit heavier, it might feel like the bad outweighs the good.

Yesterday was one of those days for me. It was very much up and down all day right from the get go. The morning started off great, we were all up, washed, dressed and had eaten breakfast in time ready for school. The house was tidy and I felt like I was on a roll. But it all went a bit t!ts up after that. After I’d dropped Kory off at school, I went to do my food shopping and Kora was misbehaving, she was trying to climb out of the trolley the whole way round the shop and once I got home, I realised I’d forget to buy half of the food I went shopping for. Then the day got a bit better again right before totally messing up just before bedtime. It left me feeling like a bit of a sh!t mum and I was ready to hand myself the worlds worst mum award but as I lay there unable to sleep last night, I realised that although I make mistakes as a mum sometimes and I don’t always feel like I have done my best. It does not define me as a mum. It does not mean I don’t love being a mum and it certainly does not mean that I love my children any less even on a particularly hard day. My kids know that I mess up sometimes, I’m not perfect and when I know I’ve messed up, I make a point of apologising but my kids also know how loved they are and that will never change.

I have always wrote honestly on my blog, I share the good, the bad and the ugly with you all because I think if people are going to talk about parenting and everything that comes with that, then they might as well be honest about it.

I know what it’s like to be woken up by your child and have them immediately demand your full attention when you’ve hardly even had a split second to open your eyeballs fully and take a breath. I know what it feels like to have a child climbing all over you constantly and how that can leave you feeling frustrated. I know what it feels like to still be tired from the night before and how we still have to plod on the next day regardless. I know how it feels when you’d really rather not get down and play with toys and you’d much rather just sit in front of the tv but we do what is required of us anyway.

I can’t promise you that you will never not feel the weight of a difficult day of parenting again but like everything, it is just a fleeting moment and it will pass. Although difficult to deal with and some moments harder than others, it does not make you any less of a mum. What I can promise you is that there will always be good parenting days too. I’m not hear to tell you to ‘treasure every moment, even the difficult ones’ because there are some days that we as parents can’t wait to see the back of! I’m here to tell you that you are amazing, you are doing a great job and you are a good mum, even on those days when you might feel too tired to realise that.

Being a good mum doesn’t mean you always plan loads of activities for you and your kids to do together to fill the day, it doesn’t mean you always genuinely want to play, being a good mum doesn’t mean you don’t sometimes feed your kids convenient junk food and it does not mean that you don’t let your kids watch hours of tv. Being a good mum can mean messing up, sometimes yelling and saying sorry for that. Being a good mum can mean sending your kids to bed an hour earlier than usual but reading that story book despite barely being able to read a sentence without yawning. Being a good mum can mean giving plenty hugs and kisses to your kids, being a good mum can mean simply telling your kids how much you love them.

So on those days when you might feel a bit sh!t, just know that you will make it through like you have done before and that you already are a good mum because you can be both.