6 Struggles of Motherhood Common in the Early Years

In a recent interview on the Happy Mum Happy Baby podcast, the Duchess of Cambridge spoke about her own struggles of motherhood and the importance of the early years. With the launch of her 5 Big Questions campaign, she is keen to start conversations about our shared experience as mothers and the difficulties we all face.

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The interview got me thinking about how often I feel lonely and isolated by the struggles of motherhood. The relentlessness of it all can feel overwhelming until a conversation with a mum-friend reminds me many of the daily battles are mutual.

Here are 6 aspects of motherhood that can feel like a heavy burden until you realise others share your struggles of motherhood.

Staying with your child until they fall asleep

It’s 7pm and the kids are in bed. I want to say goodnight and head to the living room for peace and quiet…and wine.

“Can you sit next to me, Mummy?” The words I dread to hear because I now face a battle of wills.

We recently moved our toddler into a “big girl bed” and sometimes I have to sit beside her bed for an hour before she falls asleep. I’ve read the advice. I know it’s a no-no to be in the habit of sitting in the room until a child falls asleep. But the experts have never met my youngest. She’s determined and she screams. Very loudly.

There is a school of thought which suggests this tendency toward “attachment parenting” can have positive benefits on the physical and mental wellbeing of the child. For now, I’ll go with what they say.

So, when I’m sitting on a hard floor in the dark, subtly trying to check my phone as my two-year-old fusses about in her bed, I’ll try and recall the benefits. And think of the many parents sitting on chairs in bedrooms or cuddling beside their littlies as part of The Great Bedtime Power Struggle.

Screaming at your kids then feeling bad about it

I’m utterly evil when I’m sleep deprived. My tolerance levels are negligible and I overreact about almost everything. Why can’t everyone just leave me alone when they’ve kept me up all night? Sadly, my kids never get the memo. I end up shouting and screaming and then feeling guilty once the moment has passed.

Yes, shouting is an unhelpful reaction to a likely already tense situation. I know it can be damaging and it is never my prefered response or means of discipline. But I’m human. It’s actually helpful for my kids to see all sides of my humanity so they develop healthy expectations of themselves.

The best way to remedy the guilt is to humble myself and apologise to my children. I often expect this of them so it seems only fair I am willing to admit when I am wrong.

Next time you lose your cool, it might help to remember that no parent is perfect. We all have bad days and thankfully we have numerous opportunities to do it differently next time. Tomorrow is another day.

Feeling guilty about the impact of motherhood on your marriage or partnership

Remember those carefree nights when you and hubby decided at 5pm you would go out for dinner after work? Or maybe even popped to the cinema on a whim? Ha! The good old days.

These days a romantic night in consists of a takeaway, a bottle of wine from Aldi and lights out by 9.30pm.

Let’s face it, you get annoyed with each other about trivial things because you’re exhausted. The kids sap every last ounce of energy from the core of your soul and every other relationship in your life suffers. Having children change things. It’s a cliche…because it’s true.

We did a wonderful marriage course many years ago. I’m so grateful for the tools we learned there as they have been incredibly valuable during a time when we could very easily grow apart.

This article on Psychology Today suggests some ways to invest in your marriage to help counteract the effects of the post-baby years.

Dealing with unmet expectations of the birthing process

Before I had my first child, my husband and I attended antenatal classes. We sat in a circle with other anxiously excited parents as the facilitator went to great lengths to prepare us for what was to come. Only she didn’t.

You could say no one can adequately prepare you for the shock of childbirth. The problem with the antenatal classes was that they left me with an impression that there was a right way and a wrong way to give birth i.e. natural = good; intervention = bad.

My birth plan (hahahahahahahaha….sorry….*cough*) stipulated no drugs and a birthing pool. After 50 hours of contractions, it got thrown as far as I could lob it and I began begging for as many drugs as they could give me. Only, it was too late. I was told I had to push without so much as paracetamol. Needless to say, I was exhausted from lack of sleep, dehydration and fear. The doctors ended up intervening at the last minute and my baby was pulled into the world in a rather gruesome and forcible way. I had brought an actual person into the world, yet I felt like an utter failure. My body didn’t do what it was supposed to do.

I know now I had absolutely no reason to feel like I had failed. Before modern medicine, either my baby or I would likely have died in that scenario. We are lucky enough to live in a world where we have choices when it comes to childbirth. There is no right or wrong way to have a baby. If you have brought a baby into this world, you are AMAZING. It doesn’t matter how they arrived. What matters is that they did.

Ongoing concerns about the impact of daily decisions on your future adult children

There is a LOT of parenting advice out there. Trust me, I have read enough parenting books to go at least 1/1000th of the way around the world if you line them up. But if I took it all on board I’d be a basket case, destined to get parenting wrong 100% of the time.

Of course, we want to protect our children and prevent them from harming themselves. We want them to be well-balanced adults who contribute positively to society. Our hope is that our children’s memories of growing up will be cherished rather than offloaded in the chair of a counsellor’s office.

When it comes to protecting our children, studies regularly show that allowing children to take risks in play is beneficial to their health and wellbeing. One study even suggested we may observe an increased neuroticism or psychopathology in society if children are hindered from partaking in age adequate risky play. It’s a bit extreme but see such studies as permission to hold the parenting reins a little loser.

Denaye Barahona, of the Simple Families website and podcast, talks about the unnecessary pressures we create for ourselves as parents which add to our mental load. She recommends we release ourselves from the misconception that it is our job to make our children happy all the time.

Denaye regularly runs a course titled The Mental Unload, designed specifically for mums who want to “lighten their overworked mama brain”.

Feeling overwhelmed by the relentlessness of motherhood

You slog away in the kitchen for hours only to have your food rejected by picky eaters. The laundry basket fills up quicker than you can empty it. You haven’t had a decent night’s sleep in three years. Everyone leaves their crap around the house for you to clean up. One child is screaming for you to wipe their bum while the other two are trying to scratch each other’s eyes out over a pink crayon. It’s ALL TOO MUCH!

There have been days since I became a mother where I have literally hated my life. I have screamed at the kids because I wanted to be anywhere other than with them. So many times I have wondered if there is something wrong with me because I can’t handle being a mother. Until I realise I am not alone and there are many other parents who regularly feel the same.

Motherhood changes you. It can break you. It can build you. The overwhelm can either defeat you or you can acknowledge that this job is bloody hard and find ways to cope.

My own solution is to try and find ways to get on top of the logistics of family life. It doesn’t make motherhood any easier but it does help me to feel like I have tools to make the household run smoother. I hope to share some of these “systems” with you in the coming months – so stay tuned!

It’s a tough gig and the struggles of motherhood can leave you feeling utterly lonely and isolated sometimes. If you feel like it is all a bit much, I have written previously about some pick-me-ups for overwhelmed mums.

Most importantly, to your kids, you mean the world. They love you just as you are. Take strength from that.

Love,
Mum Rox