Sunday 29 January 2012

Great tips for new mothers

  • Just before your baby is born go and get your hair done. Get a style that is quick and easy to maintain. Still look good but with less effort.
  • When you go out always pack one more of each thing in the change bag. i.e. nappies, bottles, spare babygrows.
  • Thinking of buying a bottle warmer - don't waste your money. If a babies hungry they'll eat anything.
  • Instead of cutting babies fingernails, always a daunting process, bite them off. Babies fingernails are soft and you don't want to snip their skin. if you bite instead you can feel what's finger and what's nail.

Friday 20 January 2012

Time for tea.

Everyone talks about the work/life balance but what about the mummy/life balance?
Anyone that has children will know that it is a 24 hour a day job (even when they are sleeping you are still on call!)

It's not a life sentance, being a mother, it should be fun and rewarding. No one can continually give, give, give.
It is just as important to take time for yourself as it is to spend time with your children. If you take the time to make yourself feel better physically and emotionally then you will feel better in yourself which ultimatley makes you a better mother. And everyone knows that if mum's not happy then no one is!


Is modern society restricting our natural instincts to be a good mother?

The rise in women suffering with post natal depression is astounding! My question is, is it any wonder with the world we live in today and the pressure on mothers.
Prehaps the modern idea of 'women can have it all' is affecting us more than we think.
Do women feel they should be doing more because we can rather than because we want to.
Prehaps mothers feel unsatisfied with 'just' being a mother and a homemaker because society is putting constant pressure on women. You can be a mother, a career lady, a lover and a housekeeper.
Women are almost made to feel ashamed these days that they chose to stay at home and raise their children and keep a house. 'What do you mean, you don't work at all, not even part time?' this seems to be a reurcurring question that mothers get asked more and more frequently these days.

The pressure begins at school with the question 'What do you want to be when you grow up?' Now societys dictates that the correct answer to that would be a Dentist, a Doctor a Pyschologist etc, but what if a young girl turns around and answers 'a mother'. She would be considered a right off with no ambition other than to get pregnant and have lots of babies but isn't that what we were put on this earth to do!
These young girls are being pushed into being career driven and going for jobs that produce high levels of testosterone and when women produce to much testosterone they become stressed.

It does make me think that we have it all so wrong and makes me look to people like the Armish who uphold very traditional values. The wife stays at home and looks after the children and keeps the house and the men go out to work.
They are following the natural balance of life. Each person knows their role in life and there is never any pressure on them to do more. Have they got it so right and us so wrong?

It's all about survival!

If you get to the end of the day and their not hurt, they've been fed & watered, and they have a nice comfy bed to be tucked up into, then you have done you're job for the day. Regardless of the screaming, tantrums, demanding attention seeking and whatever other little gems they have thrown at you that day.

We all have the days when we strive to be the perfect mother - you sit and read to them, you cook them a healthy full meal, you even get the playdough and paints out.
However we also all have those days when it's hard enough to get out of bed let alone do anything else.
That would be a day that you plonk them down infront of the tv and let them get on with it and then feel guily about it for the rest of the day.
In the words of Beryl Pfizer... ‘No matter what the critics say, it’s hard to believe that a television programme which keeps four children quiet for an hour can be all bad’.

That doesn't make you a bad mother just a survivour!

Wednesday 18 January 2012

I hope my child looks back on today
And sees a mother who had time to play.
There will be years for cleaning and cooking,
But children grow up when you’re not looking.
Tomorrow I’ll do all the chores you can mention
......But today, my baby needs time and attention.
So settle down cobwebs; dust go to sleep,
I’m cuddling my baby, and babies don’t keep

I took his hand and followed

My dishes went unwashed today
I didn’t make my bed
I took his hand and followed
Where his eager footsteps lead

Oh yes, we went adventuring
My little child and I
Exploring all the great outdoors
Beneath the sun and sky

We watched a robin feed her young
We climbed a sunlit hill
Saw cloud-sheep scamper through the sky
We plucked a daffodil

That my house was so neglected
That I didn’t brush the stairs
In twenty years no one on earth
Will know or even care

But that I helped my little child
To noble adulthood grow
In twenty years the whole wide world
May look and see and know.
Do I work?
Yes I do work, 24 hours a day why?
Because I am a Mother!
I am a cook, a cleaner, a parent, a teacher, a referee, a nanny, a nurse, a handyman, a maid, a photographer, a conciller, a chaffeur, and a comforter.
I work through the day and night, I am on call 24 hours a day.
Now tell me that your job is harder than mine!
'Making the decision to have a child is momentous.
It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.' ~Elizabeth Stone

Acceptance

It’s hard at first, you’ve been so use to your old life.
It doesn’t matter how much people tell you (pre baby) that ‘your life is going to change’, ‘things will never be the same again’ & the classic ‘you’ll understand once you have them’.
The truth is you really will never understand until you have children.

You’ll find that after you have children you’re friends that are still childless will also not understand that things are different now. It can make holding onto old friendships hard but the oppoutunities to make new friends with children are everwhere.

The best way to deal with this monumental change in your life is acceptance.
Accept that your life is different now, not worse just different.
Your life now has a new meaning. Accept that you can’t do all the things you use to do
but that you now have new exciting things to discover.
Like what I hear you say… well there’s the first time your child smiles at you when you actually
feel your heart melt, there’s a whole new world of shopping to discover suddenly a whole world of new shops become available to you and lets not forget the baby parking at supermarkets – more space and less distance to the shop, got to be a plus.

If you can’t accept that your life has changed you will never allow yourself to fully open up and enjoy your children.
A lot of parents can end up unknowingly resenting their children because of their own inability to accept change and embrace this new life.
Once you have done this you have taken the first steps to becoming a great mother.

A Bad Day!

Some days I have the patience to listen to the incessant whining, to preform countless nappy changes and to hear the constant overuse of the word Mummy... today is not one of those days!