By Niamh Shine
I am a generally happy and positive mother of four, madly in love with my children, loving my very chaotic house with a 6,3,2 year old and a four month old. Coming from a relatively small family I like that my children are growing up in their own ‘village’ to a certain extent. But there are many days when I am so torn between what I want to do, how I want to be and what I have to do , have to be. I am one of a smallish community of parents who is also a carer to one of their children. We all care for our children obviously, but in my case my second child, my first daughter, my beautiful Eabha was born with what is horrendously known as a ‘life limiting’ condition.. This syndrome has taken almost everything from my girl, and replaced it with huge challenges...challenges like eating, breathing, surviving 6-10 daily seizures(on a good day). Someday maybe I will write about what that actually does to me as a mother, how it feels to have that awful shadow in my life, how it feels to never ever relax when you are with her, how leaving her any time is so scary. But in this piece it has occurred to me that while there are so many good things in our house I will forever wonder if being a carer as well as a mother has made me less of a mother to my other three children. Or maybe I should say less than the mother I wanted to be to all of them. This is not a cry for validation, or for assurances on what a good job I am doing...it is a legitimate struggle I have every day. Many days in our house stories and activities are abandoned because a seizure is happening. Outings do not happen very much because there are feeds that happen over a long time, or there is a sniff a chance of a vomit/chest infection/any other ailment. And while that is all pretty legitimate there are also the days where from phone conversations fighting for equipment, changing drug doses, researching new drugs/equipment or being up all night suctioning, giving oxygen that I actually want to curl up in a ball in the corner and sleep/look at my phone /stare at a blank wall. So while I am there physically with them, I am not present with them or as gentle as I should be. I actually don’t believe I or anyone else can or should be 100% all about their children anyway to be honest...I suppose I just worry that they are becoming accustomed to less than they deserve from me. It is our normal to deal with all of this stuff every day, and to a large extent I am ok with that...not with what Eabha goes through, but with what has to be done to keep her central in our attempt at a normal life, and keep her healthy. What I have to do and be for Eabha. I know they need to assimilate it and in that wonderful way of children they just do. But will they look back and realise that their tired mother was not that much fun a lot of the time, snapped at them more than she should have, had higher expectations of them than she should have...just because of the cards she was dealtwill they resent the necessary interruptions to normal play and normal life. Will they look back and realise that their whole childhood they knew about Eabha’s friends who didn’t make it, that they never had that total blissful ignorance of how tough life can be, no matter how we try to protect and cushion them. I will say again, I am a happy mother, wife, woman on the whole. I am lucky that my mental health so far has been ok through all of this. I find joy in so many things in our life, am grateful for every normal memory we get to make. But I wonder, and I struggle that being what I need to be for Eabha, and holding onto her with every tiger mama instinct I have leaves less of me for my three other loves to share....i guess only they will ever really be able to answer me that....and in the interim, on I go.
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By Lisa Ferrie On a Sunday evening, I am a whirlwind of emotions. The time with my family has flown by and I have to start to prepare mentally to leave them and return to the consumption of work the following day. My three year old asks inquisitively “are you going to mind me tomorrow Mummy?” and I almost break down in tears. By Monday evening, the harrowing loss that I felt on Sunday evening has lessened as by then, Friday seems so much closer and I can see that the children have survived the day without me. We cuddle on the sofa before bedtime, watching “In the night garden” as I whisper about how much we love them into their distracted ears. My husband and I have had the conversation many times about what we would do if money was no object. Some days I say that I would stay at home at the drop of a hat. On other days, I can see the benefits of working for my own mental stimulation, for society (I work in public service) and for my children as they are learning about work ethic and are also benefitting from socialising with other children. If I am truly honest however, I do think that in these early, precious years, my children would benefit from me being home more than three full days per week. Not to be anti-feminist, we have also discussed my husband staying at home but he doesn’t have the longing that I do to be a full time stay at home parent and I am much more achieved in the domestic duties and relish in all things related to cooking.
Looking internally, I have realised that I am a conservative person who, although I would like to think that I am a risk taker, is actually rather cautious. I always did the right thing in school and have continued to excel and please in work. I definitely struggle between my internal battle to do what’s done (go to work) and to do what I would like to do (stay at home and look after my little ones.) Then I realise that all of this is really a personal battle inside of my head and that we as a family should make the right choice for our family. But the fear of not providing for them adequately hits me and I wonder if they will lose out if we cannot afford to send them to private schools. I do not have the answer and I realise that I am incredibly fortunate to be able to have my three full days with them per week. I also love my job and am lucky to be working relatively close to home with some lovely colleagues. I hope that I don’t regret this time spent away from them when they are older and I hope that they will remember all of the things that we did do together. As a friend once said to me, “they are not comparing you to anyone else; you are the only mother that they have”. By Rebecca Flynn I spent my whole life, 33 years, hating my body, constantly criticizing my size, shape and weight and as a result I had a really unhealthy attitude towards food and eating, to the point of it being disordered. It took pregnancy, giving birth and becoming a mother to finally change that. Which is funny because all the narrative out there in the media and well, everywhere, is about "getting your pre-baby body back". WELL... NO THANKS. And I certainly don't want my pre-baby mindset back. To be honest, it's been a long and difficult journey and one I'm still on, but I don't struggle daily, nay, hourly, with my inner critic anywhere close to as much as I used to. Shortly after my son was born I was simply amazed by what my body did, in pregnancy and in childbirth, I made a frickin' human, what a privilege and a joy to be able to do that (as sucky as pregnancy and birth can unfortunately often be, it's still the closest I'll ever come to believing in "miracles")!! And then it went on to feed and nourish the little dude. Pretty goddamn cool, if you ask me. But it was as my parenting journey progressed that I began to realize that I didn't want my child to grow up to ever feel about his body, or think about women's/other people's bodies, the way I grew up feeling about mine. It's Parenting 101 that modeling behavior is the best way to instill a trait in your child, whether that be positive or negative, so I figured out pretty quickly that something major had to change. No matter how much I pretended to love my body, it'd never get across until I actually *did* love it. And now two years on, I still have low days (thanks a bunch PMS!), but I can happily say that I love and appreciate my body in a way that is so freeing and empowering. I can't recommend starting a body positive journey enough. It's been massively engrained into women, and to a lesser extent (but becoming more prevalent) men, via a patriarchal society and media that we must always have or be striving for a "perfect body", and that body is one that is generally unrealistic and unattainable. Big business/corporations profit from this self-doubt and the message to lose weight, change yourself, be perfect is so pervasive that it's very difficult to escape but it can be done if you are fortunate enough to have the impetus, time and energy.
Here's a list of 10 ways you can help yourself become more body positive.
I hope this helps. You can learn more and I'm always available to chat/give advice over on my Body Positive social media accounts: @BoPoIreland on Facebook and Instagram. Wishing you the very best if you're starting out or already on a Body Positive journey. You rock! Xx By Jac Sinnott *This blog post was originally written & posted in February 2015. It’s been edited more times than I care to mention and some of it does make me cringe a bit now but I'd like to share this with you all so that you understand the journey I have been on and what a huge deal it is for me to have finally arrived at a place of peace in my heart. In essence, how I became a mindful mammy. If you have lost someone, whether that be 20 years ago or 20 days ago, I hope you find something of comfort in this piece, especially those of you who are embarking on your parenting journey without your own parents in your life.* We had been sitting in JFK departures for what felt like a month but was actually only (!) 24 hours when I said to my husband of 6 weeks “I don’t think I want to have children anymore”, with tears streaming down my face. Not the best place in the world or the best time to discuss this but it was probably one of the first things I thought of when my brother called me to tell me Mam had passed away. How am I supposed to do it without my mother? Despite everything, she had been there for every major milestone of my life and she was supposed to be there for the birth of my babies too. Everyone has their own idea of what a mother “should” be or do but one thing we all know is that a mother should love and protect her children like nobody else in the world would, like a fierce lion protecting her cubs. Well there was never any doubt about how much our mother loved us and how proud she was to have us but in recent years, it felt like I was doing the protecting. I wanted to mind her, and be there for her, like she was for me when I was a child. I so wanted to be the one that would help her out of the deep depression.
I fantasised about lazy Saturdays walking around town with Mam, shopping and chatting, getting excited together about me getting married and all that would bring, including a family. I never even told her how much I wanted to be a Mammy….how much I wanted her to be there when that day came. Even though I knew how ill she was, I still felt as if she would just be able to slot into that Nanny role for me, as I had seen her do with my brothers’ babies. I thought she would be there to help me; show me how to be a Mammy. But recently I realised, it is the strength and courage I got from dealing with the struggles we faced as a family which showed me how to be my daughter’s Mammy. I couldn’t know how to be her Mammy until she was here, until I knew her inside out like I do now. During my pregnancy though, I was fixated on not having my Mother as a guide. I desperately wanted to ask her about her pregnancies and labours, how she felt on her first baby, what she felt when they handed each of us to her, I had so many unanswered questions. Questions that don’t even enter your head until you’re pregnant for the first time. I had imaginary conversations with her and tried to remember every single story I’d ever been told about a baby in our family but I couldn’t recall if the story was mine or my brothers. And since I have no relationship with my father, I’d never find out. As my baby grew inside me I loved it more and more every single day, but the hole left by Mam seemed to grow along with my belly. I barely had time to grieve the loss when we were embarking on the emotional roller-coaster of becoming first time parents. It was so confusing; here I was a loved up newlywed with a baby on the way but there was still a cloud hanging over me as I tried to work through the really difficult emotions. Some days it was just too difficult and I felt I could barely breathe with sadness. I was grieving for myself but also for this baby who would only ever know Mam as a picture in a frame. Then, we found out that we would be having a daughter and I think I must have cried for a week. All I could picture was Mam’s utter delight at this and her saying “my little girl is having her own little girl”. It broke my heart to think of it as it would have been a dream come true for her, but more than that, in just a few short months I would be mother to a daughter. It was so bittersweet. I couldn’t believe how much and how intensely I loved my baby already as she grew inside me; then I would think “this is what Mam felt for us, what she used to talk about on our birthdays when we would roll our eyes or tune out”. I understood a little bit more about her in those months of pregnancy and she didn’t have to be around to reveal it to me, I was starting to grasp the depth of her love for us. I wanted so badly to tell her all of this, so I would talk to her photo, or write it down. Graveyards are not for me. I believe my Mother lives within me and my memories, she is deep in every fibre of my being. I came from her so I can “visit” her anytime simply by thinking of how her arms felt wrapped around me in comfort, how her laugh sounded when she was being mischievous and how her face beamed when she would speak of her children and grandchildren. Time moved on by and I got on with the business of growing a baby, trying hard to remain positive so as not to stress myself and the baby out. Of course like any first time parent I was freaking about becoming a mother and not messing up. The basics I wasn’t too worried about; I was sure we could figure out how to feed and bathe the baby by ourselves and the rest we would just learn as we went along. It was the encouragement and support I was missing. My mother had always been my biggest fan, so much so it was kind of embarrassing. But also, it was really fricking awesome to have someone who just believed in you and stood by your choices no matter what. We weren’t without our problems; in fact I don’t recall that a full year went by when there wasn’t some awful drama or problem we were trying to deal with, but at the centre of everything was always, always love. She always had my back and was always there….even when I didn’t want her to be! By Sinéad Redmond
It was #WorldMentalHealth day last week and I wasn't well enough to engage with it and post about it. Irony much. As someone who's been very vocal about my postnatal mental illness after my first child I've been really quiet about my recent struggles this time. In part because I wanted my narrative to have been one of being the person who was fixed and better so much that I wasn't able to ask for help this time long past the point of needing it. So a fortnight ago I finally saw my GP after I got what was, in hindsight, really very far beyond breaking point, and because she is lovely and kind and understanding and heard me, she signed me off work for a few weeks, gave me an anti-anxiety script, and generally made me feel much better about life. My postnatal mental health or lack thereof is for me directly tied to the amount of labour I, as a mother who also works outside the home, need to do. Of late that workload, because my children aren't children who are easy sleepers (I consider my one-year-old to be an easy sleeper even though she wakes 3+ times a night, which will give you some idea of what my three-year-old sleep-hater is like), has been to and beyond what I can handle. When I get overloaded and worn out and exhausted like this, my brain defaults to anxiety mode. |
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