The overarching trouble with motherhood is that you can’t do it drunk

A shitty viral FB post that popped up on my feed the other day about motherhood. It was from some advertiser of some ‘lady’ product or other. It was a picture that said “Motherhood is …” and they invited you to expose your social media profile to their marketing dept and spread the word of their product by finishing the sentence in the comments.

One of my mother’s group FB friends had written “... the most rewarding thing I have ever done.”

My immediate reaction was OMFG, could you be more pedestrian?

Then I thought for about 0.5 seconds on what I would write. I came up with three potential responses: horrible, tedious, and difficult.

This is not to say I hate being a mother; it’s just that motherhood is pretty much like every other part of life – sometimes good and sometimes bad and mostly very, very hard.

Worst cat ever

For the first 3 months of Elsie's life, Damien would go to work every day and I would spend my time mainly cuddling and feeding her in the nursery with a giant bottle of water nearby and a feeling that I was VERY lucky to have a tablet computer and access to the internet. I watched a lot of online TV and listened to a lot of podcasts.

Having a tiny baby is like when there is a cat on your lap and you need to go to the bathroom but you feel bad about disturbing the cat - only about a million times worse.

I am REALLY not looking forward to doing it all again, but Damien wants to give the one frozen embryo we have a shot. I hate everything about that, because I don't want another 3-6 months of newborn hell and I equally don't want another miscarriage. Also, I am thirty-fucking-nine this November. Surely I am too old for this shit?

I have explained all this to Damien. He does not care. He just wants another fucking baby. Feminism is dead. I have no reproductive rights. Huzzah!

** I am not quite as anguished or angry as I sound; just very, very miffed. **

F**k mother's day

This year on mother's day (my second 'real one' with Elsie), I got thinking about all my other babies. Elsie is my 5th child. The others didn't make it. Now that she is no longer tiny and entirely chaotic, she makes the others seem more real.

On mother's day, it's easy to forget - or ignore - that not everyone wants kids; and not everyone who does can have them; and not all of them will survive or thrive. 

Life is a crapshoot. Forget thankfulness and mindfulness and 'magic happens'. Just do whatever the f**k you want and try not to hurt anyone else while you go about it.

20% of a job well done is not very useful at all

I got knocked up by accident just after Damien and I decided to think about maybe trying to have a baby; which was great because it meant that we didn't have to do all that tedious 'paying attention' to fertility cycles and shit. But I lost it at 9 weeks, which is not uncommon, so now we have to start over.

This is a shame because the baby was due on 24 November and I like November, conceptually, as a time of year to be born in. Probably because that's when my birthday is. Also, it turns out that Damien's uni mate Kachig is having his second baby right at that time, so they would have been the same age.

Oh well.

I was quite upset about it for a few weeks afterward, but I am OK now.

I was also really looking forward to getting out of work for 6 months or so because my job is beginning to piss me off a bit. Well, not my actual job. It's my workplace and some of my colleagues that are the cause of the irritation; but that is a very complex and quite boring tale for another time.