When trying for a long time to conceive our first child, seeing doctors, having invasive tests and being told nothing was wrong only to still not conceive I had a vision of how perfect it would be and I would be if I ever got my baby. Â Now I have 4 and I am not the mummy I planned to be.
I planned to be an organised, fun loving, patient mummy who got down on the ground to play and ran around the park playing chase with great abandon until my little darling had had enough. Indeed when I first had our eldest there was a lot of that and then one became two and two became four and it started to come undone.
When I grew up my parents were fab but we were quite a shouty household.  I want to emulate so much of my upbringing and I couldn’t have had more loving, supportive parents who are still my biggest help and always my champions, but I had planned to not be a shouty mummy.  I can still remember the first time I shouted at my eldest.  He had just smeared poo all over the walls in the toilet at Pizza Express and I just couldn’t take anymore, but I have never felt so awful.  Fast forward 3 years and I have 4 under 6 and have to get the eldest and his younger brother to school and nursery respectively by 9am; there is much more shouting than I want, but it’s so bloody annoying trying to get them out of the house !! I want to be calm and every day I promise I will be and then I find myself having asked a child to put on their shoes or cleaned their teeth repeatedly for 30 minutes and I just want to scream – sometimes I do!!  Honestly I think the school run might be the route of all evil and lots of  bad parenting. It is certainly my low point each day.
I always feel guilty about everything and worry constantly that I am getting it wrong, but all I can do is try each day to be the mummy I wanted to be and give them as much love as possible. Now I just need the kids to get the memo and get their bloody shoes on!!!
