The biggest losers

Not Just Rita's Mother - 26 Mar 16

Here are the 5 biggest losers of my Motherhood…

1. My car. From the moment I drove into the back of a van from a standing start at traffic lights on the East Lancs, while 7 months pregnant, to then be told by the driver that she thought she had whiplash (she most definitely didn’t), I knew the writing was on the wall. Since then I have had three altercations with the driveway. Not all with the same driveway – two at the old house causing some scraping and a small dent, and one at the new house involving a bush that was much tougher than it looked and my wing mirror. So that makes the score my fiesta 0 – walls / posts / a bush and a van 4.

Then there is the inside – I reckon I could rock up to a car boot sale at a moment’s notice and have enough ‘stuff’ to hand to make between £50-£100. Where does it all come from??

2. Next on my list is obviously my sleep pattern. I’m not going to harp on about this. I realise it’s a tragedy of parenthood and one I cannot change. When you get up for the day, make a brew, butter some toast, start the morning feed, switch the TV on and search for some mind-numbing comedy courtesy of E4, only to be confronted by the purple image of a sign which reads ‘E4 will resume at 6am’ (my average wake up these days seems to hover around 5.30) that is the day you learn two things:

1. Things will never be the same again with regards to what you used to call a ‘normal’ sleep pattern

2. It’s time to step away from Freeview and invest in Amazon Prime / Netflix / Both

3. My lapels and collars. The area in question really covers from collar to armpit. Although admittedly sometimes lower. This area was once crisp, once clean, once pristine. It is now frequently (more often than not) crumby, cruddy, snotty, sticky, yucky, runny and generally icky. When speaking with colleagues they often cannot look me in the eye – this is because their attention is drawn away, to the banana/ rice cake/ chicken/ milky/ mess resting sludge-like on my collar bone. It’s the unmistakable markings of – a child. Long gone is dry clean only – hello M&S machine-wash suits!

4. My boobs. There is no escaping the fact that the buoyancy of being 17 was long gone even before I came pregnant but despite this, my boobs still fitted my skin. What I have now do not fit at all. There is too much skin – or maybe too little boob…..

That is all I can say about this loss.

5. My hair. So first off a load of it fell out. This is coming from a woman who frequently sheds lots of hair anyway – I am forever scooping it out of the plug-hole / Hoover / spaces in the car that only loads of hair could get into. This situation, though long-standing has been exacerbated by pregnancy and I lost what felt like upwards of 50% of my hair in the first few months after having Rita. I was told this was normal but still found it a little unnerving. Having gotten to a stage where the loss seems to have declined to the usual pre-pregnancy rates, I decided to go for a change.

My hair is long and most days can be found tied up in a bun – out of the way. Of course if I’m going out somewhere special I will ‘do’ it – so that would be on the 4th of hardly ever. Anyway, I decided to get a load chopped off and was pretty pleased with the results. That is until OH came home and told me I looked like the Mum from Outnumbered….

Nothing against Claire Skinner but I in my mind I was walking around looking like a blonde Alexa Chung!

Not Just Rita's Mother

Mother, partner, teacher, scouser. I live and work in rainy Manchester and aside from writing I love running, red wine and singing. Co-founder of Our Kids Social offering unique and fabulous events for families in and around Manchester www.ourkids.social. @notjustrsmother FB Not Just Rita's Mother

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