DRINK ME!

Becca Maberly - 14 Nov 14

Shit…. I nearly just poured wine on my 2 years olds Weetabix! But wait, don’t call social services just yet because I’m not an alcoholic, I’m just a mother.

Don’t tell me you haven’t ever done the same. As you open the fridge at blurry O’clock in the morning, you catch a glimpse of some Sauvignon Blanc in the shelf of the door, nestled in between the milk and the orange juice and the half bottle of flat Diet Coke, a little tear of condensation running down its long smooth green neck.

Your eyes light up momentarily as you remember how magical its soothing powers are after a day of tantrums/snot/(insert any gross by-product of small child here) and you find yourself reaching towards it… but the yelp of the small child attached to your leg, jolts you back and you are reminded that you are meant to be procuring milk for cereal, not a glass for the Wine Monkey on your shoulder!

You close the fridge, tend to your dependents and go about your day as normal without another thought towards your chilled tall green friend in the fridge. Phew, you haven’t got an alcohol problem after all!

But then, at about 5pm (or perhaps closer to 4pm on a very bad day) the Wine Monkey starts to tap you on the shoulder again. “Only 2 hours till bedtime!” he whispers, and you start to long for the moment you can sink into the sofa, glass in hand, crap cooking programme on the TV…

And there he sits, tap, tap, tapping away for the next two hours whilst you coax unwelcome vegetables into little mouths, deny repetitive requests for sweets, entice grubby bodies into the bath, coax them out again, wrestle them into pyjamas, heat the sacred bedtime milk, read them the same story for the gazillionth time and finally bribe or drag them into bed and close the door.

Now, the Wine Monkey’s chant becomes deafening. As you race around the house, sweeping up remnants of 3 meals thrown on the floor, throwing toys into cupboards, kicking the especially irritating ones under the sofa, moping up the deluge in the bathroom and frantically thinking about supper, he is leaping up and down on your shoulder yelling “WINE, WINE, WINE!”

So you pour yourself a glass, and that first sip tastes MAGICAL, even though you inhale it.  Within seconds the strains of the day seem more distant and you feel a wave of relaxation pass through you. You start to feel like you, and not a harassed mum-slave. Life is A-OK again.

More often than not, that is it for my Wine Monkey and me. One glass and we are happy. Sometimes we go crazy and have 2, and 3 would not be out of this world on a Friday or Saturday night, but any more than that holds terrible consequences for the mother of terrible sleepers!

So it begs the question…. do I, and hundreds of other mothers, have a problem? I don’t think so. Studies show that if we limit it to one glass a day, then wine can have wonderful de-stressing properties. And heavens knows we need to de-stress. We can’t all find the time or enthusiasm for meditation or exercise, so a glass of wine every evening is a civilised way to loosen up. Continental style.

Let’s give ourselves a little break and stop feeling guilty about wine o’clock (but if you are downing a whole bottle a night it’s another story…*)

* We in no way want to trivialise heavy drinking so if you think you have a drinking problem, please talk to your GP or contact Alcoholics Anonymous.

Becca Maberly is the founder of  A Mother Place who offer FREE Online Antenatal Classes to everyone!

Becca Maberly

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