Mirror mirror, am I a bad mother? (No.)

Rachel Jeffcoat - 31 Jan 18

Last night my ten-month-old woke up at 3.45am and just…didn’t go back to sleep. I gave her a bottle after an hour, and she guzzled it down like an energy drink and rioted on. My husband took her away at 5.30, after she’d spent twenty minutes yelling ‘YA-YA-YA’ while bouncing on my head. Apparently she slept for a tiny bit before morning? I dunno, I don’t know what day it is now.

Then, over breakfast – me, two thickly-buttered hot cross buns; her, her brother’s leftover banana porridge – I read a post on Instagram by blogger Nicola Burke about the mothers of babies that don’t sleep. Newborns whose mothers get backache from hours of rocking by the crib. Colic-sufferers whose mothers fantasise about short spells in hospital just so they can get away for a couple of nights. It made me want to sob, thinking about the women on bathroom floors everywhere, everywhere, under terrible amounts of strain and thinking they’re getting it wrong.

I did sob, actually. I do that, when I don’t sleep. All my edges are jagged, and they all draw blood.

Babies are a thing of wonder. To be a person, where there wasn’t one before. To have a first bath, a first smile, a first mouthful of squashed banana, a first step, a first deliberate joke. No wonder we’re obsessed with them. It’s like watching a universe make itself in front of you. But there are more parenting firsts than I’ve ever read about in baby books, and not all of them feel like a handful of stars.

The first time you get out of bed so ragged and despairing you whisper ‘shut up, shut up, shut up‘ as you head towards their room.

The first time your toddler launches into his ninth tantrum, and you think to yourself that actually, you don’t enjoy his company much at all at the moment.

The first time you raise your voice.

The first time you’re unkind, because you’ve forgotten for a split-second that you’re dealing with a child who can’t help it, not a mini-adult deliberately pushing your buttons.

The same thing came with each of those firsts, for me. An overwhelming wave of guilt and self-hatred, and then this: I’m a bad mother. I’ve ruined it. I’ve ruined him. I’m a bad mother. That’s what I told myself, every time, and often I started to believe it. But it’s not true.

Listen, motherhood brings you lots of things, but sainthood isn’t one of them. You don’t get an ability to be pushed beyond human limits tucked into your hospital discharge notes. The only difference between you now and you before your children is that now you get a lot less sleep, and you love them so wholly and completely it consumes. The things we do, with that new and painful love! It astonishes me. We take it burning in both hands and we leap into the unknown, over and over, into every new phase and challenge.

Sometimes we fall hard. And then sometimes, for whole minutes at a time, we fly. The vistas you’ve seen from up there, right? Whew. Those heart-stopping views. The fact that we fail as often as we succeed doesn’t take away from the gorgeous bravery of that leap.

What you need to be a good mother – and you are, dear one, you are – is enough love for your children that they feel safe with you. And a willingness to sincerely apologise. Modelling an apology, a decent screw-up-and-repair, is infinitely more precious a gift than pretending to get everything right first time.

Let me tell you, I am a black belt in apologies, these days. I murmur them into her fuzzy head as I rock her at 4am, one fat little hand clasped around mine. I say them into rear-view mirrors and I whisper them through bedroom doors. I let out all my breath and sit down on the kitchen floor and tell them I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it, I was frustrated and I was wrong.

I ask them to forgive me. Do you know what? We love each other. They always, always do.

Photo by Tony Kirkbride on Unsplash

Rachel Jeffcoat

Rachel Jeffcoat is an editor, writer and mum to two boys and a squidgy baby girl. She can usually be found hunting for missing Hot Wheels cars, poking things with sticks, eating vast quantities of secret cake, writing after midnight and reading whenever she has a hand free.

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