How to Take Care of Yourself

Ellie Hutchinson - 15 Jan 16

Whether it’s pinterest or your parents, the pressure to be the perfect mum is never ending. We all know about the judgy eye roll from the stranger on the bus or the looks of predictable disappointment from friends when you can’t make that drink (again). Sometimes, being a mum sucks. Not because of your beautiful, precious but sometimes boring baby, but because of *society*. As women are more often than not the prime care givers, we have a lot to live up to. From the dawn of time, we’ve been blamed for all ills as well as credited with an never ending capacity to love.  Not only that, but in this crazy post industrial capitalist age that we live in, we also have to be beautiful and successful too. Sheesh. Too much, you guys, too much. This quest for perfection is going to destroy us all. As a mum of one “spirited” daughter, I have two mummy mantras- one for my daughter “you be you” and one for me “no-one benefits from you being a martyr”. Mums, we need to self care ourselves.

The quickest way to self care is to acknowledge that yes things are hard and busy and oh my god look at the state of this house and I haven’t made home made play doh let alone baked a cake in the shape of Olaf and is my child going to be a serial killer??????? Acknowledge that all these thoughts and feelings are thoughts and feelings that do you and your family no good. Bin them. Also, because of sexism, it’s highly unlikely that men parents have these issues and ideals foisted upon then, so turn that frown upside down and rage against the machine instead.

It’s a cliché, but booking in me time is crucial to your mum mental health. Ideally, my QT with ME would involve getting a mani pedi while Channing Tatum serves me cocktails and I eat pizza, but realistically, a long train ride will do. For real- if you can be alone for more than 30mins, doing nothing, do it. I’m lucky enough to work somewhere with a generous holiday allowance so one of the first things I did when I came back from Christmas was book a day off, just for me, once every six weeks. I plan to do nothing with it. If you can’t do this, go for a walk, take a bath, listen to a podcast, read a book, read the paper- but whatever you do- DO NOT CLEAN/COOK/TAKE CARE OF ANYONE. This is crucial.

Finally, let go of perfection. This is the most important bit. When my daughter was born, I came over all concerned that I would seriously f her up. I don’t know why! Myself and my partner are pretty easy going, well adjusted people, with a solid sense of humour but the fear of messing up this perfect person was super strong. Talking to a friend about it, she said “well you will. But try not to do it too much” which was weirdly the best thing she could have said to me at that point. I want my daughter to be happy, healthy and herself, and I will do everything I can to support her to be those things. But, I am her mum and sometimes she will hate me and blame me but that’s motherhood! And that’s ok. That’s her journey.

Accept that you are never going to be the perfect parent because that perfect parent doesn’t exist. That perfect parent is like Santa- a nice idea, but kind of creepy when you think about it. Embrace the good enough parenting approach. Give yourself, and others, a break. You’ll make mistakes. You’ll do it right. You’ll do something in between. You are a complicated, and sometimes not great human being like everyone else, and you’ll do complicated and sometimes not great things, like everyone else. But you’ll also do wonderful, tremendous, life changing things. For in spite of what we are told, mothers are people too. We make mistakes. We do it well. We learn. We make a mistake again. And that’s ok. What we need (alongside maternity rights, subsidised childcare and equal care giving) is to apply all the love that we give to our beautiful, wonderful babies to ourselves, just once every so often.

Ellie Hutchinson

Feminist. Mum of two. Lover of red wine and Channing Tatum.

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