I always said I'd have one baby. Just one. I always imagined my baby would be a little girl, probably a tomboy (just like me when I was a child), probably dark haired, probably heavily into her books and stories (again, just like me). I imagined trips to the park, taking her shopping for clothes, exciting, fun-packed birthdays spent with a my loving husband, her father, who would dote on her as much as I did. I would be a working mother, I would juggle home, family and career with astounding dexterity, and my own mother would be proud and amazed at the woman I had become.
As I write this, my fiance is upstairs putting my almost-five year old daughter and two-year old son to bed. Heather and Charlie, my two eldest, aren't biologically his. In fact, they're the product of an unhappy five year marriage which culminated in my soon-to-be-ex-husband beginning an affair when Charlie was only five months old, before buggering off with the other woman and leaving me to care for two children on my tod when Charlie was only eight months old.
Plan-failures 1-3: I had two children, one of whom happened to be male, then ended up with divorce proceedings on the go. Oops.
So, here I am, listening to the chaos slowly dying down upstairs as Drew claws back some control after the emotional torment of bathtime. But wait, what's this? Why, there appears to be an infant in a crib to the right of me!
Yep, Noodle done gone had another baby. Jasper, the result of the altogether awesome union of myself and Drew, is four months old.
Plan failure 4: I went and spawned for a third time. This is not sticking to the 'one child only' plot.
Heather, my little lady, is not the little girl I would have anticipated having. She is as ultimately girly as it is possible to be; everything in her world must be pink, and she actually cried around six months ago because Drew couldn't arrange for her to ride a unicorn (a normal pony just wouldn't do for this Princess, thank you very much). She can't be bothered with reading, but she loves to act and sing and dance and dress up in beautiful dresses and go shopping and watch films. She's brilliant; a caring, funny, unique little diva, but totally unexpected.
Plan failure 5: My daughter is a girly stereotype who only wants to wear dresses and is bored by books.
I suppose what I'm getting at here, in a long-winded, wordy kind of way, is that being a parent is impossible to plan for. It really doesn't matter how well prepared you may think you are, how much you know what your life will hold in store for you, there's always a chance that you could be served something that you didn't order.
I know so many people who have beaten themselves up for not feeling how they're 'supposed to' feel, doing the things they think they 'should' do, behaving the way they perceive they should. I know lots of women who've experienced the unexpected - unplanned pregnancies, divorce, unusual family situations or mental health issues.
I'm one of the many women who have been diagnosed with post-natal depression, and I know that when I had Heather some of my issues stemmed from feeling that I had failed for not feeling the 'overwhelming rush of love' which so many people bang on about, but which a large proportion of women just don't experience. With all three of my children I couldn't come to terms with the fact that my house was cluttered and messy and my hair was dishevelled when I had only given birth a fortnight before, putting huge amounts of pressure on myself to do more than I was physically able to because I wanted to conform to an ideal portrayed in the media. As my children grew older I felt that I was failing for not doing enough with them, that their lives weren't rich and enjoyable enough becaue I wasn't filling all of their days with wholesome activities and constantly taking them on educational trips.
Honestly, it's surprising I have any hair left.
With each addition to my brood my role as a mother has fit more comfortably against who I really am, and I've learned along the way, through knowing a lot of other maternal types, that we all do it differently. There's the right way, and then there's the real way. Parenting comes with a lot of myths, expectations and fierce competition and I've said many times that I wish I'd have had some more honest accounts to read or listen to when I was feeling inadequate the first time around. Little Hugo isn't necessarily more intellectually advanced than your kid, Brandon probably wasn't walking at three months and your next door neighbour probably doesn't cook all her baby food from scratch using only home-grown organic ingredients.
I know not everyone will agree with my point of view or how I do things with my family, but that's the point - we're all different; no matter how you handle life or what situation you happen to be dealing with, you can still be an awesome parent. I don't intend to preach (much), I will tell tales of my midget clones (they're insane, really they are), I may reminisce about past events, I might take inspiration from the lovely women I know, I mighy just ramble incessantly. We shall see.
Stick around and say hello, I won't bite (unless you ask me to politely).
