Other Mothers share a little of their story

Following are the challenges and dreams of a couple of Mums at various stages of Motherhood.  Thank you for sharing a little of your story xo

The joy that comes when your child looks into your eyes is priceless

Comments from a Mum 2 Be – Sydney

Age of children and sex: Mother to be…..my baby is due in April next year.

Most personally challenging aspect of becoming a mother?
I am 8 weeks pregnant and  have realised almost immediately that as soon as you conceive you are concerned for your baby’s health and well-being.  My challenge is not to worry and keep focussed on staying happy, positive and healthy myself for the sake of my baby who is growing every day.

Most rewarding? Falling Pregnant!  Yippee!

Concerns for your child’s future:  Concerned about them being happy and healthy and me not wrapping them in cotton wool but to give them the independence required to grow.

Dreams for your children: For them to follow their dreams and feel loved, secure, independent, happy and confident throughout their journey.

Comments from a Mother of 2 – Sydney

Age of children and sex: Male, 2 years 9 months  and  4 months old Female

Most personally challenging aspect of becoming a mother? I couldn’t believe how different motherhood was to how I expected it to be.  It is the most difficult job I have ever done, but of course the most rewarding.  Nobody can prepare you for this journey, I think every mothers journey is different.  In the beginning I felt trapped in a world of the unknown, totally over whelmed with fear and an incredible love.  Everyday is a challenge, I still feel like I play the guessing game on a daily basis (what could possibly be wrong? why is she not sleeping? why is she crying? why is her poo a funny colour?)  Everyday I get more confident, and realise I am the right woman for this job !!

Most rewarding? Hearing my son tell me he loves me.  Seeing my daughter smile for the first time, goodness the rewards are endless….

Concerns for your child’s future: at this stage I don’t have concerns for their future, I just hope I can provide a stable and happy future for them.

Dreams for your children: Reach for the stars my little angels, follow your dreams, we will make them happen together xx

Comments from an English Mother

Age of children and sex: Eliza Grace, 18 months old and her brother (yet to be named) due in November

Most personally challenging aspect of becoming a mother? Thinking about Eli before absolutely anything else – putting her first every time.  I suppose it’s becoming less selfish as a person.

Most rewarding?
Watching her grow and learn every day.  She constantly surprises and amazes me with the things she can do.  She’s relentless at trying to say words properly and do things on her own.  She’s a joy to watch and be with.

Concerns for your child’s future: Where do I begin…I worry about her growing up in this uncertain economic climate – will we be able to provide for her?  I worry about the schools she will go to, whether she’ll do well, if they’ll be the right ones, will they do their best for her.  I worry about her going out on her own for the first time, being taken or knocked over.  I worry about her being ill.  I worry about me being a good enough parent and doing my best for her.  At the end of the day, all I can do is my best and give her love, support, encouragement, guidance as well as just be there when she needs me and even when she doesn’t!

Dreams for your children: I want them to be all they can be and above all happy with who they are and the choices they make.  I want them to only regret what they have done, not what they haven’t  (within the realms of the law etc!)  It would be great if they become successful and rich but only if it makes them happy.

Comments from a Grandmother – Sydney

Age of children and sex: F36, F33,M32

Most personally challenging aspect of becoming a mother? Being a good role model and putting your children’s needs before your own. Making mistakes and reminding yourself that you are only human!

Most rewarding? To see your children happy and leading rewarding lives with someone to share their future with and the ultimate GRANDCHILDREN.

Concerns for your child’s future: To feel that they will always have the skills to manage through the ups and downs that happen in the real world.

Dreams for your children: Just to lead happy, healthy and fulfilling lives and to have partners who share their passions and dreams.

Exercise can be your best friend

When my daughter was about 3 months old, quite a few of the girls in my mothers group joined together and organised a Mums and Bubs training session.

We would take the babies to a local park in the prams and our motivational personal trainer would run us ragged around the park for an hour. When the babies were little, they would normally sleep in the pram, but if they became unsettled we would take the pram for a run or incorporate them in the training session.

Towards the end of their first year when they were 10kg, they became pretty good weights when we were doing squats!

Some weeks, when I had gone back to bed after the early morning feed, the thought of crawling back out of bed and to the park for exercise would seem like torture.  But by the time I got to the park, chatted to my friends and came home I was bouncing off the walls with delight – well almost, sometimes I was pretty sore in that good kind of way!

Ahhh endorphins, how I love you!  For those that don’t know endorphins are a protein molecule produced by the body after exercising in our case. Some of the believed benefits are: they enhance the immune system, they relieve pain, and they reduce stress, and postpone the aging process.

If you want to read more about the benefits of endorphins, and other ways to achieve a natural high check this out. If you really can’t handle exercise, than maybe a daily roll in the hay is more up your alley!

Anyway the point is, I think I could have easily stayed in bed and then become quite depressed.  Exercise really helped me to look after my physical self, but also more importantly my mental health.

When I trained and ran the New York Marathon in 2005, I learnt the benefit of taking little steps to achieve a big goal.  I had hated running before I decided to run the marathon and saw the marathon as a big challenge rather than a great run.  First off I started running a couple of kilometres a day slowly building up to 42 of them!  Looking back, the biggest challenge wasn’t the marathon; it was deciding to take on the challenge and then doing the exercise each day.

2005 New York Marathon - I look forward to setting myself this challenge again one day. I was so fit and healthy, it felt great!

This is a very important point: The little things that we do to achieve our goals are critical. Big achievements start with small steps and I believe that being healthy and happy through exercise is a great achievement.

Exercise can sometimes be a necessary evil, but it really is my best friend.  No matter how much I don’t feel like going and seeing my friend, I always think of how good I will feel when I’m finished.

So, my advice here is (and this blog certainly isn’t about giving advice, rather sharing ideas that might help), we must find time for ourselves. This is one area where I think many of us struggle. If you don’t have childcare support or can’t afford a gym membership with a crèche, incorporate your exercise into your child’s day.  Take the little ones for a fast paced walk in the pram, or chase them around the park until they are exhausted and have a big long sleep – heaven!

Make the time for exercise, you will feel a million times better.  You will look great, feel great and have more energy.  All benefits for us Mum’s.

Join the story…document your journey

Over the last couple of weeks, I have shared some of my stories on motherhood.  It has certainly been a journey that has started as a university project.  To expose myself so much in my writing has been an interesting and sometimes uncomfortable journey.  I am however enjoying the experience and I appreciate the messages that have been posted on the blog and those sent directly to my Face book account.

The blog statistics tell me that about 50 people are reading the blog.  I’m glad that you can relate to the stories, find them entertaining, or have benefited from them in some way.   I have parents reading this in three continents, which is great!

I now ask you to share a little of yourself.  I would like to develop the blog to share and document challenges and dreams of motherhood / parents across the world.  Stories from Mum’s 2 Be, new Mum’s, and more worldly Mum’s and of course our wonderful Dad’s who are reading.

When you post your response using the below reply button, I can see the responses before I agree to publish to the site.  I will hold off publishing all results until Friday.  You don’t have to sign up, so it’s quick and easy.  Just copy and paste the below headlines and complete your responses by Thursday.  I appreciate that you have plenty of other things to do in your day, so thank you in advance if you can take the time to share your story.  Sometimes its nice to stop and reflect and I hope you enjoy the experience.

Name: (if you want to remain anonymous feel free, just give me your preferred alias!  I will only publish first names of all entries)

Age of children and sex:

Most personally challenging aspect of becoming a mother / father?

Most rewarding?

Concerns for your child’s future:

Dreams for your child / children:

Just a quick entry / tip – Over the past week we travelled to Queenstown, New Zealand.  For anyone who is looking for a great country to travel with children, New Zealand is your country.

You have to love a country that has a special line at immigration for parents travelling with children.  My instant fear at seeing the immigration line snaked around numerous times, was quickly turned to joy when the lovely man at the back pointed us to the parents line with three families in it.  You just have to love it!   Good start I thought and thankfully it just got better.

Keeping warm with Hayla in Queenstown, NZ

Besides that people really seem to like children, are really friendly and it is just the most beautiful country.  Flying from Sydney is also relatively stress free.  Will say relatively as we were both feeling like we needed a holiday after the trip home!

Thanks again for your positive comments, glad you are enjoying reading this blog and will get a new entry up mid-week. Mel xo

Adjusting expectations for my new life

Motherhood is much more than I ever thought it would be. It is both wonderful and… challenging – I wouldn’t use the word bad, because its certainly not, but challenging it certainly is at times. I knew that I would have great love for my child; I just never knew how deep that love would grow to become.

What I couldn’t ever prepare myself for is the never-ending reality of motherhood.  You are on call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 356 days of the year.  Although my husband is the most wonderful father, at the end of the day, ‘Mumma’ is often required rain, hail or shine.  There are no more sick days for me!

When my daughter first arrived this new reality overwhelmed me to some degree.  I would put her to bed at night and then try to complete all the tasks that I couldn’t get done while she was awake.  Cook, tidy the house, maintenance around the home and pay bills – you know the drill, the list is endless.

I’m not really sure when this happened, but I decided to relax a little. My day had to have an end to it, even if I felt there was more to do.  If I couldn’t get it done, would the world really fall apart?  Sitting on the couch with a glass of red became much more appealing.  This was a really weird concept for me as I am a very organized, time conscious person who is driven by a schedule.  But I’m now wondering, can a mother ever really do everything she wants 100%?

It seems to me these days that I do lots of things about 60%.  Well that might be a bit harsh, but 80% would likely be a fairer estimation.  I was talking to Tracey the other day and she asked me how I was going.  “Great I said, if you are happy with the glass half full.” I explained that I feel like I do everything about 80%.  It is really hard to work on your career, look after home, child and husband and do all those tasks 100%.

Tracey felt exactly the same way.  She has a full-time job and therefore her concerns really surrounded the limited time she was able to spend with her son and husband.

Then I started to think, is it that as a new mother I can’t ever possibly do everything 100%, or do I put such high expectations on myself that what I’m achieving is fine, but as a mother now I’m always wanting to do better?

Before our daughter came into the world, my husband and I tried to alter our ways so we could be the best possible role models.  We started a swear jar to cut out the gutter language before her arrival (my husband was an onsite engineer and construction vocabulary can sometimes be distasteful).  We actively limited TV and instead filled the house with music.

When you have a child, the best in you often comes out.  People want to be kind and polite around their children to provide a good example.  Potentially change characteristics in yourself that you don’t want to pass on to your children. Become more active to show a good example.

Maybe my standards haven’t dropped, rather that I expect more of myself?  I want to always do better, achieve more for the child that I love so much.

Whatever the answer is, motherhood brings huge changes to your life. I think finding a happy medium between what you want to achieve in various aspects of your life and the time and effort you can give to each task.

If it means I have had to readjust my expectations and be happy with 80% instead of trying to achieve 100% in everything I do, then I think that is great.  The most important thing for me is to find a place where I have internal peace and happiness and a happy content family.

Damn it, the cat is out of the bag!

My little toddler is discovering the world right in front of my eyes and it is so exciting!  It can also be somewhat of a nightmare, especially when going shopping means a world of kiddie drugs are being thrown at them from every direction.

My daughter has never eaten a doughnut or lollies, but is drawn toward the colourful, lolly filled doughnuts that say ‘eat me!’ from the low level racks at Doughnut King.

In the past 2 or 3 months, Hayla who now tells me “walk” when I’m pulling into the car park of the shopping centre has started noticing those annoying little rides that the shopping centres love to place everywhere to make your shopping trip more difficult.

In the last two weeks, little Hayla has started to take an interest in the look of them, their flashing lights, and the bright colours. Thankfully I could easily distract her and move us quickly away.

Then the world changed. The other day she saw one move…oh no I thought! Hayla ran over to the moving object and before I arrived the little boy’s Grandmother confirmed that it was my daughter’s turn next. Damn it, the cat has exploded out of the bag!

Ok, so what is this going to cost me?  To my shock the answer was worse then I had anticipated, it was $2!  I had figured something like 50cents.  I think I am still living in a world where you could buy a bag of mixed lollies for 20cents.

Now $2 isn’t even the price of the coffee, so it isn’t the earth.  But the cost I am thinking about isn’t just monetary, even though there will be many more rides to come.  The real cost is the time it will now take to explain why we can’t go on the ride AGAIN today and the tantrum if a ride is not allowed altogether.  I’m sure this phase will pass in the next 6 months as we pass the terrific 2’s stage, but at the moment it hurts thinking about it!

Why do shopping centres do this to us? OK, so I’m not going to stop going to the shopping centre because of the rides, but do they realise who controls the credit cards.  Oh, that might be Hayla too!

What has your child discovered that you wished they hadn’t?  What do you think of the little rides at the shopping centres?  Am I just being a kill joy?

I’m the Mum, yet sometimes I feel like I should be wearing the nappy!

Since my mid twenties I have been very conscious of the need to exercise my pelvic floor and thought that I did the appropriate exercises.  Having completed a marathon and being very aware of the impact of running on the whole body, the pelvic floor muscles have been at the top of my ‘must look after list’.

I was very nervous about having a problem later in life.  What I didn’t realise was that I wasn’t going to have to wait until I was a little old lady in a rocking chair to have problems, it was happening to me now.

I started to become a little concerned after having Hayla. Going for a walk, I would really struggle to hold on and get to the bathroom.

I was VERY concerned when running with a couple of girls in my mothers group, when I started to wet myself.  Yes, it happened to me.  It literally felt like my pelvic floor had given way.  I had to stop running and really concentrate on holding my pelvic floor up until I got to the park toilet.

It’s not something that I really want the world to know but I’m pretty comfortable with the mechanics of the human body and I hope sharing this experience does two things:

(a) For anybody who is having similar problems, don’t worry others are going through it too and its better to discuss it and find out what to do about it and take control of the situation.

(b) Those who don’t think of their pelvic floor, this is a reminder that it may be OK now, but time and more babies could result in problems.  The pelvic floor is the muscle that supports your bladder, intestines and uterus and needs to be looked after. And as they say, prevention is better then cure.

My friends were so supportive about it and we had shared so much over the past months that it wasn’t really such a big deal.  It still isn’t.  Some of my friends have issues with their pelvic floor and others don’t even think about their pelvic floor. When the topic comes up in conversation I always remind them that the exercises are important. The last thing you want is to be laughing and have a little leak. It can become a pretty common problem.

After this experience I really started to actively focus on recovering my pelvic floor.  Some things I learnt that you might find helpful include:

1. After birth don’t too many pelvic floor exercises at the beginning.  Start with 10 and build up by 1 everyday until you can do about 40 a day.  I think I over worked it.
2. Really let your sneezes out.  If you hold them in you are putting further pressure on your pelvic floor.
3. Laughing out loud is better then giggling for this same reason.

If you want further information on the pelvic floor there is some information on the Australian Physiotherapy Association website http://www.physiotherapy.asn.au/index.php/physiotherapy-a-you/womens-health/strengthen-your-pelvic-floor

I was interested to see on their site that doing pelvic floor exercises at red lights isn’t recommended.  I have heard many times from others this is the best time to do it, but I always seem to be chatting to little Hayla about our day or calming her in the car.  My pelvic floor is the last thing on my mind.

You will be glad to know that things have got a little better, although long periods of exercising can still be troublesome.  I think the biggest problem is remembering to do my pelvic floor exercises everyday.  I try to do them every morning before I get out of bed, but often Hayla is telling me ‘UP!” and before I know it my day has started without the necessary exercises.

What is most important for me is that I take control of my body.  I’m not ashamed of its problems but I want to actively manage the challenges it presents so I do stay in control, particularly as I get older. The body is an amazing ‘machine’, exercise and maintenance of that machine is solely up to user.

How do you remember to do your pelvic floor exercises?  Any tips that you find useful to ensure you remember this very important daily exercise?

Technology taking over your Toddler?

Two months ago at my monthly Mothers Group dinner, we all started discussing apps that we had on our iPhones.  The topic then changed to distractions for our little ones and apps once again came into discussion as a great way to grab a couple of minutes of instant silence.

How these little friendly distractions can suddenly become our worst nightmare!  I put a Dora the Explorer app on my iPhone and now little Hayla believes my phone is her property. It is though the phone is actually called Dora!

She has even been known to somehow get my phone off a shelve and run to a corner in the room to play her game,  accidently send e-mails or make phone calls.  I feel pretty silly when I have to start chasing her to get the phone.  Thankfully she can’t move that quickly yet at 19 months.

The amazing thing really is that a 19 month old knows how to unlock a phone, scroll to the icon she wants and start a game or listen to music.  We also taped us singing ‘ba ba black sheep’ on the voice recorder with Hayla coming in at different points.  She knows exactly what she is looking for and what app to go to.   What a different world my little girl is growing up in.

Sitting down to the computer also creates problems for me.  Even if she is really happy with her play doh, the second she sees me move towards the computer, it’s straight over and on my lap.  Thank goodness she has lovely long lunchtime naps or I would never get anything done.  I can’t even contemplate life with no daytime sleeps.

One of my favourite bloggers, Mia Freeman recently posted this YouTube video from Japan:

I’m not too worried about technology taking over books.  We have read to Hayla every night since she was a baby and now as a very independent little toddler, we wouldn’t dare get away with putting her to bed without a book or three.  I love this and will always foster this love of reading with her.

What are your thoughts?  Is technology taking over your children’s world?  Would they prefer to be watching TV than running around outside?  Any other funny toddler technology tantrums you want to share?