It's rare for me to post twice in a day, but here I am.
I've been thinking about the Jacinta Tynan article from Sunday Life all day (yes, today. I "begrudge" motherhood for not letting me get around to reading the Sunday papers on Sunday). She asks "Is motherhood really that hard?" and I respond...
I am definitely not a mother who talks only in negative tones about motherhood. Far from it. And I'm fine if you want to wax lyrical about the joys of parenting. That I find you gloaty, smug and insenstive does take some of the shine off all that lyrical waxing. But, go for it, I love hearing about the grand, joyful, make-my-day parenting stuff. Now that I think about it, I actually feel a bit sorry that you don't seem to understand that gettting through the hardships of parenting actually makes up a lot of the joyful bits, they really do.
However, as much as I relish the joy, I do think it's irresponsible to write an article and say things like "being a mum is one of the most seamless, joyful, intuitive things I have ever done." It's not like that for a lot of mothers and their sense of inadequacy is already off the charts without a magazine article rubbing salt into the wound. Your own mother would tell you that (because believe me, while she was busy getting on with the "grace and joy" of mothering she was also busy gathering support from her circle of friends to get her through the next day.) And let me tell you, there is something really really really really "difficult about being up all night with the love of your life" night after night, month after month, year after year. Really difficult. Sometimes, you just can't "solve" things and that's certainly one of the hardest bits of parenthood. I'm well over 1000 nights into the "being up all night with the love of my life" bit and believe me, it's no cinch.
There's also something rather odd about the fact that you consider motherhood to be not "diffcult" not "a hardship" but rather "time consuming". 'Time consuming' is the last thing I would say to describe motherhood. It just seems so... removed. Like it's another thing to cross off your list. In fact, overall, I found your whole article rather soulless and distant. I wonder, have you really engaged in all the icky, sticky, bitty beautiful glory of motherhood? Really?
Oh and, by the way, I do think I deserve a medal. I think mothers everywhere do. They always have.
[Image: these photos were taken of Maxi-Taxi when he was about five months old. We were about to head to sleep school for the second time in his young life, this time for the full week's programme. It had been 178 days since I had had more than 4 hours of (broken) sleep in a night. Was it hard? Yes it was. Was it worth it? Yes it was. Just look at that little face.]