Parenting is hard...

… really HARD sometimes.

The hours are unlimited, there is rarely time off and weekends blur into just another day!

It can be boring and monotonous, messy, frustrating, isolating and bloody lonely.  There are times when it is terrifying, stressful and noisy.

After 48 hours of no sleep, sitting in your bombsite of a house, with unwashed hair and dishes and laundry threatening to take over the house who hasn’t dreamed of the time before kids? Virtually no responsibility, money, time to yourself - whether it is to read, shower, go to the loo alone…hell, even 30 seconds to moisturise for god’s sake…

Who, after hours of trying to get a screaming baby to sleep doesn’t consider violence when some asshole wakes your little darling?  After your significant other has swanned off to work in a nice, clean peaceful workplace, with time for coffee and maybe to read the paper, little chance of being shat or vomited on, leaving you in the wreckage of your life, with cracked nipples and unidentified matter under your nails and in your fringe and then has the balls to walk back in and ask what you have been doing all day…well, you get the picture!

You yearn for the time when your baby eats solids, talks, walks…right up until they do.  Then you look back fondly to the days when they stayed where you put them, and didn’t answer every question with NO!

All of that said… Parenting is also the best thing in the world, so much more than just a job, the rewards can be so much greater.

The first smile, first words and steps, a squishy cuddle, all the milestones.  The time when your little boy stops rioting around the house, takes your face between his chubby little hands and says “I love you Mummy, you’re so beautiful” and lands a big sloppy kiss. 

The privilege of watching the little person you have created going out into the world, starting school, making friends, starting their first job. Of creating a useful member of society, a kind and caring individual who also knows his own mind and takes no shit from anyone, who stands up for what’s right and protects the weak. Nothing could make you prouder.

Not everyone gets the child they long for, I grieve for them.  Not everyone choses to have children, I respect that.

But, for ME, parenting has been the single most important achievement in my life...

So yes, parenting is hard, but so worth it!!!