Archive for supermum
I’m not a SuperMum – I’m just lazy
Posted by: | CommentsIt’s nearing the end of school term. It is Winter. It is, quite frankly, bloody freezing!
(Yet I still have a child who insists on walking the half hour to school in shorts and t-shirt – brrr! Insane! What is wrong with children?!)
Walking in the school gate, I run into another Mum I see occasionally. Not often, but often enough to perform the perfunctory “Hi, how’s things?”
She passed comment about the (her) walk to school being hard work, and thank goodness she rarely does it. I admitted that I was unable to empathise as I walked, to and from school, daily. A good half hour each way.
I lie. It’s a half hour - very little good about it – with the kids, and about 17 minutes on my own. Technically, with the baby. In a pram.
“Wow, no wonder you’re so fit!”
Well, yes, walking that far daily does have an impact, but really the tracksuit pants and daggy top, the unkempt, sweaty looking hair and the shortness of breath are just an illusion. Really, I have no other clean clothes, and you seem to be able to get away with dirty trackies if you’re actually ‘excercising’ in them. The hair looks sweaty, because a) it is, or b) I haven’t washed it for a few days. The shortness of breath is because I’m not really as fit as I used to be, and pushing a bloody pram up a hill while yelling at two kids to “Hurry up!” every 3 steps takes it out of you.
“Thanks” I mumble.
“You are a SuperMum” she continues. “You’re just amazing, walking every day. And what a great thing to be teaching your kids. You’re amazing.”
Um, no. No, you’ve got it all wrong.
Yes, I’m aware of the benefits of walking dailly and doing some excercise and all the rest of it on my physical and mental health. I’m aware that these habits will rub off (hopefully) on my kids, and I’m getting them active before they start their day at school, and the whole childhood obesity thing etc etc blah blah blah.
But, really, I’m not a SuperMum. Nor am I particularly amazing.
The reality of it is, I’m just very lazy. Very, very lazy.
My pet hate – hate – is buckling the kids into the car. I’d much rather walk for half an hour, pushing a pram up a hill, with them in tow and urging them on with increasing levels of frustration than put them in the car.
I’ve even been know to get partway through the morning routine, look at the clock and think “Ah, fuck it! I’m going to have to drive today,” then get to 5 minutes past the time we absolutely must be out of the house to walk, and walk anyway.
I don’t have time to have a shower in the mornings. And it’s much easier to pull on yesterday’s trackies that are lying on the floor than attempt to locate a clean pair of jeans. As for shoes, I’ll trip over my runners or locate them in the freezer when I go searching for bread with which to make their lunches.
Besides, their complaints, fighting and boisterousness is much, much less painful on my brain than when performed inside a vehicle.
None of this is to discredit the benefits and “good” of what I am actually doing. Just don’t put me on a pedestal or compare your behaviours to mine, especially to undermine yourself … coz you’ve probably got it more than a little muddled.
My new Superpower – The Flash
Posted by: | CommentsI love that kids think their Mums are the most amazing beings on earth.
Well, they are, but kids take it that step further.
Recent goings on in my household showed me just how great my kids (or at least one of them) thought I was.
He’d overlooked the X-ray Vision Power failure, where I failed to notice that his board shorts had a big rip in them, and focused on the new on … The Flash ability.
(Not “Flashability”)
It’s not because, often, I am to be seen running from one end of the house to the other wearing nothing but a towel, or my undies, or because the baby find it hilarious to pull my shirt up, or down, exposing full boob to the general public whilst he is (supposed to be) feeding.
Nope. Apparently, I’m capable of dropping kids off at school, racing to the shops to purchase new bathers, race to doctors for blood tests and back to school to drop new togs off, go to immunisations clinic, have lunch, feed baby and be back in time to pick them up from school.
Actually, I’m to get bathers back to school by 9.30am.
I like to think it’s because they see me as one of their Heros. They know I have eyes in the back of my head. They know I can cure all hurts – emotional and physical – with a hug. That their hurtful words bounce off my chest without leaving a mark.
Are they testing me with this Flash Ability?
I don’t think so. I think its just selfishness on their part.
It’s not that they think I can perform the transaction and be back at the school in time with the appropriate goods.
It’s that they want the goods at a said time. It’s all about them. They need new bathers, they will have to swim in their undies if I don’t, they will have their friends laugh at them and they will be known as Undie Boy for the rest of their educational career.
Me me me me me me!
And if this Super Power fails them?
“I hate you. You’re the worst mother in the world. You hate me!!!!”
*sigh*
Fortunately, that Kevlar-like chest I have deflects these words, much like Superman’s deflects bullets.
My only hope is it can remain intact until … well, for the rest of their natural lives ….
Do you deserve an Award? I know I do
Posted by: | Comments*sigh*
Fatigue is really setting in, now that I’m still doing night feeds and bottle feeds at the same time … fun, fun, fun!
Still, I get to do the usual mumming stuff … mixing the kids lunches up (when I remember to make them), not realising that one leg of my kid’s board shorts is, well, not there anymore when I hang the washing up, and still having issues setting the coffee machine.
At least I haven’t mixed up the making of coffee and making of 6 month old baby’s bottles.
Yet.
I have managed to put the microwave steriliser in the fridge. I think we’re up to about three times, now.
Anyhoo. I really think I deserve an Award for everything I do.
Sure, I don’t foster 892 children a year. My kids are pretty normal – which makes it hard. There’s bugger all support out there for special needs kids, and none at all for normal kids.
Do you deserve an Award, too?
I think you do. Here it is … The Real Mum of the Year Award, designed for normal Mums.
Nominate a deserving Mum … go on .. right NOW – and yes, you can nominate yourself. I dare you!
Superpowers? Surely not!
Posted by: | CommentsDoing the “good mum” thing the other day and playing with the kids at a playground.
(OK, I was feeding the baby whilst texting some friends, and the older two climbed up things the wrong way, and down other things. The wrong way.)
I noticed a woman wearing a shirt that had, across the back “What’s your superpower?”
My immediate thought was it was one of those shirts advertising something – a new rum mixer or similar.
Curiosity got the better of me (as it is wont to do – damn that Curiosity!) and I did the walk around, sneaky glance thing. The front read “I make milk.”
Thus, I make milk, what’s your superpower.
An initiative of the Australian Breastfeeding Association (aka the ABA).
Cool shirt I thought.
With my background in health, my recent study in health and my two, now three, gorgeous boys, I am an breastfeeding advocate. Besides that, it’s just too damned easy for people like me whose heads are too full and they leave the bottles behind.
(Yep, been there and done that too)
I’m well versed on the benefits of breastfeeding, for the baby and the mum. In oh, so many ways! We’ve all had it rammed down our throats, so there’s no need for me to repeat all the research and World Health Organisation stuff again.
However, I am not an advocate at the expense of the mental health of the mother. I firmly believe the health and development of a baby is just as much, if not more, affected by the emotional and psychological health of a mother than it is by what, or how, it is fed.
(Obviously within reason. There are some things a baby should just not be fed. A diet consisting soley of cow’s milk, for example, is proven to be disasterous. Your top shelf Belgian chocolate is also not a good idea, and just a complete waste of chocolate on someone so unappreciative of such things.)
While I firstly thought the shirt was cool, and I’m sure went a long way to encouraging Mums who may have been teetering between feeding styles, or lacking in confidence about their abilities to breastfeed and persist with it, I did begin to wonder whether it gave some mums, particuarly those who have a really easy time breastfeeding and/or are fanatical about it some sort of perception that they were better than mums who bottle feed.
I also wonder what it does for those women who would dearly love to breastfeed, but for some reason – emotional, psychological or physical – are unable. Do these women, who have successfully carried and birthed a baby, and raised it to whatever age, feel some what Super Inadequate as a result of not being able to “make milk”.
I also wonder about those who choose, for whatever reason, not to breastfeed. Do phrases like this place them into some other “lesser category”? Does it make them rise up and protest (unnecessarily as far as I’m concerned) that they’re doing a great job? Or just add another “Guilt” to their already overflowing list?
Or both?
Frankly, it’s not a “super” power. It’s a perfectly natural response to a whole heap of hormonal and physiological goings on in the body after the birth of a baby. Some women have it better or more than others. Just like some experience PMT more or less than others.
“Making milk” is something that “millions of women all over the world do every day” to use a common phrase that is thrown at numerous mums when they make comment about being scared of childbirth/children or when they cry out for help.
I’m quite sure it’s not the ABAs intention to alienate a whole heap of women, and it was designed to encourage a whole heap of others, comments like these can go a long way to adding to the isolation and inadequacies a lot of Mums already feel.
It’s bad enough we have the 80 year old Italian Grandfather next door telling us what to do, without the experts adding to the confusion.
I’m not a fan of the term Super Mum, nor of Mums being labelled “super” for various Mumming activities – or non-mumming activities that they partake in whilst they are Mums.
What I am a fan of is mums feeling “super” for doing the amazing jobs that they do each and every day, regardless of whether they Make Milk, or whether they make those sandwiches filled will all kinds of vegetable type goodness, then cut into little stars and packed into the lunchbox.
Personally, I’m a Vegemite cut into little triangle person myself. And if you don’t like it, don’t eat it, but there’s nothing else for ya!
