How Motherhood Taught me to Make Friends with The Bitch that is The Inner Voice

Pacing round the house for the umpteenth time with my new-born attached to me in a sling, I frantically shook her rattle with my right hand and a held a full glass of wine in the other. I’d had no sleep and was wearing a stained tracksuit with sick in my hair. My other half was in bed with earplugs and an eye-mask on, the last time I saw him looking like that was when we were at a Spa in Mexico. The wine stains on the floor were the least of my worries, I needed to get this baby to stop crying.

At 7 weeks I was told this was the point that things would get easier. Easier?! My daughter never seemed settled, ever. No amount of feeding, rocking, cuddling or cooing worked. Why couldn’t I make this little human being happy?

When a family member asked casually “Is she sleeping through the night yet?” I nearly spat out my tea. I told a white lie, saying nearly, but the truth was she hadn’t slept for longer than 3 hours since she’d been born.

This wasn’t how I ever imagined motherhood to be.

Sometimes the hardest decision of the day was whether to have a rose or a sauvignon blanc, with no second thought to the mothers at that same moment in time dealing with prolonged crying spells, no sleep and recovery from birth injuries.

In my child free days, I’d see mothers walking with their prams, staring lovingly down at their babies, and get a warm fuzzy feeling inside, picturing myself doing the same. I’d see mothers having Sunday roasts with their little bundles of joy in a pram asleep next to them, thinking, how lucky that they didn’t have to get up for work the following day. I saw new-born pictures on Instagram of little babies being pushed in the pram at two weeks, fast asleep with a faint smile on their face. This dream world was so far away from the reality I was actually experiencing. My daughter, to clarify, screamed as soon as we put her in the pram for our first walk, meaning the first milestone celebration went down like a lead balloon. “She’s obviously got a bit of wind!” we both said in unison, trying to act like it was no big deal at all.

Where was I going wrong?

My favourite prechild activites consisted of going out drinking, visiting nice restaurants, and having lay-ins. Spending quality time with my other half was my favourite pastime, and the best thing was feeling like I had life ‘together’.

Sometimes the hardest decision of the day was whether to have a Rose or a Sauvignon Blanc, with no second thought to the mothers at that same moment in time dealing with prolonged crying spells, no sleep and recovery from birth injuries.

As soon as she was born, I felt like overnight I had been thrown into a world of total unfamiliarity, completely different to what I’ve been used to. For 32 years I’d had some sort of routine, my life was in some sort of control. I had created a path for myself in a male dominated industry, I am a well thought of professional, and I have had my fair share of meeting deadlines, having long, challenging days in the office. And this little human made me want to fall in tears to my knees and not get back up again.

“That’s it! I want my old life back!” I said flippantly one day to my other half, “I can’t take her anywhere without her crying, so I’m going to have to stay locked up here for the rest of my life!”– slightly dramatic, I know, but these are the sort of thoughts that enter your mind when sleep deprivation takes its toll.

Is this how it should be? Have all the mums in the world kept a pact to not expose this secret? That motherhood is in fact an endless world of feeling like a failure, tiredness, and never relaxing? Was the frantic bobbing up and down with baby in a sling in fact a common ritual performed by all mums that we just never got to see? I wanted answers and I wanted them now.

So I reached for the baby books. Talk of awake times, routines, how to burp the baby, all overwhelmed me. How could I have a routine when one day she fed 17 times in 24 hours? Don’t get me wrong, had I not been so scared by this whole experience, these would have been helpful, but personally, they made me feel even worse. I was achieving none of what was recommended.

In desperation, I picked up the phone to the midwife who was a mother and before she’d even said hello I asked, slightly hysterically, “How do you do this!?” She laughed, asked me to confirm my name, and said with a calm, wise tone, that it gets easier.

“But HOW did you do this?”

She said that I was doing a great job. I did not believe this for a second.

Then one thing became clear on a rainy Sunday when I was crying into my pillow. That I was clueless at being a mother, but an expert at beating myself up. This is when it clicked.

From my daughter’s daily reflux and wind to her crying attacks in public (one of which put a packed beer garden in an eerie silence, with me darting across to the exit door which wouldn’t open how hard I tried, meaning I had to exit through the pub itself) it seemed one thing after another. I had not been prepared for this new life that I thought I would succeed effortlessly at.

Looking after another human being day in day out was revealing my strengths, and more terrifyingly, my weaknesses, some of which I’ve not had to ever face living in my little bubble I was in. This led me to spending the night feeds googling, researching, in desperation to read other mothers struggles. I needed to find someone who could relate.

Then one thing became clear on a rainy Sunday when I was crying into my pillow. That I was clueless at being a mother, but an expert at beating myself up. This is when it clicked.

The inner voice inside was fantastic at pointing out my failures. She hadn’t been very kind to me. Every time I dropped a dummy, spilt some milk, couldn’t get her to nap, there she was again, telling me I was doing it all wrong. “You can’t even pour her a bottle without spilling it over the floor!” she’d would say. “Ha..an hour of rocking and she’s still not asleep, you’re not very good at this are you?” Quite frankly, the inner voice was a bitch.

I’d also been putting an unrealistic amount of pressure on myself to get things perfect. Perfectionism cannot exist in motherhood. Period. Making comparisons with other mothers based on their amazing Instagram posts, thinking that I was alone in this journey and that no one else had ever experienced these feelings.

When speaking to other mothers most would say, “Don’t you just love being a mum!”

Love? I thought, how could you love this perpetual feeling of disappointment day in day out?

After the sobbing attack on that Sunday afternoon, I decided things couldn’t continue how they were going. Things had to change, for my sanity, for my relationship, for me to enjoy my daughters first year, for me to stop the negative thinking. This is when I tried to make friends with the ‘inner voice’ who had been so unforgiving all of these months. I replaced my thoughts of “You’re a failure” to “You’re doing a great job” — even though at first it was extremely difficult to believe, after a few times a day (even looking in the mirror) it sank in, and the more I believed, the more things seemed a little easier. Once in a while there was the odd moan from the inner voice, but I’d react by simply laughing it off.

My days are now filled with excitement and love, rather than anxiousness and fear. Don’t get me wrong, there are days where I am feeling exhausted, but I always remind myself that time is going so quickly, and I don’t want to look back at this phase in my life knowing I surrendered to fear, fear of doing the wrong thing, fear of not living up to the mum I wanted to be.

I am glad I had that moment of realisation on that Sunday afternoon. Sometimes we need to reach breaking point to enable us to step away, look at the bigger picture, and start again with a fresh view on things. And on that day, I became friends with my inner voice.

And she’s finally realised life is too short to be a bitch.