Thanks for your comment. These are very wise and valuable advice! Whining and moaning to fellow mums over a cuppa is the only way to survive!

She often gets it wrong but she sometimes gets it right. She makes mistakes but she always says sorry. She is happy, sad, annoyed, grateful, elated, stressed, joyful, overwhelmed, tired but she is not perfect. She is human.”

There’s also a very good idea that sharing your frustration with your mate, friends, other moms relieves the pressure and helps you get up and get on with it, again, again and AGAIN.
Just recently I realized I became a “whiner”, I complain, complain and complain and cherish those who have been in it too and have no problem listening.

Feeling helpless and pressed is considered such a shame. You OUGHT to be tough and “do something” instead of whining. Well, who told you you don’t do anything? LET’S FACE IT: mom’s life doesn’t have too many circumstances you can “resolve”, “improve once and for all” or “step aside”, “not assume someone else’s responsibility”.

A whiner or achiever, all day you clean up after your kids and husband, metaphorically, too. Whatever is left undone, is yours. Making the guilty party “clean up” sometimes takes even more energy than “cleaning up” yourself. Yes, it’s worth it in long-run prospect, but sometimes you don’t have the energy for anything, you’ve been promising yourself a break for hours – and here it comes, more work. You don’t belong to yourself. I NEVER EXPERIENCED THIS AT PROPER WORK, I could work for 12 hours and feel happy and involved. I feel the same about intellectual work now, it’s my rest these days.

And even if these days I have a lot of free time, being a stay-at-home mom means sometimes I have to deal with really nasty pressure and can’t exit, I HAVE TO GIVE MY FULL ATTENTION to sth I don’t want to way too often. I’m used to hearing it’s egoistic to think like that, but why is everybody else entitle to take care of his/her boundaries and not take up anything s/he doesn’t want to do (culture of consent) – and moms can’t (the younger the kids, the more areas where you can’t “be yourself” and “take care of yourself”). I tried to go to group therapy with this despair but was called a whiner and irresponsible for being unable to take care of my life. C’MON! It’s just not safe sharing such things with strangers. And some husbands.

You are lucky if you have someone to support you who never puts you down for being “bad”, who actually sees that you are exhausted and NOT EVIL or UNDERPERFORMING.

7 years ago when I had my first baby, all Internet resources in Russian were about how to make your baby absolutely psychologically healthy, happy and content. I was never able to please my baby and I started to hate those articles and their judging authors.Then there was a wave of those who said: take care of yourself first, don’t stretch yourself, your baby will not die if you don’t answer to her every need immediately. Now there’s this new wave of “shadow motherhood” that entitles us to have human feelings and be realistic about where we are and if it’s really that harmful not to be sweet with your baby all the time no matter what.

You can’t be perfect. I didn’t mean to be, I just wanted to be good enough and, more importantly, not to hurt my baby with my temper, be a poised, wise adult, I wanted to enjoy it, I wanted to feel close and not to destroy this feeling by my shortcomings. I couldn’t. Burnout was always near. They say it’s codependence. But isn’t it the essence of motherhood? You can’t follow Fritz Perls’ lines when your child depends on you so much.

So, yes, we mothers need to protect our boundaries and be responsible for our rest, etc., but let’s acknowledge this: we can’t do it 100% from the start, we start with 5% maybe when the newborn is fussy and there’s no one caring around to help. We can hope to come to 80% of being “on your own”, “within our boundaries” and not responsible for what happens to our kids by their adolescence.
But to hear you are 100% free and you are a whiner if you don’t cope when you have a newborn, it’s cruel.

Let’s face it: being a mom means being needy. It’s not meant to be solely your responsibility. To “perform” well you need to depend on others. Please don’t blame yourself for your shortcomings if you are on your own. Your sole responsibility here is to CONTINUE looking for support, not give up and stall depleted of energy when you hurt yourself or your children for too long.

Some women become very sick to be relieved of their overwhelming “responsibility” of being a perfect mother without any support network (without the possibility to pause, withdraw, delegate your load for some time). Don’t wait to become sick. Acknowledge your limitations.

It’s considered shameful to be dependent, whiny and needy, you are supposed to be grown-up, independent, deal with it. It’s good that there are so many voices able to share that there’s a realm where it’s inhuman and potentially DANGEROUS to be on your own and efficient. Emotional world is different from business world. Different standards here. Most of us had to find it out and find some peace with it still believing we OUGHT to be efficient in caring.

Someone has to watch your back when you dedicate your 24/7 to someone so fragile and in need of constant care, you cannot be autonomous. If you have to, don’t nag at yourself for being harsh and unresponsive sometimes: you’re saving the last titbits of your resources before you shutdown.

Ha Jesus Christ Dave.. could be worse!!

My son definitely yelled Jesus Christ Dave at the dog down the street – oops

Thanks so much. Ha human mum is getting there. Too tired to be perfect mum! xx

Totally fair. We all have different ways of coping and different senses of humour! I hope you get some sleep soon!

Thanks so much. I have nothing against the fluffy stuff actually. There are some great cheery blogs around thank god! I am just glad there is a mixture out there now. It is far healthier for new parents!