I’m not sure what happened last year. I didn’t get past my initial blog post. I’m going to pin a lot of blame onto my PND but motherhood in general also gets a little seat at the blame table.
I decided to start this blog after trawling the internet for some solidarity, looking for someone who was in the same position as me, alone with a toddler and a baby, missing their team mate/husband, for them to just agree, and say “yeah, me too!” But there was no one.
Looking back I can almost guarantee that this was because, like me, the Mamas are just TOO DAMN BUSY to sit down and write out their thoughts and make them understandable and then of course there’s the task of actually getting them uploaded onto a webpage!
However I did get some thoughts down and some of them went like this…(just pretend the page swirls here and takes you back to February 2023)
…Ben leaves again on Monday, for 5 nights, which doesn’t sound like a long time, but have you ever tried to put a 4-year old and a 1-year old to bed? Solo?
It’s hard, and by myself, some nights, I really struggle to keep my cool.
After the birth of our second daughter in July 2021 I was diagnosed with Post Natal Depression and Anxiety. It was an awful time, I constantly felt as though I was failing and genuinely believed I had made a huge mistake adding another child to our family. Luckily, I was able to access counselling quite early on. I started to feel better within a few months of talking about the very rapid, traumatic birth. Voicing all of my fears made them somehow feel less scary and more manageable.
Solo bedtimes are highly triggering for me. I often feel as though I am not in control and start spiralling. Negative thoughts thunder around my head and I lose my temper with my excitable girls. I’m working on it.
At the moment we are living at my folks house (due to our house being uninhabitable during building work). I am often able to call on my Mama to hold the baby, whilst I get my eldest off to sleep. She is the deepest sleeper but unfortunately takes the longest to go to sleep.
…page swirls here and brings you back to present day…
Bet that was fun.
Looking back is not fun for me. I found life hard from about July 2021 to roughly March 2023. My turning point came when Child 2 started to walk. She became a little more independent and happy to sit and play by herself for a few minutes, probably knowing that she was able to come running back to me whenever she needed a cuddle, drink, snack, boob, etc!
I hope this page will make another Mama feel less alone in the middle of the night, or after an exhausting bedtime, flopped down on the sofa, or during a late/middle of the night feed.
My now 2.5 year old is not a great sleeper. She wakes a lot during the night and the night wakings have become more frequent of late. But as a wise Mama once told me, “everything is a phase. The good, and the bad, it’s all a phase”
I’m clinging onto this advice like a beacon of hope, I’ll sleep again one day, but for now I’m ok just riding the wave.