This title is so understated. It should read ‘Being a mom is bloody hard!’

If you are a lucky mom you will have family around you when your baby is born and in the years that follow. Family to guide you, support you and simply ‘just be there’.  Don’t get me wrong, this does not mean that they are at your beck and call every minute of the day or live in your shoes day and night, but simply to be there for you at the end of a phone or, in this day and age, FaceTime/Skype.   If you are extremely lucky you will have close friends who also have/had children and can relate stories of how they coped with just that emotion you’re experiencing or that wonderful tantrum you are trying to control when in the street.

Some of us aren’t that lucky and find ourselves doing what we can with the knowledge we have, albeit very little. I was just one of those moms.  I had no parents or close friends to rely on and I was young and very naive.  But, with lots of love and a certain amount of intelligence you can raise your child to be just as great. Morals and manners are easy to teach and worth every minute of your time. They are a great grounding for adult hood.  Hearing from our family and friends how little Tommy was potty trained or how Sam was reading at the age of 2 is often unhelpful anyway. We all know that children are different. They grow at different stages, their development comes at different times and speeds and …. very importantly, we should never compare children with each other. Does it matter if your child is not reading at the age of 2 but little Sam is on her next boxed set of books? 99.9% of the time the answer is no. Children catch up very quickly. By the time they go to school the gap will be a lot smaller albeit if any gap at all.

We automatically want our first child to walk, talk and generally grow up far to quickly. We have that sense of pride when others notice that little Dan is no longer in nappies and he has only just had his 1^st birthday! The second child is different. We are not in such a rush. We have learnt that children grow up far far too quick and we try and savour each stage of our child’s growth. With the third child (I would imagine this to be true as I only had two) all rule books go out of the window and the child dictates what they do and when they do it.

Problems start when they grow up to be teenagers and adults. But… that is for another day.

My advice to all moms – enjoy every minute with your children and never regret the ‘me time’ that you don’t seem to be able to get because you need to bath your child, sort their clothes, make meals or just read to them. You will get the ‘me time’ you need and far too quickly. I promise.