{a fifo wife} The stuff I used to worry about when the kids were little..

I woke this morning thinking about Game of Thrones. I woke as you do at 2.47am because if I’m not worrying about rubbish, I’m thinking about other rubbish. I mean what importance to my life is it that Bran from Game of Thrones is north or south of the wall?

None.

Then as I started to drift off to sleep my eyes snapped wide open, and I started thinking about all the stuff I had worried about with my kids. The stuff that kept me awake for years. Stuff that would wake me in the middle of the night, that would worry me, consume me for nights and days on end. Thinking now how crazy it was because I lost sleep over it. Lost time. Lost energy. Lost patience and lost ‘presence’ with my kids because I was worried about stuff that now is nothing.

So what was so important that took so much from me and yet I don’t bat and eyelid now? Well let me tell you

1. That I was wholly and solely to blame for my son’s Autism. Born with a minor defect he required surgery. Sent to another city no room at Mc Donald House or room for us at the hospital I was placed in a hotel- alone. Eight days from a C-section with no family, my husband on his first offshore job I had to give him a bath and at 10.9 pounds he didn’t fit in the sink so the bath was my only option. I lowered him into the water, the bath was warm, and he was slippery. He loved the water finishing up, one hand under his head I reached backwards to get a towel I should have had it on my lap but I didn’t, and he slipped from my hand under the water. He was under less than a second, but I never forgot his eight-day-old face eyes wide mouth open screaming. I cried, he cried and I carried it for years that I had done this to him, that this and every other bad thing I had done gave him Autism. So as he grew and more difficulties came, it ate at me. However, Autism didn’t come with him slipping from my hands in the bath it’s inherently in my husbands family and I didn’t ‘give’ him Autism.
2. That my bad mothering would hurt them later. When my youngest son was 18 months old, I succumbed to exhaustion or depression I don’t know which because the two are so similar. Envidetibly one will if you allow it will become the other. For six months I yelled, I spit venom and it would eat me but then sleep would come and I would love them. I would be the mother I wanted to be. However sleep would then disappear and yet the process would start again despite everything I tried. It felt at the time inescapable. Eventually, I broke I could do nothing but cry and my children were taken out of my care by my mother for a couple of weeks so I could mend. The decision to remove my children from me because I was so tired and broken is the most horrible thing I have ever had happened to me and it will not happen again. I have since learnt to stop, to rest and to care for myself but for years after I worried that I had damaged them with my exhaustion with my tired, venomous, parenting. That I again had caused my son’s autism, that my bad behaviour of losing my temper, yelling and screaming had damaged them. That I would be the reason my sons went to jail, made bad choices or become horrible human beings. Yet none of this is true. Whilst, not an excuse to behave in such a way it has happened now I can’t change it but my sons don’t remember that six month period of their life that seemed like an eternity only I do, and it doesn’t reflect in their personality or behaviour, in fact, they are as opposite to the fear I had as I am to the mother I was.
3. That my small social circle meant that my children would have trouble making friends. That they wouldn’t be social enough as adults. That they would become loners in an already lonely world. I worried so much about this. I tried joining groups. I tried to find my tribe. I tried making play dates but to know avail I just never found my place and so play dates never emerged. I should say however with the exception of one other young mum I found relating to other mothers hard. However as it turns out it made a little difference my B1 is Autistic so naturally making friends is harder, B2 is a social butterfly and B3 well he is the star of the show all with no help from my limited social circle.
4. That I didn’t spend enough time teaching them. Don’t get me wrong I read with them, in fact, I read a lot. I played, I cuddled especially with B1 but the more children I had I didn’t have time to teach the ABC’s or to count. So later on as I saw other people’s children recite the ABC’s I worried I hadn’t ‘taught’ them enough that I hadn’t given them the ‘best start’.  However, it made no difference because the same parents whose kids knew their ABC’s at two years old are still in my kid’s classes with some having a below-reading standard and the only difference is that we played our way to prep school and my kids learnt the ABC from Sesame Street.
5. That I wasn’t enough as a parent. When we fell pregnant there were was an odd radio silence and it was only natural in hindsight given how anti-child I was that it happened. The reality was however, all our children were planned, there was no oops. After the loss of a baby in 2002, I realised how much my husband wanted a child and loving him as I did we planned. We planned that after we were married, travelled it would be time and so it was. So to get radio silence should have come at no surprise what I didn’t plan for was the spoken concern for the welfare of the child with comments such as ‘we are you worried about you having this baby Deb and No one is here to do this job for you. So while those comments were meant to be with love, they were taken in by my already scared pregnant mind, run with and blown up. I think it’s what caused my eventual breakdown and my insane ability to be so hard on myself, to think I wasn’t enough. I couldn’t rest until everything was perfect. I had to prove a point after all. I would rise at 430 and not go to bed until 1030 or until the house was clean. I think without laying blame, in fact taking it all it was these comments and not being able to see them for what they were that set my anxiety in full blown motion that I wasn’t enough. However, I was enough more than enough and it’s only just understanding this that has got my anxiety under control making me a better parent than before.

So don’t worry about the moment you snapped because you are hanging on with 2 hours sleep or them making friends. Don’t worry about being enough or having play school teach them their ABC. Don’t worry about any of this parenthood doesn’t come with a manual, with rules or a one fit all outcome. Do what it takes to feed, love and nurture them.

Don’t worry about anything it only robs your kids of you.

xxDeb

{image with the thanks to here}