Today, I am struggling…

Today, I’m struggling. I’m struggling with this whole parenting thing. I am doubting my ability to be a good mother to my two daughters. The fact that I am now expecting baby no. 3 is freaking. Me. OUT. When I tell people that I’ll have 3 kids under 5, they physically shudder, or shake their heads. Or tell me that it’s going to be sheer insanity. That I won’t leave the house for about five years. That 3 is the hardest number.

So yeah, I’m scared. Was I planning to have 3 under the age of 5? No. No I wasn’t. And I know that that has made it more difficult for me to mentally cope with this reality. But recently I had a pregnancy scare, and as I lay in the birthing ward waiting for the doctor, my two previous births in this same hospital came rushing back to me. I looked over to the bassinet and felt excited to experience the joy of welcoming a new baby into the world again. I felt honoured to be blessed with this opportunity. And just when I had these sentiments, I heard the first cry of a new baby being born in another room. I heard the midwives in the ward exclaim gleefully and happily that baby was finally born, and I felt privileged to share this moment with an unknown, unseen mother. Thankfully,  everything was fine and I was able to go home. I left the hospital in gratitude and excited at the prospect of welcoming a new baby, a new person into our family. I felt reassured that I could give birth again, because let’s face it, once you’ve been through labour, you spend all subsequent pregnancies in a state of sheer terror of D-Day, the “D” representing both ‘Delivery day’ and ‘Dooms day’. Ignorance is bliss when it comes to labour and birth, and by the end of your first pregnancy you just want to get it out of the way, because you have NO IDEA HOW PAINFUL LABOUR IS. With baby no 2, and 3 and so on, you live in utter fear of the pain of labour, counting down the days with quaking legs and waking up from nightmares of that pain.

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But I digress…

That was around a week ago.

This morning I woke up from a night of fitful sleep, a sleep interrupted by the baby kicking me from the inside, from the almost two-year-old who didn’t want to sleep in her own bed and kept waking up, from scream-out-loud they’re so painful leg cramps. I dressed the kids when they woke at 6:30am, and settled them for a quick breakfast of cereal, while I prepared my own tea and toast, and before long, my eldest had spilt milk all over her dress, stockings, chair and floor.

I yelled at her.

I lost my patience.

She just stood by her chair.

I continued to yell as I cleaned her up, then told her to go and change her stockings. Then Z (my little one) decided that she wanted to take off her stockings as well, and proceeded to have a tantrum when I didn’t let her.

I yelled some more.

Once that debacle finally settled, Z decided she didn’t want cereal, but chocolate instead and made her way to the pantry and pointed to the highest shelf where she knew the chocolate was kept.

I said no. Can anyone hazard a guess as to what happened next?

Yep. More tantrums from her and more yelling from me. I picked her up and tried to physically restrain her over my extremely large, larger than usual as most people took their leisure to tell me, almost-28-week pregnant belly.

When I finally settled her down she decided she wanted a chocolate chip muffin that I had made yesterday and was currently eating, but she was smart enough to demolish and tear it apart to pick out… you guessed it, THE CHOCOLATE CHIPS and left the bulk of the muffin in crumbs and pieces ON THE FLOOR, which my eldest immediately stepped on…

More yelling ensued.

I got them to sit on the couch and read some books while I drank my tea at the table and ate a piece of toast whilst getting lost in my phone. Because #badparenting.

No sooner had I gotten through half of my toast, fighting ensued between the girls because Z wanted to read whichever book her older sister was reading.

Y E L L I N G…

I ambled over to the couch to attempt at negotiating peace between the two when I noticed that Z had picked up the can of drink my husband left on the couch last night and was happily chugging through what remained (which really wasn’t much).

LAST STRAW. I snatched that can, squashed it in my fist and launched it across the living room, the remaining liquid in it sloshing the rug and couches as it sailed through the air.

Z started crying at my reaction, and I sat on the couch surrounded by toys, food particles, sticky soft drink remains, one crying toddler, another deflated elder daughter, one baby inside furiously kicking me, and me… Not a shred of dignity left, not a shred of confidence in my parenting ability left, absolutely and completely OVER IT with that overwhelming guilt washing over me.

I can’t do this. I just cannot do this.

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And OMG, I’ve just read over this and cannot stop laughing. I can’t stop laughing at the hilarity of all that I’m describing, but I’m also crying at the same time because it’s actually just ridiculous and I know it’s probably not that bad, but also that I am currently deep in the trenches of parenthood .

You know when you speak to parents of older children and you lament on the difficulty of smaller kids, and they shoot back with “oh that is NOTHING. WAIT till they’re TEENAGERS. I WISH my kids were BABIES AGAIN” and you just want to push them off a cliff (is that too sadistic?) because no matter what you do or say you can’t convey to them your sheer tiredness and lack of energy at trying to raise more than one highly irrational and illogical human being who wants to be with you ALL THE TIME while you try to do something for yourself outside of them, you know, BE SOMETHING besides “JUST” a mother?

Maybe when my kids are teenagers, I will also say the same. But right now, I’m tired, I’m losing patience and energy and I’m constantly wading in a sea of doubt which threatens to pull me under, every single day. Doubts about my competence, my ability as a mum, my lack of knowledge and wisdom to raise these children into good, Muslim, human beings, anxiety over sending my eldest to school next year when I REALLY want to homeschool (more on this another day), stress and insecurity over how I am going to juggle three children with the school run, fear that I am scarring and traumatising my children with my parenting…

Today, I am just, struggling…

And I need to hear from you fellow mothers, how are you coping? How do you keep sane? How do you not drown in self-doubt?

I’d love to hear from you all.

*Images taken by my dearest friend Zahrah of Love by Lah’za. Please do not use without permission of The Modest Life.

12 thoughts on “Today, I am struggling…

  1. Omg u are amazing TMB hang in there. When they are town balanced adults gleaming back at you, all these small details will fade and the indenting love you have for them will take over. Sending you love and hugs. Xx

  2. Such is life my dear. You are certainly not alone in your struggles. Every mother experiences these. You just take it day at a time, and deal with as best as you are able to at the time. Some days are better than others, you are able to cope better. Raging pregnancy hormones can make the situation feel worse than it is at times.. Once your newborn arrives everyone eventually gets used to the new way of living. And the kids suddenly grow up a little bit more.

  3. Salaams Saltanat,

    You are not alone and I am not alone (yey!).
    Remember I told you at Al Ghazali centre ladys’ souk months ago how my neighbor told me he heard me yelling at my kids from his apartment ? #badparenting big time!
    It happens to most of us I think.
    Congratulations on the bub numero trois! Alhamdoulillah!

    You will manage, like all other morhers do. It all just works out.

    Take care
    Larissa

    1. Wa Alaikum ‘Assalam Larissa! Omg yes I do! We all have our bad parenting moments don’t we? I think we don’t share our #badparent moments enough lol. Thank you for your feedback sweetie. Xx

  4. It’s SO hard sometimes. I was in the same situation with baby number three (now 13 months) and some days were really shudder-worthy but some days have been absolute joy. My eldest is now five so is at school and that’s really helped. How do I stop the self-doubt? I’m working on that.
    Hang in there – we’re all allowed bad days 🙂
    Louisa

    1. Thanks Louisa! How do you find juggling the school drop off/pick up and getting the kids ready in the morning for school and so on. I’m kind of worried that my kid will be the one that’s always late to school with her uniform all over the place and lunch money in her fist because I won’t be able to be organised enough!

  5. What i love about you is you care. And because you care about your childrens health, wellbeing, education and future its overwhelming. Its a lot to navigate and prepare them for. Life could be easier with an ipad, chocolate on demand and all afternoon TV but what kind of adults would you have produced at the end of that? Diamonds are only produced under pressure.
    May Allah give you patience and success xx

  6. First time reader and mama of two. I would like to start out by saying that you are enough just as you are. I know that you doubt yourself, but don’t. Hang in there and take it one day at a time. Whenever you feel like you’re going to rage/yell/scream, isolate yourself. While in isolation, take a deep breath and think about your kiddos being just kids. They don’t know any better (except for your daughter that knows where the chocolate is; she knows everything :). It’s a reminder for me to calm the fuck down and handle the situation better. I’m not suggesting that it’ll work every time but sometimes is good enough for me. I always remember the quote “the days are long but the years are short”. That helps too; sometimes 🙂
    P.s. Can we start a movement that stops people, especially fellow mamas from saying “wait till they’re teenagers?”. It adds unnecessary anxiety.

    1. Thanks for stopping by and reading Hannah! And mostly, thank you for your kind and hilarious words of support. I truly appreciate it.

      And I agree, we should totally start a movement banning people from saying THAT phrase!

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