I love my children to bits. They make me a better person, they fill me with love and emotion and so many amazing things. They teach me how to feel what its best (and worst) in life; they challenge and push me and are remarkable, wonderful, extraordinary people. They make me laugh and cry happy tears and when I hold them in my arms the world just feels perfect.

But I can’t help feeling that being a mum isn’t what I’m naturally good at. I struggle, and I feel that it’s largely caused by my own limitations. I wish that I had more love to give to my children, that I was a naturally less selfish person, that I enjoyed making sacrifices for them, that I didn’t dread DD being ages 2-4 or DS needing extra help with school work, that I wasn’t short-tempered and impatient and unsympathetic with them, that I could enjoy being a mum more and not resent or regret being unable to go out or be with friends or sleep until 9am or having this buzzing of relentless child-related thoughts in my head all day and night. I’m extremely ashamed that I feel this way, but accept that I can only do the best (+ I do try to do the best) that I can.

So given that I’m clearly not a very motherly person, and that I don’t have a fairy godmother to grant my wish, what I’d really, really like is for my hormones to please just stop telling me that the most important thing in the whole world is being pregnant or having a tiny baby or breastfeeding. My ovaries may be twitching, but my womb is longing and my breasts are mourning and it’s all getting a bit much right now I’m finding it hard enough to be an ok mum for the children I have, and I’d be an even worse one if I had more. So could someone please just tell these damn hormones to go away and leave me alone!

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This little rant was recently used as the basis for a rather more positive and less desperate (I hope) ‘Celebration of Babywearing’ blog post that I wrote for the Natural Mamas forum to celebrate International Babywearing Week 2011. You can find the post here: Emily’s Celebration of Babywearing

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