Tag Archives: marriage

Oct11

Are you a Natural Mother?

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Are you a natural Mother? I sure as hell am not!

Being a Mother has been the only job I’ve ever had in my life that brought me to my knees begging for mercy on multiple occasions.

mercy

My husband recently brought it to my attention that other people he knows (sometimes himself included) feel inadequate when around me as a parent. This made me sad. Never since becoming a Mother have I EVER tried to force my opinions or ideas on another Mother because I know people parent from their own experiences. What may be important to me, may not be for you.

dumbfounded

Here is a perfect example. When my husband and I were about to become first time parents, I had actually gotten my ideal job offer, BUT, it wasn’t meant to be because my husband was on a trajectory that would make him 3 times more money than I would ever make, but it would require him to leave for long stretches of time, and IF I took my job offer, it would have meant that my baby would be without either of his parents for most of the beginning of his life.

My own Mother’s words rang in my ears about how much she had wished she could have stayed home with me when I was small instead of leaving me in daycare or with various babysitters and I made the decision to stay home, because I wanted better for my son than I had. I wasn’t sad about it because I have faith in myself and know if I went back to work tomorrow I know I could get a full time job, without much headache.

zeropercentsure

I think this is what makes me come off to other Mothers as being a natural. The opinion that others have of me, doesn’t bother me. I will tell you it is entirely because of the fact that life has taught me, when others find fault in you, it is because they don’t have the bravery to look at themselves and figure out what is driving them to criticize others. I know I look crazy to others and I know others think I should care more about their opinions but I just walk through my life to my own beat, looking a touch crazy on a regular basis, and I’m proud of that!

crazy

I parent my children without apologies. I make every bad situation into a teachable moment for them and myself. I’ve turned every meltdown that my kids have thrown in public into a teachable moment for me, sometimes I learn my lesson and say, “No way am I gonna attempt that shit again” other times, I just am hurting to solve the issue and try and try and try again! I hear the criticism from others, I just don’t care! Also I have developed this amazing ability to tune out people, I mean if I can tune out the screaming banshee of a child of mine throwing a tantrum about having the wrong spoon colour, tuning our a mean mommy wannabe is easy peasy.

muahh

Back to my original point, I am not a natural Mother, nope not me, you must have me mistaken for someone else! My house is constantly a mess, I swear in multiple languages, multiple times a day! Everything about Motherhood has been difficult for me, I just stepped up, and did my best, researched the shit out of everything I could and then applied what I could to my own situation. Now I will make a list of the things that didn’t come easy to me.

Pregnancy

Childbirth

Recovery from childbirth (two c-sections that had open holes for over two months, and terrible nurses making me cry in hospital both times)

Sleep (the fact that none of my kids slept for more than 3 hours at a time for more than a year a piece) I am not a morning person.

Breastfeeding judgement

Pumping problems

Judgy Grandma telling me to give formula because my kid was too skinny

judgy relatives thinking that both of my kids were on the Autism spectrum (even though I am trained to find markers of learning disabilities and they are trained to be gossipy Aunties, please give me your unsolicited and uneducated opinion)

Hormonal imbalances

Infertility issues when trying for my second

Miscarriage when trying for my second

Dealing with having my health deteriorate due to complications from childbirth

Weight gain for someone like me who used to be athletic!

Dealing with postpartum depression

Despising my husband for not helping because of his and our culture’s chauvinist ways.

My husband not standing up for me to people who constantly criticized me in his circle of people

My husband not stepping up to the plate once we became parents

Recognizing my children have allergies, and then having to step up to the plate and change everything that I had learned to about cooking and relearn to make everything from scratch. A whole lifestyle change.

Even now, I get so much judgement for REFUSING to hang around people that despise me, because it isn’t worth my emotional sanity to give toxic people even a moment of my time.

haters

The point of all this is to show you, or someone you know that even when you suspect that someone is perfect, chances are they aren’t. I struggle EVERY Day! I am constantly learning how to deal with life so that it doesn’t tip me back into depression. I don’t want your pity because I deal with my emotions, I have balances and checks in place to ensure that I don’t fall back on hard times. I am emotionally intelligent enough to ask for help when I need it, but I am very cautious of whom I ask.

I hope you take a good hard look at yourself today and just be happy that you have made it this far!

 

Aug27

Funny story

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I was emptying out my hubby’s clothes from the laundry and pulled out a Long Blonde hair and got so upset, I started throwing all his clothes all over the floor, just tossing it here and there…midway through my hissy fit I realized it was my own long grey hair!!!!

I’m an idiot today! I put the clothes neatly away after that!

Jul16

Never Say Never

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To all you new Mothers & Moms to be, I see you. I see you saying all this judgemental stuff, saying I would Never do this or let my children do that. I have been you. I get it. Let me say this that eating crow was the Hardest thing that I’ve ever had to do!

Don’t judge the mom with one kid, when you have none.

Don’t judge the mom with two kids when you have one.

Don’t judge the mom with three kids until you have three, etc etc because until you have walked a mile in that Woman’s (or Man’s) shoes, you Really and truly have no clue! Like none, really and truly, being a parent is like the Hardest Job in the world, and you have to do it for the most part on little to no sleep, and you are trying to take care of this living, breathing piece of you, that has his/her own ideas and personality that sometimes refuses to be tamed.

Many parents don’t even agree on taming young children so that their true personalities can come through. It’s such a crazy thought to me personally, let me make my child like everyone else so that they are more pleasing to other people. Really? No Thank you!

Jul13

The thin line between love and hate, in a marriage…

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My ringtone on my phone for my husband is Pink – True Love, the lyrics go something like this:

pink

I love my Husband This much! To a tee! This is us! More often than not since we had our second baby. I know that there is light at the end of the tunnel, and this is just the current state. This shit happens when you have a kid, and it gets better once the baby grows older, this much I know. My beef is that no one ever mentioned this to me, like ever…

So no one ever told me, and no one ever talks about the fact that marriages go through ebbs and flows. Every marriage/relationship has phases to it. I know that when it comes down to it, through thick and thin, I love my husband, but at this stage in my marriage, there are multiple times a day to be totally honest that I hate him!

Something that I have noticed is that as women we only bitch to our friends about our spouses, or tell them about how wonderful they are. Why? We should be more honest with each other if we are going to open up, then open up, and don’t always call your friends to bitch and vent. That will give them the wrong impression of your spouse. If you have a friend who does this maybe you should try to lead the conversation and ask if there is truly anything good in that person’s marriage. If your friend truly cannot say anything good, then there might be an underlying issue there…

Me, on the other hand, my husband just drives me bonkers. If for example I ask him to get me a glass of milk, this is what happens:

Me: Can I have a glass of milk please, my hands are full, I just got baby to sleep?

Hubby: urrgh, I just got comfortable, couldn’t you have asked me before? ok, ok, give me a second.

Me: (in my head I say the following) you effing jerk, I bathed and fed your children while you have been lying down on the couch for the last hour, and I just need one small glass of milk to drink before it gets too late and I drink it at 12am so that my bladder will be full and I will have to wake up in the middle of the night to pee, but sure you need a few minutes go ahead and take it.

Hubby: (probably a half hour later) gets up and asks, What did you want? He walks to the kitchen, “What kind of glass?” he opens the fridge and asks “What kind of milk?” “Where is the milk?”

It is just ridiculous! It is a barrage of questions just for one simple request, and that is mostly because I have said to him repeatedly that I despise unnecessary questions, so he does it to irk me.

My problem is that I cannot find a way to irk him, he is the type who lets almost nothing bother him. He could literally be sleeping in a pile of dirty poopy diapers for weeks on end and he wouldn’t be bothered.  Yes, I have tried it…don’t judge.

My whole point of this post is that in a healthy relationship, as I have learned not just from my own experiences but from actually speaking to my friends and family honestly and openly is that no relationship is perfect. Every “Good” marriage, will have ebbs and flows, hills and valleys, and the marriages with longevity all are ones that have couples that still argue, albeit less, but they don’t just say eff this and get a divorce.

Growing up in the Indian culture, and being a first generation Canadian like my husband is something that requires a bit of a balancing act.  I’ve learned that as a women according to our traditional cultural beliefs you really just have to sit back and let your husband do whatever he wants, while you just throw your hands up in the air and say something along the lines of “oh well boys will be boys” and laugh off any crap your hubby might do…(insert screwface here)

I’ve been told by numerous people, including other women that I shouldn’t be so opinionated. I call Bullshit! I say it for this reason. I feel that if your partner doesn’t push you to be the best version of yourself, then you are just in the wrong relationship.

I’ve seen many couples where both individuals are exactly the same person, and neither of them are very nice, mostly because they have no one in the relationship to give them a reality check. I’m grateful when my hubby will call me out and tell me I am spending too much on nonsense…I may not be in the moment it happens, but that is besides the point. I know he’s grateful that I have gotten him to see that binge drinking to the point where you are constantly shitfaced isn’t a weekly or even monthly event.

Look the point is that there are not enough examples of modern Indian couples for the younger generation to look at. By no means am I judging people who have chosen divorce, or anyone for that matter, I am speaking from my own experience and only getting a realistic view of marriage after endless nights of crying out of sheer frustration because I was under some delusional impression that planning the wedding or getting through the first year or marriage was going to be the toughest part. It isn’t!

Currently I think that stage after having children is the hardest part of a relationship. As a woman you are constantly sleep deprived and hangry, so you have the patience of an flea infested, fire-breathing dragon, and want to kill your significant other for a wide variety of reasons!

What do you think is the hardest point in a marriage? Why? Do tell!