What? I’m a mum?

YES! This still doesn’t feel real. I have a TINY human. A little baby. My own darling angel.

Before becoming a mum, I had my own idea of what I thought motherhood would possibly be like. In reality, my ideas were not far off. Not far off from 5 cups of coffee a day, explosive nappies and the appreciative ogre burps in my face after a bottle that has been gobbled.

In the short 6 months that I have been a mum, I already feel like I have learned so much. At my baby shower, I received so many presents which resulted in constant babble of “what’s this for?”, “How do you use this?”, “Where does this go?

Along with that went the thought pattern of “Am I actually about to birth an offspring?”

It seems I’ve come a long way since then. My daughter is 6 months old and going strong. Mummy is also going strong, thanks to Nespresso in the mornings and wine at night! (just kidding – I’m still trying to lose the baby weight!)

Motherhood is an adjustment. More of an adjustment than my jean size since giving birth, but hey, that’s one of life’s curve balls – literally.

Here is what I’ve learned since becoming a mum:

Multitasking

Becoming a multitasking queen should be a skilled point on your CV after becoming a mum. Bottle in one hand, coffee in the other. Coffee because we have to keep ourselves going. Bottle because screaming hungry baby. Either way, I’d consider this an almost win-win sitch.

Patience

If ever you considered becoming a meditating Buda, now is the time. Without patience, you aren’t getting anywhere, pal. Those screams and cries of not knowing what our kid wants can be enough to drive us up the wall. Especially when we have tried every method to calm the poor buggas. It’s a total moment of “OMG, am I a bad mum? Does this little human even like me? All it does is cry. What do I do with it?”

 Motherhood comes with chores

If you thought your chores were over since being a teen, you’re wrong. I’m talking about sterilising bottles, measuring formula portions, nappies, packing baby’s bag, the copious amounts of extra baggage required to pack and unpack in the car when going out – the list is never ending. We have a whole extra human to look after besides ourselves. It’s funny how a baby requires more than an adult to just pop down to the shops. Thank heavens for dads and other helping hands us mums have.

 Sky rocketing stress level

Those moments featuring your screaming child in the back of the car on the highway, like is she going to die or explode from screaming that loudly? Because my head sure is! My favourite is when feral moments like these happen on highways, and you can do NOTHING about it!

You can never take enough photos – of the same thing.

Buying extra cloud storage is a must with our offspring. Don’t you find it weird how we all take photos of the SAME THING. We want to capture every moment, every second, every memory. It’s human nature. It’s also human nature to have a complete wobbly when deleting “the same” pictures to free up some space.

Realising that there’s no instruction manual when it comes to parenting is a scary revelation. But at the same time, it’s not. It means you can parent however you want. I definitely have so much more to learn through motherhood. These are only a few highlights that have stuck out to me.

The best thing, amongst all of these is the rewards of smiles, gurgles, cuddles and affection we get from our little ones. All the joy in the world is reflected through those little gummy smiles from our babies.

To all the mums reading this, you’re doing a frikkin fabulous job!

Until next time,

Mycaila Jade

xxx