The Pressure To Be A Perfect Mother ♥

Last Sunday saw the celebration of Mother's Day - well, I say celebration, but I can tell you whole-heartedly that there were no celebrations in this house, in fact, I couldn't have been less in the mood for a 'Mother's Day' if I tried.

There was nothing special about Sunday for me, it was simply just another day of my life, filled with usual day to day tasks and tribulations that come with minding and parenting two young children and to be honest, I hated the feeling of pressure that came with the 'Mother's Day' tag - the pressure to be a perfect mother.

I'm far from being a perfect mother. I spend far too much time on my phone, I can be overly shouty and easily frustrated and I bloody hate making dinners... but when Mother's Day came along I felt as though I needed to be perfect, needed to have a nice day and needed to mark the occasion with the kids - even though they had absolutely no clue that is was in fact Mother's Day and only that I brought the boys to visit my grandmother and asked Tyler to say "Happy Mother's Day" to her (which he renamed Baddies Day...), he wouldn't have known the phrase at all.

My social media channels were bombarded with mothers gushing about their children, showing off the plethora of gifts and cards they were given and sharing their enjoyment of getting breakfast in bed or being taken out for dinner - I felt very happy for them, but I got none of this on the day, nor did I expect it.

My day was filled with the sound of my children whinging even though there was nothing wrong with them, my four year old deciding he was going to go all David Bowie on me and paint his face with my MAC blusher - which he then dug the end of my eyeshadow brush into, my other half going into work early and coming home late and my efforts to have a nice day with my kids failing completely.

I love both of my boys to the moon and back (such a cliché but it's true). I mind and care for them day in, day out, not because I want to be celebrated, but because it's my duty as their mother.

They weren't sweethearts on Mother's Day. I wasn't able to put my feet up and my house will always be in a perpetual state of mess... but I wouldn't have it any other way.

I chose to become them mother and I don't expect them to celebrate me for that. Yes, a thank you from time to time would be nice - even though I'm quite happy to say that my eldest has lovely manners, and if they could stop the whinging for awhile that'd be great too, but ultimately they're young children and I'm a mother of young children and believe me, there's nothing perfect about it at all.

But it's okay, because this messy, noisy, sometimes chaotic life we have is perfectly imperfect to us and that's all that should matter.

So if you also felt under pressure to be 'the perfect mother' last weekend, remember that perfect is something that no one can ever be and being a good mother and trying your best is far more important that comparing yourself to others - who only post snippets of their life which may be far removed from reality anyway - and feeling absolutely crap about yourself when there's no reason to at all.

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