This week’s Dispatches from New Motherhood piece is #Badmum by Maria Gutiez Dueñas. In this deeply relatable and spirited account, Maria writes of the ideas of ‘bad’ and ‘good’ mums, and how social media can perpetuate those images; how fear of judgement can be detrimental to mental health.
Maria says, ‘I struggled. I struggled a lot. They say being a mum is not easy but it comes as a natural thing BUT I truly believe every single mum in some point has thought: "I have no idea what I am doing." I wrote this piece because I wanted to share that feeling and remind everyone that #weareallinthesameboat (and for the laughs).’
Maria’s important piece is a rallying cry to be whatever kind of mum you want to be. Enjoy it here.
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#Badmum
Maria Gutiez Dueñas
Am I doing it right? Does anybody know the answer for that? #nope.
I used to overthink everything and compare myself to everybody. I used to worry about how motherhood should be, and about how other people were doing it. I used to be terrified of such little things as going outside, of the baby crying on the bus, or of feeding her in a coffee shop – all because of 'the look'. The first time someone gave me 'the look' I was on a plane and I cried all the way to France #cryingmumsleepingbaby.
The younger me used to make jokes that if one day I got pregnant I'd make a dotted line on my belly that read ‘open here’. I'd say my boobs were just decorative. When I found out I was pregnant I was sad; not because I was expecting, but because I was unhappy that I wasn’t happy. I was miserable because I thought this wasn't how I was supposed to feel. And I had an awful pregnancy #nothelpful. Then I chose to have a C-section and to bottle feed and people were like #whaaaat.
People might not say you're a bad mum directly but we still feel it. It's in the small remark in the health visitor queue, it's in the well-intended advice on how to deal with temperature, it's in the 17 links to blogs about how to cook healthy food for your toddler in the Spanish mums WhatsApp group #theheartofdarkness. All of this escalates in your brain, making you reconsider everything you are doing.
#badmum 37k posts #badmummy 17.5k posts. Most of them just banter, mothers celebrating their kids playing with their phone so they can shower, or #pizzafordinner again. However, there are many mothers that really feel bad. As if they're inadequate. As if they're failing. Why do so many of us use that hashtag? Why do we worry so much about what others think?
Try to remember that behind every #proudmummy #besttimeofmylife #lovebeingamum there is also #haventsleptforamonth #hidinginlootopostthis or #haventtalkedtoanadulttoday. And, above all, try not to compare yourself to the idea of the #goodmum. #goodmum plays with her kid with wooden blocks. She only eats organic food. She reads a book at bedtime after brushing her child's teeth every night. She recovered her pre-pregnant body by running for charity. She always looks great, is really good at crafts and her Instagram acount has 4000 followers. She even manages to have sex from time to time.
I'm a #survivorproudbadmum and here's what I think: a good mum is not about all that stuff. A good mum is YOU. It's me. And we do our best; we do our unique and awesome parenting. We care, we cry, we sleep on the floor, we have crumbs in our hair, we are constantly tired and we wear maternity clothes long after we've had the baby but ... so what?
We are #greatbadmummies and we rock.
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#Badmum by Maria Gutiez Dueñas appears in the Mothership Writers anthology Dispatches from New Motherhood. All 50 pieces from the book will be published here over the year to come, creating an online library of what it really means – right here, right now – to be a new mother.