Last week, before my birthday shenanigans knocked me for six, I met up with fellow blogger, writer and all round nice bird Bell from Bow, otherwise known as Celine. She’d followed my blog for a while, realised we were practically neighbours, and messaged me on Twitter. So naturally, we went for gins – though hilarity ensued when she accidentally went to the wrong pub, so I simply put said gin in my pocket and went up the road to meet her. With much in common, including flexible working woes, we could have nattered all night. Instead of wasting words on each other (we’re both cut from the cloth), I asked her to write me a blog to post here.
Well, she doesn’t actually much need my help to grow her audience- the next day she made Mumsnet Bloggers’ Network’s front page with this beautiful post on high achieving women and their struggle with the unpredictability of newborns.
But since I can identify with how parenting, work and other life stresses can make us turn the ones we love most into emotional punchbags, it’s my pleasure to introduce bellfrombow.com with this blog on being an Angry Bird.
I’ve followed fellow blogger Reprobate Mum for a couple of years and have always enjoyed her refreshingly honest style. Candid even when life is crappy, she is refreshing in the parenting sphere where so much can be about how the kids are doing, not how YOU are doing. So when we followed each other’s blogs when I launched, and got involved in a Twitter conversation, it seemed to make sense to take our chat to the pub. After a hiccup with me in one pub, and her in the other, we had a gin-fuelled evening of job-bashing, storytelling and local gossip. One of the things we both had in common, in the bluntness that comes with gin and reading online confessions, was the anger and rage that seems to arrive with the first baby, and in both of our cases, hasn’t left since. Let’s be honest, since Trump got voted in, lots of us have got even angrier, knowing that across the pond, women’s rights just became a bit less important.
I’ve written a lot about the unfairness of being a parent in today’s 9-6 corporate world and how angry it makes me, so I won’t repeat myself or my pleas for flexible working that works. Some excellent, and equally angry, columnists have written far better takedowns of Trump than I ever could (although he seems very angry too – I wonder, if like my toddler, he’s just hangry, and would be happier with a sandwich.) Getting angry because I shrunk my merino sweater seems pointless, and it’ll fit the kids now anyway.
The rage I am most ashamed of is the rage I feel towards my husband, the one I am closest to, the one who does the most for me, for us as a family. He is a great dad and a very decent partner, although his choice of music is usually awful and he has an unhealthy obsession with Lego. But oh my god, sometimes, when both the kids are screaming and he is stuck at work, or when my eldest does a dirty protest in his bedroom (a potty training accident, but it felt like mutiny) and of course he’s out for a run, or when I was on mat leave and covering the nights and the baby threw up on five sets of sheets (we don’t even have that many sets – I had to improvise with towels) and I was on clear up and laundry duty because I was at home. Or when he is invited on a business trip to Miami, and I have to do a weekend alone with the kids whilst he drinks Grey Goose at rooftop bars, or when he simply managed to drink hot coffee and pee with the door shut when I hadn’t for days because I was the primary carer at home and he was suited and booted in the office….. (Note how NONE of this is his fault. Nobody ever said anger had to be rational! But his talent for avoiding shit-mageddon is incredible.)
I thought it would get better with my return to work, but I’ve had broken sleep for three years and am trying to balance life and work and kids and my fuse is incredibly short and rather flammable. And I feel hugely guilty because this wonderful man doesn’t deserve my grumpy, snappy bullshit (does this count as an apology my love?! It’s a bit public I know, but every word is true), nor do we have the time to row over silly, unimportant household chores when a friend has been diagnosed with cancer, another is facing infertility and the world as a whole seems to be going to shit.
During our gin-based chat, Reprobate Mum pointed out that it’s almost a compliment to lose it with your partner. Like when your toddler flips out in a major tantrum with you, and as soon as Gran arrives he grows angel-wings, says please and thank you and doesn’t wipe his nose on the sofa. Your toddler is in his safest of safe places with a parent, and can push the boundaries. I can (I shouldn’t, but I can) be a complete grumpy-arsed cow with my husband knowing he’ll still love me in the morning.
So because time is short, and so precious, and because every person of my parents’ generation who has raised kids and knows how flipping hard it is having two toddlers in the house tells me to cherish these mad days, embrace the chaos, because when it’s over you don’t ever get it back, that’s why I should stop narking about the mess on the table, and he should leave the house in a state I would almost approve of. That’s why we should drink more wine together on a Friday night and have a giggle rather than strop about who should be loading the dishwasher, or who changed the last evil nappy. And even if I’m knackered and grumpy and fecked off because the baby has hidden the TV remote again, perhaps it’s time to channel the anger into a sweaty run, or a sweary tweet or a phone call to my patient mum. Maybe it’s time to pay heed to the #blessed images on Instagram and take up meditation (ha, falls off sofa, maybe not).
What I’m going to try is what I do with my toddler when he’s so upset he can’t breathe, when snot and tears are all over his face and he’s incapable of speech but making lots of noise. I’m going to count to three. Just take time to breathe. Easy enough to say. But I need to manage it, because the kids are little mimics, and they can’t see me losing it over trivial stuff, because they don’t get the back story of no-sleep-no-coffee-so-much-mess-another-bill. They don’t understand that frustrations build up and explode, even though we see it in their tiny bodies every day. And I want them to grow up to be like their dad, chilled, relaxed, and not angry. Not like me. Not in that way at least.
Celine Bell
@bell_from_bow
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