They don’t know that mean mum is a result of love. They will have to wait until they have kids of their own until they understand that.
I can’t moderate in most areas of my life, it’s not just mumming. I promise to be vegan but before the animal kingdom lets out a communal cheer, I’m shoving slices of salami in my face.
I try to get fit and fart at yoga. I get camel toe sweat at boxing and I look like David Brent when I do Zumba. I tend to go all or nothing in sport. Mostly nothing.
Either I’m doing it or I’m sitting on the couch munching on some chocolate covered pretzels feeling guilty. No in-between. No moderation.
And then there’s sleep, or the lack of it. When I was a boozer, I didn’t sleep. I used to lie awake with my heart pounding as sugar pumped through my veins. I used to feel grumpy and tired for days after as my body recovered from the battering it had taken. Sometimes, it felt like my sleep mechanism wasn’t working. The thing in my body that switched me off was broken and no matter how desperate I was to nod off, the hangover wouldn’t let me. Booze punished me for overdoing it.
Sleeping and parenting aren’t great buddies either. I’m up early doing lunches and burning raisin toast whether or not I have slept a wink. I can’t lie in bed. There’s shit to do.
My general state is that of someone that’s been out on a huge bender. I look like a zombie, I have pale skin and black bags under my eyes, I wear torn, bleach stained clothes and I’m usually dragging a leg behind me because I’m too exhausted to walk like a normal human. I am the living dead.
But this living dead is functional. I’ve crawled out of my hungover grave and am pacing with my arms outstretched, ready to meet the demands of my little monsters.
A hangover with children is not an option. The two lives are not compatible. That rockstar mother, preoccupied with the party is not the mother I want to be.
She is a disaster zone.
I had to make a choice. Hangover or Mum.
It wasn’t easy. I chose the hard, bumpy road instead of the smooth inebriated one. I have times when I wonder what I’m doing? Wonder if I can really do this?
But then I reminisce about those long days in bed feeling like a shit parent and my faith in myself is restored. In the moments I feel like giving up…..that’s when I remember my struggle.
I get up and I get on with it.
I chose the 18-year parenting hangover rather than the 24-hour booze one.
A hangover spread over time is more bearable. More doable. I’m clear to face all the unexpected obstacles head on, rather than hide from my family in my darkened room and even though burying my head in a bottle of Prosecco is very appealing at times, I know those two worlds don’t mingle.
Unlike a real hangover, parenting hangovers are rewarded. Like today, I didn’t lie in bed and hide. I got up and made cookies bigger than my baby’s head. I achieved something.
So, good or bad, shouty or tired, drunk mummy or sober mummy?
I have made my choice.
X
Originally published here.
Victoria lives on The Sunshine Coast on the East Coast of Australia. She has three uncontrollable children, a very patient husband and a dog. She’s been sober for 2 years and writes about her zig zaggy journey in her blog – www.drunkmummysobermummy.com. Victoria is currently writing a book about parenting, alcohol and life as a sober mum.
You can follow her (in a non-stalky way) on Instagram and Facebook.
