I'M NOT READY!!!!!!!!!

As far back as I can remember there have always been occasions or circumstances where self-doubt told me that I wasn’t ready, but no times were more prominent and overflowing with fear then when I was about to give birth. Not only was I not ready for what I thought would be a painful experience but I was not ready for the journey ahead and what motherhood actually meant. Believe me, the pain of child birth is not something you can ever prepare yourself for, I felt as if someone was setting fire to my insides whilst simultaneously ripping all my organs out through a gap the size of a pin head and to this day I HATE anyone who brags about doing it all natural and says “it hardly hurt and was 4 hours in total from when I had my first contraction to giving birth” I hate you all :-)

because my labor was not all sunshine and roses, in fact it hurt like hell, I hated everyone, nobody understood the pain I was going through least of all my mum and the nurse who also happened to be a mother of 6 but regardless she had ABSO-fucking-LUTELY no idea of the pain I was in. I also wanted EVERY single drug there was available, including the ones that had yet to be invented. All-in-all it was a less than pleasant experience.

That, I thought, had to be the worst, ill-prepared moment of my life. But then I went back and had number 2, which was just as unpleasant and I have to say I am not an earth mother who is able to breathe through the pain and embrace the beauty of life. I found that impossible especially given that I had a doctors hand up my “lady garden” whilst in excruciating pain, naked from the waist down with 6 or 7 complete strangers in the room, all whilst being injected with a spine blocker so that I could feel nothing from my eye lashes down. Somehow I lacked the ability to just “be” and love all that motherhood had in store for me.

So now that I had these two lumps, that were super cute, but relied on me for everything, I had to learn all there was to learn and fast. I had never even changed a nappy before. Had no clue how to breast feed or even wash a baby, much less be left unsupervised to raise these tiny humans all by myself. Anyway, somehow I muddled through and if it wasn’t for the help of my mum, dad and sister I think both boys would have perished a long time ago or I would have left them somewhere (due to baby brain, which I still have all these years later) and just never remembered I even had kids. But luckily enough all three of us survived those early years.

The next melodrama came when I had to take the oldest to nursery. I was fine and actually really excited for him as he was growing up and getting bigger. I also thought he would love it as he was a very old soul and often felt as if he was the mature one in our relationship hahahaha. So we get to the nursery and I’m still excited for him, until I have to say goodbye and then it dawns on me that “I’m not ready!” All of a sudden this wave of emotion came crashing down on me and I felt as if I was going to have a meltdown. But I knew that if I did this he would never stay, so I kept smiling despite my heart literally breaking into a million pieces and being consumed with pain as I heard him say “mummy no go” and I waved my last goodbye and walked out the front door. As soon as my foot hit that pavement I started crying and walked along the main road blubbering with snot bubbles, until I got home, where I kept crying whilst feeding the munchkin I still had and cleaning my house. It was ridiculous when I look back now, but at the time I just could not cope with the idea of them growing up.

There have been several of these milestones that I have experienced with both my babies, each time regardless of whether they took these steps in their stride or not, I always felt like a voice in my head was screaming “I’m not ready!”

How does a parent prepare for these major steps in their children’s lives and are you ever able to be ready for them?

Ever since the boys were little I have always prided myself on having an open-relationship with them, similar to the one I had with my parents, where we can talk about anything and everything. So when they asked questions about where babies come from I gave them the answers….the real answers, they don’t think it has anything to do with storks, bees, frogs, hippos, birds or any other animal. I also always told them that they were not allowed to date until they were 30, which I find to be a reasonable age. I also said they need to find a girl with a 10 year plan as anything less would not be acceptable for my boys. There are levels to this dating/relationship thing and girls need to be on the right level for them, because make no mistake I will make sure the boys are on their correct level and know the reality of entering into an adult relationship.

The boys are now 14 and 13 and the other day I realised that there is one thing that “I am not ready for nor will I ever be”. I had a conversation that made me realise they are ready for girls…..so what do you do when your children are maturing and they are ready but YOU MOST CERTAINLY ARE NOT.

I always thought I was pretty cool and could talk about anything with them and prepare them for as much as life had to offer as possible. But then I realised in doing that I had not prepared myself. I am so not ready for them to grow up, have girlfriends and have sex. I can literally feel my chest contracting. See it was ok to have these talks in the past because sub-consciously I always felt like they would NEVER reach the stage where they were ready. In doing all that preparation with them I forgot to get me ready……and now that they are getting older and moving closer to the day when this will inevitably happen, “I’m not ready!” I need the clock to stop, or at the very least slow down because they are growing up fast and I’m not ready. How do you prepare yourself for the day when your brain actually allows you to really SEE them for the first time and acknowledge that they are not babies or little boys anymore, they are becoming men…..and I am not ashamed to admit that “I’M NOT READY!” Like, really not ready, even as I write this I am struggling to breathe as “I AM JUST NOT READY!” My best hope is that someone reading this finds a way to stop time so that I can RELAX, because if you didn’t already get it “I AM NOT READY!!!!!”