Shift the guilt!

From the moment that you find out you’re pregnant, there’s one word that will start to rear its ugly head: guilt. On the day that I discovered I was pregnant, for example, I had spent that morning on a ladder painting a wall and inhaling the fumes. I had had a glass of wine (or three) the night before, accompanied by half a block of Camembert. ‘What’, I wailed, ‘have I done to my baby?’

And so it began: my journey on the Guilt Trip.

It may not feature in too many guide books, but guilt is, unfortunately, part of being a mum. We love our kids so much that we’re desperate to do everything for them; so much so in fact that, on occasions where we may fall slightly short of what we perceive as ‘perfection’, we become practically distraught that we have somehow ruined our child’s life.

In her book ‘Motherhood: The Guilt That Keeps On Giving’, Julie Ann Barnhill talks about the trap of the 'shoudas' – I shouda stayed at home, I shouda disciplined differently and so on.

‘Sometimes we respond to 'shouldas' as though they [are] absolute commandments’, she says, 'thou shalt', and 'thou shalt not'. This thinking can really heap on the guilt and, with this type of expectation around, it's no wonder that we begin to feel that there must be something wrong or lacking in our ability as a mother.’

Equally, the situation isn’t helped by the number of motherhood 'myths' that swirl around us. A ‘good’ baby, we are told, sleeps all night. So, if your baby doesn’t sleep all night, what does this mean? That you have a ‘bad’ baby? That you are a ‘bad’ mother? I doubt it.

The simple fact is that many new mums simply set their sights too high. Perfect parenting is not merely impossible; it simply does not exist. In previous centuries and, indeed, in the early part of this one, there wasn’t the pressure to do everything correctly. Now, however, so-called experts (don’t even get me started!) pontificate on perfect parenting. (We’ll gloss over how few of these ‘experts’ actually have children themselves, shall we?)

Setting unreasonable boundaries is another no-no. Before I became a parent I remember pontificating about ‘no child of mine being plonked down in front of the TV to keep them occupied.’ Next thing I knew, I had to plonk my daughter down in front of the TV for ten minutes, simply to give myself the time to carry out a task. What did I do? Beat myself up while looking for the nearest sackcloth and ashes. That’s what. Where did it get me? Nowhere! I just had to accept that I was being the best mum I could be and, like any other mum, was muddling through as best I could. Half an hour of ‘In the Night Garden’, I discovered, was not going to put my child off the rails.

Any time you feel guilty about any aspect of your parenting skills, tell yourself that you’re doing the best job you can and, each evening, write down three positive things that you have done that day as a mum and give yourself a pat on the back for them.