Mothers.

I didn’t get to bed til gone 2am as I watched Ady’s QVC appearance at about 130am and then waited up for him to ring me afterwards. Bizarrely given I am often awake til the early hours I really struggled and was nodding off on the sofa. The children bounded in to me in bed at around 7am with Mothers Day greetings aplenty and snuggled in bed with me for an hour. They are dreadful bedfellows, wriggly, constantly chatting and with poking limbs. Davies gave me a constant update of the time as I’d said I’d get out of bed at 830 and Scarlett talked an endless stream of nonsense. Positively nowhere I’d rather be very early on Mothering Sunday though.

I know I do sentimental rather a lot and I know a lot of people are anti Mothers Day. From a commercial, yet another excuse to spend money on cards and other ornamental plastic tat or cuddly toys I can completely appreciate where they’re coming from. However, having children was never something that factored in my life plan, infact I was always fairly adamant that I didn’t want to be a mother. It wasn’t an accidental or ‘it just happened’ type state for me. It was the result of literally years of mulling over the pros and cons. I almost came at it from a scientific point of view and will openly admit it was entirely to do with Ady. I’d known from day one of being with Ady that fatherhood was not just something he wanted and dreamt of, it was practically something he was born to do. I watched him with children – strangers and the children of friends, over the years and saw how he came alive in their presence, how he just ‘got’ them in ways other adults so rarely did. He was always totally upfront about the fact that children were very much on his agenda. We never really talked about it but I think privately we’d both decided that we would be prepared to run with the other one’s dream for the sake of being with them. For Ady that meant accepting he wouldn’t have children if he chose to spend his life with me. For me it was the opposite, I felt it wouldn’t be fair to stay with Ady and not have his children. Which still didn’t mean it was something I actively wanted to do.

My Dad will openly admit that having children would be something he’d advise people against. Frazer and I are his life, he adores us and I watch him come alive in the presence of Davies and Scarlett, his adored grandchildren, but still he will say that whilst he wouldn’t now be without Frazer and I as individuals he feels he would have had a different, and perhaps better life without children. Certainly I don’t think he’d have stayed with my Mum… I think I agree to an extent. I don’t believe I would ever have hankered after children if I’d not had any, I don’t believe I’d have felt that physical need for babies that many women seem to feel. I’ve never experienced broodiness or baby-hunger in my life, infact the very reverse, babies are totally not my thing. Despite having two of my own I remain faintly scared of children generally. I didn’t particularly get on with them when I was one myself and I still really struggle when faced with a child who doesn’t respond to my particular brand of dealing with them as people rather than a seperate species (which sadly the ones more used to being dealt with as a seperate species don’t really get). I don’t think I will ever in my life be described by anyone as ‘good with children’ :lol:. I think if I’d never had children I probably wouldn’t have missed them. I think I would still be on the path I was treading, probaby financially better off, better travelled, less tired, blissfully ignorant of all sorts of issues and ideals and generally a completely different person.

Motherhood has changed me in myriad ways. It has grabbed my self image by the balls, shaken it all around, turned it upside down, spat at it, jumped on it and then stuffed it back in my face. All that I thought I was I have discovered in the last seven years to be untrue. All that I thought I could never in a billion years be I have found to be precisely who I am. Motherhood tests you on every single level, challenges everything you believe in, finds you both more lacking and yet more competant than you ever expected to be, pushes you daily to your very limits and then some. I think I am very defined by my children, something to myself at least I resisted for a long time. I accept that I have been changed forever by the process of giving birth and then spending time with Davies and Scarlett.

There are a billion little things every day that just amaze me about motherhood – today I was sitting in a restaurant next to Scarlett who was eating ice cream with one hand and holding my hand with the other. I was looking down at her little hand, chubby and soft skinned, with it’s grubby little nails with scuffs of long since worn off nail varnish and was just overwhelmed by the amazingness that once her whole body was small enough to be inside mine, six years ago she was just starting out as a collection of cells somewhere deep inside me, in parts of my own body that I’ll never see but she was familiar with for months. Now she’s here, a whole complete person with views and ideas and potential, capable of pushing more of my buttons than anyone I’ve ever met before or will ever meet again. It’s bloody amazing.

Davies couldn’t contain his excitement at Mothers Day. He’s been wanting to tell me about the present he chose for me, the card he made for me and bursting with the idea of it for days. He snuck out of his bedroom this morning and decorated the lounge with streamers. Noone else will ever love me more completely, look at me like I am the most beautiful woman in the world, hang off my every word, believe everything I say, be more influenced by me, have their happiness quote raised by massive amounts just by being in the same room as me, getting a smile or a ruffle of the hair. Once I was his whole world, now I am less so and that influence will lessen over the years but I will remain a reference point for him forever. I know my Dad was thinking of his mother today, my Granny was thinking of hers, woman both dead for some 20 odd years but still called to mind whenever they hear the word ‘mother’.

Do I worry about getting it wrong, cocking it up? Ish is probably my best answer. I have this idea that loving them will lead to wanting the best for them, I think for Davies and Scarlett I manage to be about as unselfish as I can be for anyone and that while there will inevitably be things that could have been done better there will be relatively few that *I* could have done better. 99% of the time I am confident that like most other things I do I am doing motherhood to the best of my ability. Davies and Scarlett truly know me, probably better than anyone else ever has. So they know all my faults and weaknesses, they get the warts and all side of me that no one else has ever seen but if the only evidence of how it’s going is them and I think they are pretty amazing then I have to conclude that some of my greatest ‘work’ to date is there in them.

So, motherhood. Best thing I’ve ever done in my life.

So far 😉