I love my kids.

I never usually like to preface with that phrase, because I feel like it feeds into the narrative that we should feel guilty for being honest. That, if we say something negative about motherhood, it means we’re ungrateful. Saying it’s hard means we’ve lost sight of the wonderful sides of it. But I guess the truth is, I do feel guilty for what I’m about to say. 

I love my kids, but I don’t like being alone with both of them. 

Not always. But often. Not because I don’t love them, or because I would rather be doing something else. Not because they’re too much, or I don’t find joy in motherhood.

Because splitting myself between them often feels completely impossible. 

It’s not that I don’t want to be there; it’s actually exactly where I want to be. But trying to prepare three different dinners to the soundtrack of a 4 year old who only speaks at 99 decibels or above, with a football flying past my head, as I step on 90283768 pieces of wooden fruit, while Ms Rachel tells me ‘big feelings are ok’, and my 18 month old pulls my trousers down as she shouts ‘MAMA MAMA MAMA’, has me feeling like I want to scream, cry and run out the back door. During these moments, I am, quite literally, in fight or flight, and honestly, a one-way ticket out of here sounds like fucking bliss.

During these moments, it can feel like my body is there physically, but my mind is not. It’s like I’m the magician’s assistant, lying inside the box, being cut in two halves. I’m trying to separate myself, so I can be enough for two people, but the top doesn’t really work without the bottom – and you can’t wipe another arse with your feet. 

The days when my husband isn’t around, juggling both of their want and needs for attention, connection, fuel, hygiene, energy release, validation, wipes of snotty noses, etc., etc, et-fucking-cetera, tears me in two. It doesn’t feel easy. It feels like I’m running a race I can never win. I so desperately want to be that easy, breezy, Type B Mum. But the constant stream of micro-decision, weighing up who needs me faster or first, stops me. I’ve heard the glass ball theory, which explains how balls are always going to be dropped, but some are glass, and some are plastic, and knowing which ones to let go of is freeing. Yes, in theory, I love this. But please, for the love of God, can someone else just hold my fucking balls? 

In these moments, I feel well and truly useless. I am not the gentle parent I try so hard to be. I snap, I sigh, I eye roll. I run frantically between each task without so much as a smile. It’s quite clear I am not having a good time. Come nighttime, when they are tucked up in bed looking like the most beautiful angels I have ever seen in my life, I question what I did to get so lucky. And knowing they probably felt like they were getting the worst version of me that day sends me on a shame spiral I have to fight to climb out of. 

If there is one thing I struggle with the most as a mother, it’s guilt. Intense guilt over such minor things, that quite frankly, weren’t even on the radar of my 90s mum, who, in her words, ‘was just pleased she was keeping us alive’. 

When I go to her with these regular, agonising thought patterns of shame that seem to rise every time I’m overstimulated, she looks at me like I’ve finally, as everyone predicted, completely lost my mind. Not because she’s cold or doesn’t care, but because she has hindsight, and knowledge (in fact, as a therapist, a lot of knowledge), that in 20 years’ time, these days that felt like failure to me, won’t even be on the radar of my children. She tells me that I lead with love – more than she ever did – and when all is said and done, that is really all that matters. Life is, after all, about balance. And I know that my balance sways toward love, care, patience and attention. Yes, the pendulum sometimes swings the other way, but most importantly, it always swings back. 

As a millennial mum, I don’t think I’m alone in trying to break cycles with my own children. To model calm, to let them be unapologetically loud, to say sorry when I’m wrong, to repair when needed. I know, for a fact, that I am giving my children things I never received. I don’t blame anyone. The generation I grew up in just didn’t place value on these things. But after all the feelings have been validated, the tantrums have been held, and the sorries have been said, I’m flat-out exhausted. It’s the reason I find parenting so difficult. It’s not because I hate it or regret it – it’s the opposite. I’ve never cared about anything more than I care about my children. And I’m terrified of fucking it up.

I’m trying to parent with so much intention that I’ve lost sight of the whole point. By overthinking my every word and how I may or may not be traumatising them, I’m spending so much time in my head that I’m forgetting to just be present. I’m trying so hard to do things ‘right’, I’m missing out on the magic. I’ve forgot to trust myself.

Recently, on another solo parenting day, I took the kids out for a ride on their scooter and trike. We got just around the corner from our house, and my son wanted to go down a big hill. Now, for all the things I overthink and stress about, risk-taking isn’t one of them. He’s naturally a cautious kid, so I encouraged him to take the big hill on while I waited at the bottom with my youngest. As he came near the bottom, he picked up too much momentum and started to wobble from side to side. As always with injuries, it’s like you watch it play out in slow motion, but you can never get there quickly enough. He went over, tearing up his forearm and cutting his hip. As he stood up and caught sight of the raw, gravel-filled, bleeding graze, he looked at me in horror and screamed, ‘CALL THE AMBULANCE!’ I wanted to scoop him up and carry him back home, but I had an 18-month-old sitting on a push-from-behind trike, screaming because she was so scared. 

I had two arms, but both children needed them. 

I held my eldest’s hand as he hobbled home, screaming and pushed my youngest, tears and snot streaming down her face.

These moments are heart-wrenching. They are the ones where you truly have to choose who needs you most, right there, in that moment. Sometimes that means leaving the other to figure it out on their own. It’s quite literally an emotional and physical triage. But weirdly, these kinds of situations don’t seem to get to me in the same way the five-pm-free-for-all does. The days that aren’t an emergency, but feel like they are, seem to leave me most unravelled.

In truth, these feelings are why I do not want more children. I know wholeheartedly that my love would grow. I have no question about whether my heart could expand large enough to fit another in. But I also know my time and mental capacity won’t double; it’ll divide, again. This division is something some mothers handle with ease. They throw a couple of nappies and crackers in a bag and go on their merry way. But me? I’m not that mum. I wish I were. And the choice to remain a four-person family stands firmly in that knowing. 

The thought of a big family, overflowing with beautiful chaos on a Christmas morning, wrapping paper hanging from the chandeliers and plates passed round the table, is beautiful—but for my sanity, it has to remain just a gorgeous fantasy.

I try to remind myself that I can’t parent two children like I parented one. And actually, there is beauty in that. The addition of my daughter has taught my son that sometimes others need to come first. He’s learnt to share, even when he really doesn’t want to. His empathy and ability to love unconditionally shine even brighter.

And my daughter? She is proof that doing less is sometimes more. She has a much greater capacity for being alone. She figures things out in her own way, because I can’t always run to her rescue. When she falls, she gets back up and tries again, with far better emotional regulation and coping skills than my son had at her age, or even now. She’s shown me that I don’t need to be all-singing, all-dancing, all of the time. I don’t need to have all the answers or do things perfectly. I really do just need to lead with love and let the rest – glass or plastic – fall where it drops.

I just need to be their mum.