Sacrifice… blah blah blah. Kids… blah blah blah. 

I never paid much attention to people when they spoke about parenting before I became a mum. “It can’t be that difficult,” I’d scoff, sipping my piping hot, barista-crafted latte while strolling home from the gym on a Sunday morning in blissful ignorance. Oh, how I look back and laugh at that time now, two kids later.

For the first 12 weeks of maternity leave 2.0, I revelled in telling anyone who asked about how ‘chilled’ it was this time. I was prioritising myself, I said. I was doing pilates, I would brag. “I’ve made time to do a three-step skincare routine in the evenings,” I WhatsApped a group of mum friends, who (politely and surprisingly) didn’t tell me to piss right off.

I was experiencing a Hollywood movie-esque maternity leave filled with sunshine and rainbows… until I wasn’t. A series of unfortunate events – my toddler breaking her foot at nursery, a nasty bout of double mastitis and a bathroom renovation (that was supposed to take four weeks but took eight) – all conspired to quickly burst my bubble.

It was a humbling experience to watch my best-laid plans crumble around me. Everything I put in place while I was pregnant to help me achieve maternal bliss was whipped away from me in the blink of an eye.

Suddenly, without childcare in place for my eldest, I found myself going on car journeys for the joy of having two free hands: the car is the only place where both the toddler and the baby are strapped into a seat at the same time. I was heavily reliant on my WhatsApp ‘village’ of mum friends to allow me the space to vent, and I can tell you the first thing to fly out the door was my stupid three-step skincare routine. I’m lucky if I find the time to brush my teeth twice a day now. 

Why am I telling you this? I’m well aware I’m not reinventing the wheel when I say motherhood is hard. If you’ve read this far, you’re likely already more than aware of that. But the last few weeks of utter chaos have reinforced two life lessons for me.

Number one: the best-laid plans go to shit all the time; it’s how you respond that matters. Pre-baby Fliss didn’t cope well with plans going wrong. I enjoyed a routine, and if something went wrong I’d try to fix it. Now, as a mum of two, I know not everything can be fixed, and sometimes it’s an absolute blessing when things go wrong and your hand is forced. Being thrown into a situation in which both my toddler and my baby were at home with me full-time without a bathroom for an extended period of time meant I had to get inventive. Was it part of my idyllic plan for the summer? Absolutely not. Did we make the most of it despite us all having to bathe in a £15 plastic storage box for weeks? Yes, we did.

There were tears, of course. Mainly mine as I worked my way through the overwhelmingly long days of solo parenting, balancing naps and breastfeeding with toddler snacks and under-stimulation tantrums. But I’m out the other side now, and I am so proud of us all for surviving. I can appreciate now that I’ll never have another summer like it in my lifetime. The bond we created as a gang – me, my daughter and my newborn son – because of our unexpected summer of fun together is unparalleled. 

Lesson number two is a more humbling realisation. That girl I used to be – the one with the hot coffee and a keratin blow-dry – didn’t listen to the warnings about parenting being tough pre-motherhood because she’d never experienced it (I’m aware that’s the definition of ignorance). Parenting, for me, is turning out to be a series of events that you just have to work through – the good, the bad and the ugly. So do I wish I’d listened to the conversations about it before diving in? For the most part, no, actually.

So often well-meaning conversations about parenting end up centring on the negative aspects of life with kids. And I’ve been there myself: the depths of my sleep deprivation during my first maternity leave seemed to know no bounds, and my god did I moan about it to anyone who’d listen. But what I’m starting to believe is that my pre-baby ignorance was bliss.

Over the course of the last four years I have waded into – and out of – a handful of parenting situations that scared the living crap out of me. There are situations I’ve successfully worked through that I’m sure I’d have avoided if I’d immersed myself in the world of parenting before diving in.  

I’ve proven to myself that even if everything seems to be falling apart on the outside – the toddler needs a wee, the baby only had a 20-minute nap and all I’ve consumed in the past 24 hours is white toast and instant coffee – that might not be the end of the world. In fact, what seems like chaos at the time can, in hindsight, include moments that go on to form some of our best, most-cherished memories.

I’m chronically aware of how hard it is to understand that in the heat of the moment, but now I’ve had this mild epiphany, I’m trying to apply this sunny disposition to as much of life as possible.

So next time everything seems to be going wrong, why not let your best-laid plans go to shit? Because I’m living proof that you never know how things will turn out – plans or no plans – but it will probably all be OK in the end (and it might just lead to some of the best times of your life). 

Images: Felicity Thistlethwaite