Our guest blogger this week is funny mum Sharon Mannion who is currently appearing as Concepta in ‘Bridget and Eamonn’ on RTE2. Her one-woman show ‘The Curse of the Accordion Button’ is at Smock Alley Theatre, Dublin, on February 23rd and 24th.
“If there’s one thing us Irish mothers do well, it’s worry.
It begins in pregnancy, comes in waves and is ever changing.
Will I be a good mother?
Will I be a bad mother?
Will I be a trendy mother? An annoying mother? A cool mother? A strict mother? Heaven forbid, an earth mother?
Do I even want to be a mother?
(I sometimes think I didn’t want to be a mother, I wanted to be a father. They get all the fun stuff and none of the sore nipples.)
I had heard the clichés and had morphed them into some pretty scary assumptions…
1. You can never leave the house or go anywhere without your baby ever again. That includes the toilet, shower and Tesco.
2. Any dreams or ambitions you ever had, either disappear entirely and are replaced by this new love of your life, or, must be swallowed up and remain inside you like an untreated ulcer until the day you die and the ‘ulcer’ pops out on your deathbed in the form of resentful sobbing.
3. The lovely man you married, who is everything you want in partner, immediately transforms into a beer swilling cave beast on the birth of the child. A beast who leaves you to do all the night feeds, nappy changes and discipline and shows up once a week to throw the child up in the air to uproarious laughter.
4. You might regret it. Not in a, ‘I can’t bond with my baby for the first few months because my hormones are all over the place’ kind of way, but in a, ‘Look at that, we’re two years in and I kind of wish we never bothered doing this’ kind of way.
Yeah.
Is it any wonder I was freaked out?
Husband got the brunt of it.
Are we going to stay living here?
Where will the baby sleep?
Where will we sleep?
Do we need a new shelving unit?
Should we use a soother?
What if breastfeeding doesn’t work out?
What kind of travel system do we get?
Do we need a new car?
Do we need a second car?
A third?
His answer to all of the above was ‘We’ll see’.
(He sees preparation as a form of defeat, which didn’t exactly lower my stress levels)
In any case, I’m pleased to report that as is the case with most forms of worrying, it was completely unnecessary and counterproductive. None of my fears materialised and now I look back at my ridiculous assumptions and laugh at the insanity of them.
I have found the truest cliché of all to be that everything works out in the end.
Of course, that won’t stop me worrying in the future.
The first time he falls and cuts his knee, the first time he stays out all night, the first time he drives a car.
I’ll be lighting a candle underneath the Sacred Heart like my maternal ancestors before me.
In fairness, there’s other things us Irish mothers do well too.
Like, love unconditionally.
Pick you up each time you fall.
And when all else fails,
Make tea.
