Mummy and Edie's Swim Stories - Real life Motherhood

(Sorry it’s been a while!)

Readers, I am so sorry it’s been so long since I last posted a blog, I know some of you have been waiting! A lot has happened since my last blog so grab yourself a cupper and I hope you make it to the end of this piece.

Edie is now nearly 9 months old and has turned into a little girl, in what seems like, over night! When people say “they grow up so quick” I didn’t believe them but I feel as if life is whizzing past us at lightning speed!

Swimming lessons are going awesome. Edie is loving her lessons, we can now submerge, hold on and kick on command and just to link back to my previous post, we have had a poo during a lesson! The disposable nappy and neoprene happy held us together! PHEW!

Being Mum

I’m going to steer a little away from talking about swimming lessons with this blog post because I’m feeling reflective about my journey as a Mum. I met someone else struggling this week and it made me stop to think, things like this are unspoken about because everyone feels like they are the only one. So, I hope this helps someone else in the same or a similar position.

Edie aged 2/3 months was a crying, cluster feeding, non-sleeping, pooing machine who would only settle for me (sometimes my Mum) and it was intense. I must say that age was the hardest for me, probably contributing to why there haven’t been any blog posts since (I was kidding myself thinking I would have the time and energy to sit down and write a blog every 4 weeks)! 

Fast forward a couple of months of going backwards and forwards with my Health Visitor (who is AMAZING!). We decided talking therapies (AKA counselling) might be worth a try. So off I went, pretty much weekly, and there we discovered I had so many untouched issues contributing to why I was feeling the way I was. Having a baby is a massive life changing event, and on top of other things you already have going on, it’s enough to make your mind explode, and that’s exactly what happened. I lost the “old Jess”. Despite feeling tired and deflated, I was lucky enough to be able to pick myself up and get out of the house on most days and do a good job (if I do say so myself) of caring for Edie.

Finding ‘normal’

So the above explains the beginning, and after a rollercoaster of emotions I started the process of finding the “new Jess”. The first step was going back to work! Yep, I went back to work 1 day a week when Edie was less than 6 months old! Everyone around me kept saying “I couldn’t imagine anything worse” or “I don’t want to go back to work at all” – meanwhile I was SPRINTING in! It gave me that bit of normality that I craved. Don’t get me wrong, I could talk about Edie and everyone else’s baby for hours on end but I don’t think, without that bit of normality, I could have sung the “Wiggly worm” song, one – more – time or spoke about how many times everyone was up the night before (I could tell by the bags under most of our eyes anyway)! 

In January I started back at work 3 days a week and since, I feel so much more content. I feel that I appreciate my time with Edie even more than before, I manage her on her bad days easier, I am more organised at home and I have embarked on a fitness journey with my lovely PT Vanessa (I have also stepped into a gym alongside my PT’s, which a month ago, I probably wouldn’t have had any confidence to do). The back fat over the top of my costume, that’s currently a work in progress!

The moral of my story is: don’t be too hard on yourself, because 9/10 mums are feeling exactly the same as you. I thought I was alone, going INSANE even. But, I have been lucky to have two really good friends with babies very similar ages, who have been an amazing support to me, whether they know it or not! (Shout out to Joanne and Hannah, thank you girls, you made me feel “normal” even on the worst of days)! But if you aren’t in that position, get on to your health visitor (because they have tons of contacts) or get yourself out to some groups and before you know it, it’ll become habit and routine. 

I hope you have enjoyed/found useful my second posting, and now I’m back at work, they are going to be coming more often! I promise! My blog posts are going to start covering various topics, so what do you want me to cover? (Send me a DM on Facebook: Glover’s Swim School). Don’t fret though, Edie’s swimming progress and our home life will be touched on often. Jess x

Edie and Mummy

Edie enjoying her Baby Sensory Chorley class.