I Was a Young Mom Once, Honest!!

Hard to believe, when I look in the mirror at the end of a long day, that I was once a young fresh-faced mom, with energy abound. Now thirteen-some-odd years later, I am a somewhat new mom again, to a third child (my lovely twenty month old daughter). Only now I have more wrinkles, more grey hair and more stretch marks than you can shake a stick at. And yes, I have less energy, less patience and I am quickly losing ground on all I thought I knew as a young mom.

I'm not sure whether it was pure naivety or just youth that got me through, virtually unscathed with my first two. Now, many years later, everything I thought I knew, I have to relearn. And I am tired, really tired.

There are days when I sit and observe new , young moms, obviously with their first child. Both well dressed, hair neatly coiffed, with their sweet sing-song voices, trailing after their lovely rosy-cheeked children. You rarely, if ever, hear them snarling at their sweet angels, to "please, bloody-well behave themselves". Instead they ask, repeat, and then go through all of , by the book steps, in order to get their child to comply with their loving request.

Then, spot the experienced moms, they are recognized from a mile away. Usually frazzled, with hair half hanging out of their onion elastic pony-tail holder. Which of course is all they could find since their wonderful babes took what was left of their good elastics, for science projects, themselves or to use as weapons against each other. The sing-song voice has turned into a hoarse shriek that could paralyze the deaf. And finally, their wardrobe consists mostly of clothes which their children are most definitely mortified by. The last, only because they have not a spare moment to replace what they have been hanging onto for years, and the thought of shopping with a small child could break even the most seasoned shoppers.

Well I am no longer a young mom, I think they now refer to us as mature mothers. Women who have been crazy enough to have a child after 35. Whether it is a first child, a third, fourth or fifth, that you have after this golden age, it is much different than parenting in your twenties.

When you are in your late thirties or in your forties, you now know what life is about, you've become slightly more selfish about your time ( what little you have). You, in other words, know what you are missing. Quiet afternoons enjoying a good book, uninterrupted. A long bath, without an audience. All of those things we took for granted before we had kids, or at least when our first batch of kids were independent enough to know when to leave us the hell alone, and before we'd decided to try this new-parent thing all over again.

Don't get me wrong, I am thrilled to be experiencing parenting from a whole new perspective, it's just that I kinda miss being that young fabulous mom, I think I was??