When becoming a mum I felt I finally found myself. As I've mentioned previously I always wanted to be a mum. Growing up it was the only constant ambition I had, while my career ambitions went from teaching, to medicine, to baking, to forensics and so on. I felt ready to have a baby quite early on, but I felt like I needed to complete my education first. While I applied for universities I met my now husband, and early on in my second year at uni he proposed, and 6 months after my last exam we married. I was broody in the two years leading up to our wedding, and when I finally found out I was pregnant 4 months after our wedding I was over the moon! I was lucky with my pregnancy and barely had any symptoms. Had it not been for being a bit more tired than normal and a positive test (or four) I wouldn't even have known I was pregnant leading up to my first scan. I really felt like something had finally clicked into place, and it must have shown as I got so many positive comments throughout. I didn't really get uncomfortable at all, not even towards the end, and I really felt like I was made for pregnancy, like someone kindly said.
I have never been happier than I've been since having my little boy. No, everything hasn't been like I had imagined. I had to introduce formula where I had hoped to exclusively breast feed, leading to having to give up breast feeding completely a lot earlier than I had hoped. He still isn't sleeping through the night at soon to be 6 months, waking several times for feeds, which I had hoped would be different. My husband hasn't taken on the picture perfect daddy role like I had imagined as he feels the pressure of working even harder to provide for us. But despite all of this I'm absolutely loving being a mum, and I can't wait to add to our family again.
Boy enjoying some sensory time
Despite all of this there is still one thing I struggle with. While I've become a lot more confident in the past few years, I still worry a lot about what people think about me. And more importantly, I can be quite shy and introvert, which means that making friends can be hard. I've always had a few good friends rather than a big group of friends, and that's still the same. I can talk to a lot of people now which I would've struggled with before, but not the way I would with good friends. I had hoped this too would change with becoming a mum - I had imagined all the mummy friends I'd make and how we'd spend lots of time with them and their babies, and my little boy would grow up with lots of little friends. I spend most of my time either in a baby group (not really making friends, a bit of chatting between "exercises", but nothing beyond group), with the same two friends, or on my own with Boy. With my two good friends we're normally together all three with all our children, but I sometimes feel like the odd one out where Boy is the youngest by over a year, and they are a lot closer than I am with either one of them. I love them both dearly, but I still feel like I'm imposing myself on their day with the kids. I know I'm being irrational, but it's my own insecurities going haywire.
That said, I'm lucky in that I have the best little boy ever to keep me company. I'm actually quite happy being just the two of us, though of course it's nice with some adult company once in a while. The Boy has such a little personality, and I am really blessed being his mummy.
