“Mummy, we think you love Heidi more than us”.
You know that feeling when your heart pierces and grows bigger all at once?
It’s in these quiet moments, as I’m putting them to bed they tell me things, things I want to hear and wish weren’t said all at once.
It’s when I wrap my arms around my son and hold him closer than ever, and feel how distant I’ve been all at once.
It’s wondering how I can be there for everyone. Be a wife, a friend, a mother, and be myself (who is she) all at once.
I woke up thismorning, Heidi in her bassinet and my husband and the two kids in the bed with me and I didn’t even remember them getting in. I smiled and felt the pain in my neck all at once.
Yesterday I sat in my daughters room, she pulled out all of her dolls, I’m not great at pretend play but I was adamant. Then I heard the faint cries from a cut short nap down the hallway. She looked at me square in the eye and said, “daddy can deal with it”.
I didn’t even know she said things like that, a realisation in itself.
I was pulled in both directions all at once.
“You don’t hug me like you hug her”
“You don’t lift me up anymore”
“Mummy you never play with me”
I looked at my two babies, who are still my babies and so much bigger, all at once.
And so I said that I have to be there for her a little more right now, but it won’t always be like this. That I love them all equally, that I’m sorry. I’ll try make more time. As if time was something I could whip up with a spoon and a mixer.
Maybe this is motherhood in it’s entirety.
A forever juggling act.
The constant feeling of knowing you’re doing your best, but feeling as if you could do better.
All at once.
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