The Unmumsy Mum Diary

  About the Book

  She’s back! Social media sensation and bestselling author The Unmumsy Mum has put pen to paper once more to bring you the next instalment of her life as a mum to two young boys, writing about motherhood exactly as she finds it.

  In The Unmumsy Mum Diary, Sarah documents a year in her parenting life with her trademark wit and candour. She shares with us her innermost thoughts, from milestone moments such as taking the kids on holiday abroad for the first time and her older son starting school, to dealing with the everyday challenges of sibling squabbles, fussy eating, and guilt about trying to juggle the ever-increasing demands of work and home.

  This book is as hilarious as it is honest and will leave you in no doubt that, on those days when you feel as though you are falling short of being the ‘perfect’ parent, you are most definitely not alone.

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Introduction

  January

  February

  March

  April

  May

  June

  July

  August

  September

  October

  November

  December

  Ask Me Anything

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Also by Sarah Turner

  Copyright

  For Henners and Judy,

  without whom life would have no sparkle

  The Turner family: Jude, Sarah, James and Henry

  Well, here it is: a year in my life. I suppose in some ways this is a continuation of my first book – the next chapter, so to speak – but I wrote the first one looking back on things, already removed from whatever situation and accompanying feeling I was describing, whereas this has been written in real time as I haphazardly navigate my way through another year of motherhood, still very much learning on the job.

  When I started blogging, I thought that sharing my deepest, darkest thoughts with the world was a pretty brave thing to do. The reality at the time, however, was that I wasn’t really ‘sharing’ anything with anyone because nobody was reading it. For months, all the ‘hits’ to the site were my own and the only comments I received turned out to be spam comments promising me eternal happiness, unlimited wealth and an enormous penis thanks to the herbal remedies and magical spells of Dr Agbazara. I had around thirty-six social media followers – and I don’t mean thirty-six thousand, I mean thirty-six individual people, all of whom I’d had to follow to get an insincere follow back.

  Starting from scratch wasn’t a hindrance, though. On the contrary, having nothing by way of expectations meant I had nothing to lose. It was the ultimate podium. I was free to talk about whatever I wanted, and what I most wanted to talk about was the day-to-day reality of parenting as I was living it. One of my earliest posts was titled ‘Other Mums Must Be Lying’, and I think that says a lot about the mind-set I was in at the time, i.e. convinced that other mums were selectively glossing over any difficulties and frustrations and making out that everything was hunky dory. Either that or they really were effortlessly gliding through motherhood, making me some kind of freakish maternal oddity – this was a genuine fear for a long while.

  I couldn’t help but think life would be a lot less worrisome and a lot more fun if we were all prepared to pour out our true thoughts on the mega-mix of emotions that go hand-in-hand with being somebody’s parent.

  Not everybody agrees with me, of course. I have been sent many negative messages telling me that I don’t deserve my children, and several articles have credited me with being at the forefront of ‘bad mum’ and ‘slummy mummy’ movements. Just recently during an interview I was asked, ‘How does it feel to be at the forefront of a shift where being crap at motherhood is now in vogue?’ and I laughed, because I didn’t know what else to do. Inside, I was devastated. Is that what people think of me? That I am a crap mum? That I aspire to be seen as a crap mum? How very depressing.

  I’ll be honest, there have been many occasions when I have come close to shutting everything ‘unmumsy’ down for good, but each time I have reminded myself just why I started writing in the first place and continued to press ‘publish’ on the posts that capture the raw edit, complete with under-eye bags, weaning disasters and discipline holes.

  I think it’s a shame that ‘good mum’ and ‘bad mum’ labels exist at all. Admittedly, by some people’s standards I probably am a bit slummy and there have been times when I have allowed myself to see crafting, cupcake-baking, uber-organised PTA mums as the enemy, but that’s only because I have felt like a failure in comparison. At no point has a mum wielding crochet hooks and handing out gluten-free cupcakes ever gone out of her way to make me feel lousy. I have felt lousy because I am shit at crafts and baking and because I have the day-to-day organisational proficiency of Dory the fish (if Dory had two under-fives, a dilapidated house and a backlog of writing assignments). Sure, I had every intention of excelling at this thing we call parenthood – in fact, I was the greatest parent imaginable to my hypothetical future kids – but when those kids arrived I found myself running around like a tit in a trance and I started aiming less for perfection and more for ‘everybody still in one piece at the end of the day’. Perhaps I need a spell from Dr Agbazara.

  I think it’s highly unlikely that I will ever post my ‘Top Ten Winter Soup Recipes’, or make nursery bunting, or take a photo of my whole family looking gleeful in a field full of poppies. I am much more likely to share a picture of my kids having a tantrum because the wind is too windy, or of them showing their disgust over any food item which doesn’t come out of a packet. I share these things not because I’m proud to be at the forefront of any so-called ‘bad mum’ or ‘slummy mummy’ shift, but because I believe with all my heart – just as I did when I was writing for no one – that alongside a show reel of parenting best bits, we should feel free to open up about the days when we are tearing our hair out, too. That’s a shift I am proud to be part of.

  What follows is my honest account of a year where we have shaken up work hours, renovated the house, found our feet with a new school-starter, and generally continued to ponder how to raise two ‘spirited’ children without losing the plot. There are good bits, bad bits, silly bits, sad bits, some surprising conversations and an epic poo tale thrown in for good measure. It’s extremely personal in places, but I’m trying not to dwell on that fact and imagine instead that, just like the old times, not a soul will be reading.

  On we go, then.

  Friday 1st

  I’ve always loved New Year’s Day. I know it’s a cliché but there’s something cleansing about the thought of starting again and wiping last year’s slate clean. Of course, by ‘last year’ I’m actually only talking about yesterday and, practically speaking, I suspect life will continue to roll along on the exact same trajectory as it was when I went to bed last night … but still. I haven’t had a chance to fail at any of my resolutions yet and, in the absence of failure, there is hope.

  Perhaps I am a glutton for failed-resolution punishment, but I just can’t help myself. I get swept up in the newyeariness and, despite having outwardly declared that I ‘can’t be arsed with all that new-leaf crap’, I have privately been making the same doomed resolutions for the best part of a decade:

  • Cut down on biscuits.

  • Do some exercise.

  • Take better care of my neglected skin/nails/husband.

  • Stop sucking my thumb.

  These are just the basics – the body and wellbeing stuff that’s going to make me fit and healthy. With any luck, by the end of the year I’ll be st
arting each day blitzing one of those plankton-green breakfast smoothies and shimmying into some Lycra before stretching into the Downward-facing Dog. It’s true I haven’t exercised properly since I did Mel B’s Totally Fit DVD in 2008 but this could be my year. Come December, I’ll have abs and a thigh gap and I absolutely won’t spend my afternoons hiding in the kitchen, eating Nutella straight from the jar with my finger. (Last week I found myself browsing a fitness inspiration profile online and as I did so I concluded that I’d probably never ‘get the glow’ by fingering Nutella.)

  When I’m fitter and healthier and more zen-like (from squeezing in some mindfulness) I’ll surely be better placed to up my parenting game, too? I’ll finally start confronting the list of parenting promises I silently make each year but never seem able to stick to:

  • Stop relying on Justin Fletcher as a babysitter (via the telly, I mean – I don’t call him round whenever we fancy going out for an Indian).

  • Start enforcing discipline boundaries so my children no longer think it’s acceptable to ignore whatever I’ve asked them to do/not do; and put a stop to them crying with laughter as they hand-waft their farts in my direction.

  • Start instigating some more exciting family outings to break up the monotony of the park-lunch-telly daily circuit.

  • Wash my children properly every day and stop lying to myself that the baby-wipe freshen-up counts as a bath. (Though less frequent washing has alleviated the boys’ eczema, so there are legitimate advantages to soap-dodging.)

  • Stop comparing my life to mums-who-have-it-all on Instagram. Comparison is the thief of joy.

  The immediate stumbling block in my above new-intentions plan is that I haven’t actually bought a blender yet and I forgot to stock the fridge with any healthy stuff so this morning I’ve had no choice but to make do with peanut butter and jam on toast washed down with three cups of tea. I’m also moderately hungover from the wildly romantic New Year’s Eve James and I spent sat on the sofa, each knocking back Prosecco with one eye on the telly and the other on our electronic devices. So I can’t, realistically, see there being any jogging this morning and imagine that instead we’ll head out for a less-than-brisk family toddle around the park at the end of our road, just as we did yesterday (and, in fact, almost every day of last year), but that’s OK because it’s pointless starting a health kick on a Friday, right? I don’t yet feel like I’ve fully reappeared from that sluggish limbo week between Christmas and New Year where you snack on turkey and cheese and Terry’s Chocolate Orange while watching reruns of Only Fools and Horses and The Royle Family. I’ll treat Monday as the proper start of the New Year; and what a year it looks set to be.

  It seems strange to think that this time twelve months ago I was welcoming in the New Year sat up in bed, off my tits on tiredness, listening to a drunken rendition of ‘Auld Lang Syne’ in the distance as I fed a three-month-old Jude. Just after midnight I had settled him down in his cot at the end of our bed, before I attempted to find a non-damp patch of pillow for myself (the pleasures of reflux), unsure of when my feeding services would be required again. I actually wasn’t that far off heading back to my job at the university and planned to maximise the final remaining maternity months by writing more of the candid-and-slightly-ragey blog posts that had been keeping me sane. I feared they would fall by the wayside when the nine-to-five work hours kicked in again.

  Only they didn’t really kick in again – well, not for very long, because before I’d had a chance to properly warm my desk and swivel chair back up I received the message to end all messages, asking whether I thought I might like to expand my parenting blog and write a book.

  Yes, I would like that very much.

  So I did.

  I threw caution to the steady payslip wind and I quit my job to write a book about the highs and lows of motherhood. I’m feeling a bit edgy about the prospect of seeing it on bookshop shelves (Will people like it? Will people like me? What if it crashes and burns and I conclude that actually, brutal honesty about my feelings in those earliest years was a mistake after all? What if the Mail Online runs a story: ‘Is This Britain’s Most Ungrateful Mother?’ Oh God). Deep down I know that these butterflies of self-doubt always pay me a visit whenever change is in the air.

  More than anything, I’m feeling impatient now. The same kind of impatient I felt late in both the boys’ pregnancies, when I’d done as much as I could and it was simply a matter of stuffing my face with pineapple, giving uncomfortable pregnant-sex a whirl for the (unproven) cervix-ripening potential of semen and waiting for my tiny humans to pop out. Not that either of them popped – though perhaps that’s a good thing, as I read an article last week about a woman whose baby really did pop out, and the suddenness of it all caused her no end of problems downstairs.

  If you are reading this diary (and I haven’t accidentally left it in notebook-scribble form on a train somewhere), then I am keeping everything crossed that my first book wasn’t entirely shit and that this continuation of my parenting adventure may also have found its way into book form. I hope I am allowed that level of optimism on the first day of a brand-new year.

  This is a big year for the Turner tribe – or it certainly feels that way – as, even more monumental than my first book coming out is the fact that my first baby starts school in September. My little pudding head, the one to whom I first gave life, will walk through the school gates with his little uniform and his book bag and … no. I can’t start thinking about that just yet. Not today. I don’t want to cry on day 1 of 365.

  I’m sure I will shed enough tears to sink a battleship again this year (motherhood has turned me into a crier) but hopefully there will be a lot of laughs too. And with any luck there’ll be less shouting on my part, because the Me of Last Year shouted so much even I had started to zone out.

  I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, She’s sounding way too positive. She’s fucked.

  Let’s just see how it goes, eh?

  Monday 4th

  Oh, man. I have had the most irritating day and I can’t even blame the kids. In fact, the only person to blame here is myself, for having worn knickers that are too tight even after I suspected yesterday that I was on the verge of developing thrush. When I got up this morning I should have dug out a huge pair of M&S cotton briefs with plenty of room to ‘breathe’, but no, I ignored the imminent threat of a yeast infection and went for something a bit smaller, a bit lacier, something which gave me a fanny wedgie (a fedgie?) and ultimately ruined my morning meeting.

  Actually, it was less of a meeting and more of a jolly disguised as a meeting, which makes me all the more annoyed that I couldn’t fully enjoy it. Basically, I had arranged to meet up with a friend of mine who just so happens to have useful contacts in the world of freelance writing (long story, I shan’t bore you), but the point is I was excited to be heading out the door for something sociable that could legitimately be labelled ‘work’. We’d agreed to meet early for breakfast and it was the usual level of hectic trying to make an escape as Henry (almost four) acted out a scene from Toy Story 2 at an alarmingly loud volume while Jude (sixteen months) clung to me as if he was anticipating it being our last ever cuddle – so I’ll admit I felt pretty liberated as I shut the door behind me and commenced the walk into town.

  And then the itching started.

  I knew at once that my itsy-bitsy knickers, coupled with the skinnier than realistic jeans I had literally had to jump up and down to get into, were about to cause me all manner of problems and undermine my elation at being professional enough to have a breakfast meeting. (I should tell you now that this friend of mine is a man, which would have been neither here nor there, had I not been having panicked visions of me struggling to squirm the itch better before eventually resorting to having a quick covert vaginal scratch as he poured the coffee.)

  By the time I’d reached the end of our road I was walking erratically, like somebody was tickling my back with a feather, and I knew I wo
uld have to make an emergency detour to pick up some cream. Boots was the first place I came to but when I got there I found it wasn’t open for another seven minutes so I was then forced to text my breakfast date to inform him that I had been held up at home and was running ever so slightly late. (I deemed a white lie better than a text which read, ‘Just picking up some itchy-fanny cream. See you soon xx.’)

  Boots was awkward. Not because I have any issue with asking for thrush treatment but because I was there before any other customer, waiting outside when they opened the doors, and I just couldn’t bring myself to head straight to the pharmacy counter, for fear it would look like I had reached a level of tickly-knicker desperation so severe that I was practically breaking their door down. So I pretended to browse the make-up, had a quick test of the expensive perfumes and then casually sauntered across the shop floor to get the necessary from the pharmacy lady. My best bet, she told me, was a dual-relief oral tablet and cream combo, which sounded great, until it struck me that I would have to make another detour to the toilet to apply the cream. Having then also realised that the laciness of my ‘best’ knickers would likely hinder the effectiveness of the cream once applied, I decided it made sense to pay for a pair of big pants before using the shop-with-the-toilet’s toilet.

  By the time I recommenced my original walk to the café, having applied the cream to every visible inch of external fandango (and rehomed the entire area in comfy cotton briefs not too dissimilar from my post-partum pants) I was running hideously late and my mood was on the turn. The meeting turned out to be quite a fruitful one, in the end, but I can’t help but feel that Thrushgate tainted the day. It was not the professional start to the year I’d had in mind, and as a result I’ve decided I am going to throw out all my fedgie-inducing smalls. Life’s too short to have itchy bits.