I think my DH struggles with being young more than I do. He is 23 and still has friends. They are always nagging to hang out with them all the time and play computer games. I let him go most of the time but it is so hard being stuck on my own with the girls 24/7. I need something to do for myself so I have a decent excuse to stop him going out every time.
And I totally hear you emz on the sleep-ins, In DH's 3 weeks off I think I may have got 1.
I have had people think Im 13 just because I'm short. I guess height some how makes mee feel younger than everyone too - silly I know. People really do look down on me.
And not having my license is just another thing that makes me feel like a young mum that cant handle it. I know I need it and will feel good having the freedom but the thought of driving really freaks me out. I have been trying and Im still not there yet.
I know how you feel and i didnt think i was thaat young (im 24 and DP is 26) but we still have all the same dramas. Friends into other things, people looking, offering their opinions etc etc
big props to you for having two gorgeous bubs, my mind is boggling just having one lil man to look after.
Awww Daizy You can be my friend, I dont have very many either
I could have written your post too. I know how you feel, it is such a hard job being at home with two, and not having much time for yourself.
I am struggling more with DHs shift work as hes often not home at night, and Im sleeping in an empty bed a lot. He works so much we just dont see each other.
Its hard to find time to yourself as well, especially if you are breastfeeding and having late nights with Maddie. Could you have a look at the Whitirea polytech photography course I was talking about a few weeks back? Perhaps you could take up the WINZ 9 hours of childcare per week and perhaps go once a week or something?
And dont get me started on being a young mum, I was 18 when I had Janaya, and it was hard going trying to prove to everyone I could do it. In fact I hid the fact I had postnatal depression and left it until she was 9 months old - it got so bad I ended up in a respite home When I went for my pregnancy blood tests the guy said "oh, you were born in 1984?" I said "Yes?" he said "two kids?" "yes...?" "why are you in such a hurry, you're only a baby!"
Grrrrr.....
I think it seems that way when you are younger having kids, it's hard eh!!
I had Joel at 19 and now have the twins two and I'm only 25 next month!!! It's hard at work, because people don't understand what it is like, or they have forgotten and all of your friends seem to drift off cause you're not into getting drunk or going clubbing etc on the weekend. And it's hard to get out there and meet new people... well i find anyway, too shy!!
But big ups on voicing it Daizy and may I say your little ladies are gorgeous
Hugs hun, I am in a similar situation, although only the one kid and stuck under the same roof as my parents (who i feel seem to always be watching me like a hawk, waiting for me to stuff up so they can say 'I told you so!' - and believe me I get the 'what would you know, you're a young mother/beneficiary ....blah blah' speech EVERY DAY!). To make things worse everytime we get closer towards moving out something crops up that ends up keeping us here.
I can't believe you're only 22, has never come across in your posts I'm 21 going on 22 and I have absolutely nothing in common with other young {single} mums, I don't drink/smoke/club/go out ...heck I'm not even interested in guys or relationships. Focus is solely on Lucas and people can't seem to get over that and they look at me cock eyed when I say I don't feel the need to go out and socialise of a night time. Also still BF here too, and he wakes of a night time still (my attempts at weaning have been unsuccessful thus far, I'm not well enough atm nor have the energy to put up with a crying toddler at night) so even if I wanted to go out somewhere I am restricted because he's still a booby man.
I think doing something for yourself would be fab, even if its something like maybe a night class once or twice a week whilst DH can take care of the girls, try and get Maddi into a routine so that she goes down just before you leave etc ...most night classes only go for 2 hours (3 max) ....just an idea, if I was given the chance I'd be going back to sewing and painting classes, but my parents aren't prepared to look after Lucas.
Apparently I chose to be a single mother, therefore I must live the life of a single mother ....I'm in it for the long haul baby. My parents love Lucas, and they have supported us to an extent (and i love them for it) but they tend to still rub it in my face at every chance they get, I can't wait to stick it to them and move out on our own and show them that we can cope beautifully, we should have moved out into our own place when he was a wee baby, i think the longer we stay here the more strain it puts on my relationship with my parents (in each others faces too much).
Sorry keep going off topic with my rambling but just wanted to let you know that you're not alone, I think most of us young mothers feel judged at one point or another - it's their problem though, you try your hardest to keep on top of things (so what if your house isn't always the cleanest, or your kids don't have vegies every night ....or they don't go to bed at set times etc), you love them and provide them with the necessities of life, really that's all you can do.
big hugs to you! i couldve posted that too! im 24 and have a newborn and 21month old girls and i cant say enough how i know how you feel!!!!
i will struggle through and say no to help from my family and inlaws because i dont want them to think i cant handle it. but ive come to realise there are worse things in life than giving my toddler away for the day while i rest
i told DH im going to look into starting a sewing course or any group where i can get some me time and he would have to look after the girls. i think we can feel that way because along the way we've lost a sense of ourselves because we're so busy taking care of everything/one else.
Buzzybee me too! even though my parents love my girls to bits...they dont hold back from telling me how ive wasted my life having kids early,not finishing my degree blah blah......like you i think "il show you!" lol
I think you girls are doing so amazingly well, it is very unfair that you get treated the way you do because you are not children, and just because you are young doesn't make you stupid, or less capable and loving parents.
It wasn't so long ago that almost everyone had their babies in their late teens and early twenties, people need to remember what it was like for them as parents to young children, it is not easy at any age.
Sounds like you are all doing a great job, congratualtions on your beautiful children!
wow , there are so many people on here that are younger than I thought , Emz, I thought you were older than 23 , you sound a lot more mature than that to me ! (not LOOK ,sound lol )
Im gonna be really blunt here .
None of you , that have had babies young, have done anything wrong , I didn't do anything wrong, you didnt do anything wrong , if people want to judge us, thats their problem, as Ive said , its our problem if we let it .
There is plenty PLENTY worse we could have done than to give birth to babies at a young age who we love and adore.
You don't have anything to prove to anyone , noone is perfect and those looking down their noses at you all have their own skeletons in their closest.
Being a mum does not mean you are not entitled to have a life, you do not have to show that your child means everything to you by not allowing yourself to have fun once in a while, everyone knows how much C means to me , but hell , I still go out once in a while , it doesnt mean I love my child any less.
If anyone does offer to give you a break , TAKE IT ! you do NOT get a medal for being with your child 24/7, you are mothers, YES, but you are still girls ,being a mum should be a big part of who you are , but not all that you are.
At the end of the day , bugger everyone else and their opinions, they only need to affect you if you let them , focus on your child/children because they are the ones whos opinion matters .
I do sympathise, as i said i look very very young, so im constantly getting the "you have a SIX year old??!" gasps , but now I just laugh them off and go "yep , I sure do "
Im doing a good job, my daughter loves me , thats all that matters,anyone that has a negative opinion, isnt someone I want to know anyway .
edited to add, sorry if I sound bossy , I AM bossy , but bottom line, your all doing a great job , anyone that wants to look down on you can sod off .
Do any of you live close to each other ? would be good if you can get some young mum groups going
Hi! Just wanted to log in and say I'm a young mum too! (21). I have felt a need to prove that I can handle everything as well. I continued with my degree while pregnant and am going back in 3 weeks to finish the 4th year of my degree. I'm gonna miss my bubs though!!!
I am engaged and although most of my friends aren't engaged or have children, I still spend lots of time with them and they love my wee girl. So I guess I am pretty lucky. People definitely comment on why I've "rushed in to everything and made things difficult" for myself. But I have a very caring DF and my family all came round to my pregnancy and love Aurora to pieces.
I really feel for you though and things must be tough with two young ones. Good luck and keep your head up high and feel proud.
Good point Saffron. My grandma (lovely woman) said to me, "don't panic hun i had my first child at 18 too." My grandmother has travelled around the world , got a degree, been a teacher and helped many people in her life. And she was a "young mother". I love my darling son and wouldnt change being a young mum for the world. I just wish other people would mind there own bussiness sometimes.
I second that! Why is it that when you become pregnant and have a baby that you are suddenly public property and everyone can have an opinion or a piece of advice?
I know they sometimes mean well but honestly, it can be so exasperating! I know this is a slight aside from the topic but I just have to get it off my chest, because my MIL (bless her, I do love her) has just recommended that I put a raw egg in Isobelle's bottle so she will sleep through the night! She has been telling me this since I had Dominic and he was completely breastfeed! Sorry, I know that wasn't about the topic at all but I was just so feed up!
It is so nice to hear there are other young mums around doing well. And that I am not the only one the struggles from time to time with the things the other people say.
I haven't really had to much negative stuff said to my face but the one thing I do remember is the one time a lady walking past us (Me DH and Maddi) and yelled "Thats no way to keep a man, by going and getting fat!"
Still makes me angry, do I really look that stupid.
Older mums have the same troubles, all my friends are well past the newborn / toddler stage and aren't interested either. I'm with little fatty in being very old.
I don't think its age so much, but more about what you are doing with your life.
Its seems you either do the travel / career thing or have kiddies, and the two topics don't seem to interest the opposite parties.
Aside from giving them food poisoning I just can't imagine how it would work.
I can't believe someone actually said that to you Daizy, how awful! No one has any right to say something like that you. I imagine that she has no friends with attitudes like that.
I second that! Why is it that when you become pregnant and have a baby that you are suddenly public property and everyone can have an opinion or a piece of advice?
!
I read an article about Keisha Castle -Hughes in Women's weekly shortly after her little girl was born, and she talks about how she couldn't believe that when her pregnancy was announced everyone had an opinion , she said
"who is it thats going to be getting up to the baby in the middle of the night ? why is it anyone elses business?"
good point .
I think some people just like to judge, meh
I too found it hard when I had Andrew at 22. I was looked apon as being really young when infact I didn't feel that young to have a baby. A lot of my parents friends commented that I was really young and my mum had the best comeback to the all that really shut them up - well she was 3 years older than me when I had her.
When I got pregnant with Andrew I was working and at the time the water was making everyone pregnant. I ended up after having Andrew becoming friends with people 3 years older than me but as we had children the same age the age doesn't mean anything to us now (almost 5 years on).
My friend up here gets it all the time she was pregnant at 15 and had her boy at 16. She has so proved them wrong and most of her friends up here are a good 4-10 years older than her. And she doesn't seem to mind.
I was a puree feeder, forward facing, cot sleeping, pram pushing kind of Mum... and my kids survived!
OMG daizy you pretty much wrote the exact thing that i would have written a few years ago... heck, come to think of it..pretty much what i feel like writing most of the time.
I remember when i was in hospital after having Ayja, I shared a room with a lady who had just had her 6th child... I said to her that wow she must be so organised and so experienced, and she said to me that not really, each child is different so it's always like starting over again, and that anyone who really looks like they have it all together must be really good at kidding themselves. That actually made me feel so much better and it's often what i tell the mums i look after, they'll say how such and such looks like they've got it sussed, when really that mum had just told me how ick she's feeling too. Some people can make it look easy but still be struggling. Outwardly alot of the people i know are still surprised as heck when they find out that yeah, i was struggling so badly that I ended up on Anti-D's.
I was 20 when i found out i was having Paris, and by the time i was 23 I was just about to have Ayja, Had been through postnatal depression, we were living on the bones of our bum, and i knew i'd have to go back to study. I always felt that people looked down on us for being so young, for having kids when we didn't even have our lives mapped out. but you know what.. people do things differently. I felt terrible that mike started work at 7.45am in the morning, so i would have to go into town with him, take paris, just having gotten out of bed and dressed, I'd cross the road from his work to tech, go up to the nurses common room area, and make her breakfast, and give her a bottle and we'd have play time together, because we couldn't book her into daycare till 9am. That was when she was 11mths old, and i always felt looked down upon by all the lecturers walking past at first, eventually after a few months they'd stop and talk to me, and some recognised me from their classes and obviously knew how hard i was working, it was nice... but again, onc ei became pregnant with ayja and i could no longer hide my growing belly, i felt frowned upon again as here i now was, having to feed my child in a nurses common room at my polytech, with another on the way, and still not having finished my nursing degree. I felt so very very stink. but hey, more fool them, i carried on, graduated and was as stubborn as they come... didn't stop me feeling ick about the whole thing though.
To be honest, I was the first of my friends to have children, .... I am still the only one with children now. I feel lucky - lucky that i know i can have them, lucky that i had them early, and happy that by the time they move out, I'll just be nearing 40 and still have a decent amount of time to go back and do the stuff i wanted to do like travel etc. We went to a wedding recently and were the only people there with kids, many were our age, pretty much all had done the big oe, most were still living overseas. Me and mike reflected on that on the way home wondering what it would be like, when we came to the realisation that were just different.. and that yes, those people had life experience, but they'd not had the normal life experiences... yes they were well adept at living overseas, backpacking, touring, job-hopping. But none probably had had to worry about actually settling down, running a budget, getting all their own furniture, having a regular job/career... actually doing the grown-up kinda thing so to speak. And that's when we kinda knew that well, our time will come to do those things, and we'll be older, have time to enjoy them, and probably more money to do things too... whereas most of them are just getting married, starting to plan kids in the future, maybe thinking about coming home to settle, there-in, their "life like ours" is only just starting. I would love to go out more, but the thought of going out to clubs and bars, stopped appealing to me long before the kids came along.
I too felt, and still feel, the need to keep up appearances, I like my girls to look tidy, so that we don't get the "young mum with grubby kids" stigma, I hate going anywhere without being tidy myself cause i feel judged, I used to freak out at the thought of going to mothers groups, because i felt i didn't fit anywhere... everyone was either a teen-teen mum, or in their 30's/40s, i too didn't feel that i fitted anywhere, and so was really grateful for having found this place where i could talk to people and get to know a few people. Alot of the people we know with young kids, we have met through our daycare, and now i realise that well, we're all through different walks of life but we share the same bond in that our kids are friends and the same age and that's all good, ...but i still don't have anyone really that i can just get up and go out with.
For me, I started walking a few weeks back. I now make it a rule that at 7pm each night, i go out walking, and sometimes i really just can't be bothered, but when i get home i feel great, it's my exercise, it's my me-time, i have 30-40mins, walking in the evening glowy sunlight, in the quiet, just me and whatever music i'm listening to. It's hard to find time for yourself, but it needs to be done.
I really hope that you've found some support on here and it helps, because seriously, no-one has it all together, everyone has something that they are struggling with, and like Liz said, kids at that age ARE HARD!!!! man.... a baby and toddler, while being a good age gap for later, they are hard work at the start. It does get better, even if marginally so - I've moved on now from the baby and toddler stage, to the demanding, bossy, emotional 5yr old, and the tantruming, crazy, (still not sleeping thru the fricken night....) 3 yr old, that has nightmares all night, or wakes the house calling out for a drink or water that's right next to her bed.
Don't be so hard on yourself, don't worry what others are thinking of you, just remember that they're probably too worried about what you're thinking of them. You are a good mum, and you are human - no-one expects you to have a perfect house, and perfect kids... come on even Bree of desperate housewives, she's crackers as they come. Don't be afraid to ask for help... it's hard to do, but once you do, you'll find others that say "thank god... i thought i was the only one" .
i'm young too. I had Vincent at 21.5 or so & i turn 24 in March ( go the march mums). My DH is 30 so i often feel young coz all our friends are his age or older. I have a couple of friends that i occasionally hang out with but they are a bit older too. One has just started a job & has two kids so it's nto easy to catch up much & because we live in South Auckland most our friends are in Central auckland so i don't really see many people. I had an antenatal group with Vincent but because i was so much younger & went back to work when he was lil (nannying so kids were with me at catch ups) & they were older mums (please don't be offended as i have nothing against older mums!) but i always felt left out as i wasn't a "professional" etc.
Steph, i will look after Lucas for you so you can go to a class if you want! And you welcome to come hang out with me anytime! I really wanna look into the young mums group here in Papakura but am unsure of it. As someone posted earlier they found the other young mums were talking bout all sorts, well i'm young, married, a christian & have worked for the past 6-7 years as i left school early. so i always feel left out anyways. hence my hesitation. But i am getting to the point where i know i need to find something for me as well as Vincent.
Oops, sorry for the novel. just wanted to say i hear ya! Altho i have never been criticised for my age, i do know how you feel on the lonely front! You guys are doing great jobs! Anyone who can care for their own child is doing great in my books!
I'm 22, DH is 23, Hollie is nearly 10 weeks and I've been married 2 years. We are going to TTC for #2 late this year. Most of my friends were partying, now they are traveling. Those that aren't are different ages or still living the single life etc. I don't have my licence either.
I'm moving to a country township soon, and everything will be in walking distance. I also know a heap of people out there, so I'm hoping things will improve.
I wouldn't change what I have for the world, but some days, its really really hard.
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I'm 21 going on 22 and I have absolutely nothing in common with other young {single} mums, I don't drink/smoke/club/go out ...heck I'm not even interested in guys or relationships. Focus is solely on Lucas and people can't seem to get over that and they look at me cock eyed when I say I don't feel the need to go out and socialise of a night time. Also still BF here too, and he wakes of a night time still (my attempts at weaning have been unsuccessful thus far, I'm not well enough atm nor have the energy to put up with a crying toddler at night) so even if I wanted to go out somewhere I am restricted because he's still a booby man.
but just wanted to let you know that you're not alone, I think most of us young mothers feel judged at one point or another - it's their problem though, you try your hardest to keep on top of things (so what if your house isn't always the cleanest, or your kids don't have vegies every night ....or they don't go to bed at set times etc), you love them and provide them with the necessities of life, really that's all you can do.
......like you i think "il show you!" lol
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Saffron wrote:
