Motherhood didn’t improve my confidence. But it did force me to back myself more.

I’m more than two and half years into being a mum, and I’m going to be real right now. Sometimes, no, a lot of the time I have no bloody idea what I’m doing. You’d think after practicing something for two and a half years I’d have a decent grasp on what my role as a stay at home mum looks like. The reality is things change so quickly when you have a toddler, a baby and a forever shifting body and hormones, that the ground beneath me is about the only thing that isn’t different each day. But, I’ve managed to back myself regardless.

Initially, the struggle to find my footing left me feeling unsure of myself. But I wanted to build up my confidence, both as a mum and woman. So I’ve been learning how to back myself and be my own little cheer squad. It sounds simple but it hasn’t been. 

Trust issues (with myself) 

The younger, 20-something year old version of me is not someone I like to claim. I was whatever the level is after hot mess. My toxic lifestyle, bad decisions and cringeworthy behaviours make me think back to my early years of womanhood and shudder. From basic self care, meaningful relationships, financial responsibility and so much more, let's just say my early adult years left plenty of room for growth in my early thirties. 

The only way I moved past that version of me was to make meaningful changes. I did therapy. I was brutally honest about my experiences. I stopped blaming others for my outcomes, figured out what I was responsible for and owned it. When you’re prideful like me, it was a bitter and friggin ginormous pill to swallow. Sitting in a therapists room, fidgeting obsessively with my nails, surrounded by neutral tones, while I express my anything with neutral emotions, I felt naked in front of an audience full of judgement. But it was time I took dealing with my past seriously. It sucked big ol’ balls. 

Doing the work made me realise how important it was to deal with my shit before having kids. Besides being a slightly more balanced person (operative word being ‘slightly’), I’ve learned to accept how much of a dip shit I was. When I can muster it, I’ll smile and laugh at the stupidity of my young adult arrogance and just be thankful that version of me didn’t survive into the current day. 

The highest mountain, the deepest valley 

I had a corporate career before having kids and I thought I knew stress. Honey, I knew nothing about stress until I procreated. I think of motherhood as the highest mountain to climb while being in the deepest valley I’ve ever traversed. Difficult doesn’t do the responsibility of motherhood justice, likely no single word ever would. 

And therein lies the problem. How could I back myself with a positive mindset, give myself grace and continue aiming to be the best mum I could be while doing the most tiring and weathering thing I’ve ever done? I tried looking at motherhood the same way I did training in the gym and it changed things for me immediately.

In parts, I can liken motherhood to training in a sport or the gym (any gym baddies out there might know where I’m going with this). When I used to train olympic weightlifting, I trained five to six days a week. Week after week I’d train weights that felt impossible. The stronger I’d get, the more the weights went up. Nothing ever felt easier because the effort needed for the heavier weights increased. But actually I was getting stronger. Going back and seeing how easy trying the stuff that used to break me months prior had become proved how much I was improving. 

That’s how I try to look at motherhood today. When I bought our first baby home, everything with one baby was hard. Fast forward to today with two kids, one having significant health challenges and the tasks of the one baby version of me feel like a day off in comparison. I’ve learned to forgive myself for not doing everything perfectly. I now comfortably acknowledge that I’m doing the hardest thing I’ve ever done all while having little to no village, no roadmap and expectations up the wazoo. I took my foot off the accelerator and now use cruise control. I deal with the road bumps as they come and let experiences over time accumulate to make me a better mum.

Measuring up 

A hugely impactful step I took was to remove negative influences from my life. Besides cutting out toxic family members and social circles, the covert culprit for me was social media accounts and influencers. Seeing the perfect aesthetics, kids, bodies, families, lives were unknowingly feeding the ‘not good enough’ monster in my head. And the reality is, that’s not reality. But when you’re doom scrolling at 11:23pm with a baby hanging off your boob, postpartum weight gain still hanging over your comfiest (and largest) pair of trackpants and your hormones don’t know if they’re coming or going, you’re vulnerable as fuck. 

So, I unfollowed. Not because those accounts or influencers are bad per-se, they were just bad for me. I found women who looked more like me, made me feel less alone, more seen, better heard. I started challenging the metrics I had been trying to measure up to. Was I trying to do what’s actually best or was I trying to keep up with the Jones’? It was mostly the latter. I chose to share what little spare time I had with people who helped me fill my cup, not drain it. They were low hanging fruit by way of immediate fixes but they were actually really hard to do. 

Cue the applause 

Having ‘tidied up my back yard’ as they say, all that’s been left to do is fill in the holes I’d created with positives. What’s made a big difference is taking moments to celebrate small, some might say meaningless wins. When I do basic mum things - make homemade food, finish putting away the washing pile, emptying the nappy bin - and I give a little applause. I hand out pats on the back for the stuff “you’re just supposed to do anyway” because those little tasks everyday are exhausting, and some acknowledgement even from myself makes me feel like I’m doing a good job. 

When it comes to the big stuff, I give myself a standing ovation. Not because I’m drinking my own Coolaid and think I’m the best thing since sliced bread. Because if I don’t appreciate myself as a mum, how can I meaningfully receive encouragement and support from others if I don’t believe the positive opinions they hold of me. 

I’m still winging it most days, despite having ‘done the work’. The real difference now is that I trust the person doing the winging a lot more than I did before.