I’m not enjoying being a mum at the moment. And that’s horrible, and hard to say. Don’t get me wrong, after all I’ve been through I love and cherish him, I still watch him sleep and marvel that he’s here that he’s perfect and that he’s mine, but the actual task of parenting? Well that’s hard.

I’m barely away from him so every grumble, annoyance and irritance is magnified, I get that, but I can’t do right by him at the moment and it’s getting me down.

He learnt the word ‘no’ recently, and great as it is that his vocabulary is growing, this word has caused a number of problems. He uses it whatever he means. Even if he wants something he will say ‘no’, so you offer him something, he says ‘no’ and then will grab it off you, but if you bare that in mind and offer it again after he’s said no the ‘no’ becomes a ‘NO’ and he will scream at you…

He doesn’t go in his carseat. At all. We have had hour long tantrums over this on the drive outside. Neighbours coming out to see where the toddler was being murdered. But I’m not talking one offs (obviously some times are worse than others) but he will run off screaming as soon as he realises I want him in his carseat. It becomes a physical fight to get him strapped in, and as soon as he is his arms are wriggled out, I’m fighting a losing battle. Once he realises I want him in the car he will head off as if to walk instead, so I take him out for a walk, he doesn’t want to walk, he wants to be carried the whole way and if I try to make him walk the screaming ensues again, running after me down the street, hollering.

I’m pretty sure half my day consists of screaming.

Yesterday I got home from work and he wanted boob, I’m trying to stop him having it during the day, especially then, less than an hour before the roast my mum was cooking, he screamed for the hour. Solid. I hid in another room and he stopped. I ate my tea in another room and he ate his good as gold with my mum and dad. He sees me as a giant milk bottle, nothing more.

This morning he woke up at 6am and I stopped him helping himself to milk. He screamed for 2 hours almost solid, climbing over me, ripping at my clothes.

This has to be a phase. This HAS to be a phase and it really needs to be over quickly because I thought I was a strong person but doing EVERYTHING wrong in his eyes is breaking me.