Julie Jay: I used to be sound, but now I am officially a bad mammy

After a few weeks of being a cranky old wench, I am convinced I am giving even Medea a run for her money in the bad mammy stakes

Every time I go to sit down, I hear either screaming and roaring or 'Mom' from another room. Picture: iStock 

I have concluded that I am a bad mammy. For the last few weeks, I have been as cranky as Elton John on a long-haul flight, stressed out over work commitments and professional rejections, and trying to procure some security for the kids’ futures, so much so that my usually relatively smiley demeanour can no longer be faked.

Just this last weekend, my five-year-old chastised me for getting mad at the toddler. Did I get annoyed? Yes. Was this because my toddler had thrown my phone out through the letterbox into the rain? Also, yes. 

I feel no court of adults would convict me of being a bad mammy, given the circumstances, but kids are less generous. In their world, the person shouting about phones costing €800 and how they haven’t uploaded pictures of their deceased relatives to their iCloud is always going to be the villain in the piece. Especially when the actual villain is outrageously cute and their only sibling.

Historically speaking, I know on a rational level I’m not the worst mammy in the world, but the heart feels what the heart feels, and at the moment I have a strong suspicion I’m making Aoife, the evil stepmother in Children of Lir, looks like she’s the Celtic myth equivalent of Julia Roberts in Stepmom, just out here doing her best. 

Of course, if you’re scouring history and myth looking for evidence that bad mammies exist, it won’t take you long to find it. Take Medea, for example. Not Irish, granted, but she set the bar so low it’s pretty hard to top her in the bad mammy stakes. Killed her own children out of spite. You’d nearly forgive yourself for giving them chicken nuggets three nights in a row after that. 

Then there was Queen Victoria, who found her children “tiresome” and preferred the company of her dogs.

Admittedly, anyone who has spent time in an airport security queue can see where she was coming from in choosing the company of canines over the company of humans.

Give me a corgi any day over a guy giving out about not being able to take his nail scissors on board (newsflash, sir — just because you’re wearing bootlegs does not mean the year is 1996 — bringing blades on board is officially a no-no for over two decades). 

Of course, bad mammies can be found throughout the epochs, including within our own living memory. Back in the ’80s, some particularly awful mothers made their kids perform Irish dancing routines for the uncles and aunties, all without music because playing songs on demand hadn’t been invented yet. 

And so instead, we were all subjected to our cousins enacting a rendition of the Siege of Ennis in their Dunnes tracksuit bottoms, which had one too many stripes to convince anyone they were a branded label, all in a heavy silence, like a terrible, terrible mime. Medea, you’re officially off the hook.

I worry I’m a bad mammy in the same way I worry I’ve left the immersion on: constantly, irrationally, and usually while lying in bed at night staring at the ceiling like Beth in Little Women as she succumbed to the death rattle. It’s my brain’s favourite hobby. 

Some people do yoga. I catalogue my failures as a mother in high definition.

Somewhere along the line, I have turned into a cranky old wench. Not gracefully either. No slow transformation like a werewolf under a full moon. Just one day I woke up and thought, “Who left this light on?” and realised it was my personality. I used to be sound. I used to have patience. Now I have opinions about bins.

I am cranky about everything these days, and as much as I hate myself for it, I somehow can’t stop finding reasons to be anything but cheerful. I am cranky about the mess at home in a way that feels personal. Like the crumbs aren’t accidental, they are instead a concerted effort to bring me down at every opportunity.

Every time I go to sit down, I hear either screaming and roaring or “Mom” from another room. I haven’t even committed to the sit yet. I’m hovering. My knees are still warm from standing, and I am mid-squat, the part where your hamstring starts to burn and before your bum has had a chance to breathe a sigh of relief on the whopper cushion, which will no doubt be left on your chair because everyone in your life is out to get you. At that point, it’s not parenting, it’s a full-on cardio workout.

On more occasions than I’d like to admit, I have been guilty of losing my cool lately, raising my voice, shouting, and getting annoyed by broken eggs on the floor instead of praising my toddler for the beautiful pattern he has made with the broken shell and deconstructed yolk.

But deep down, I know this time too shall pass, that my lack of patience is a product of having a lot going on at the moment, as we all do, and how everyone is allowed free licence to be a season to be a cranky wench, especially when you discover somebody in your life has left the immersion on, in what is surely an attempt to push you over the edge completely.

So if you find yourself raising your voice this week and berating yourself for being a bad mammy, forgive yourself, because you could have done worse. You could have signed your kids up for cross-country running. Now that really is something that would have even Medea phoning Tusla.