Why you shouldn’t be impressed by other mums’ IG feeds

I’m writing this post on my mobile as you see me here, without make-up, without having washed my hair or even taken a shower. I’ve been walking around in our apartment since what feels like hours, with a tiny human attached to my chest… Miss M is crying since this morning and nothing would calm her down except for being held by me or carried around in the baby carrier…

While walking around, gently rocking my baby to sleep, I opened the Instagram app on my phone. As usual, I scrolled down other people’s IG feeds to admire their seemingly perfect and oh so glamorous lives. As usual, I would be a bit jealous seeing all these beautiful mums, looking like Hollywood stars, presenting their not less beautiful offspring. And, as usual, I would wonder why or why I am even following these people most of whom I haven’t even met in real life, if it is not because I am a bit masochistic…

And suddenly I realised that I had posted yet another picture of my baby myself not more than an hour ago, saying how proud I was of her for sleeping through the night for the first time. Don’t get me wrong. I am far from looking like a Hollywood star (though I do think that my kids are pretty haha) and I am realistic enough not to think that anyone out there would look at my pictures in utter admiration.

But some of them might show situations that can make people envious… Like the sleeping through the night thing… I have to admit that if there is the slightest bit of glamour in my life, the tiniest piece of Hollywood, of a perfect movie life, it will appear on Instagram. The pictures I post usually show the chocolate side of my life. Not because I want to impress anyone. Simply because it is human to take pictures of the positive moments, to capture the smiles and not the tears, my children’s achievements and not their tantrums. Simply because this is what I want to remember when a scroll through my feed, when I scroll through my life.

Nevertheless, this doesn’t mean that my life is always like this. Far from it…

So, what if this is also true for the others?

What if this gorgeous looking mum spent 2h in the bathroom (or rather at the beauty salon) to look like this? What if this seemingly nonchalantly-taken picture is one out of 100, the only one that was looking alright? What if this toddler with his angel smile threw a tantrum only minutes after the picture was taken?

We don’t know the stories behind the pics, do we? Because there always are. Every perfect moment, captured in one click, has a “before” and a “after”.

So, I decided to tell you some of the stories behind my pics.

Yes, my darling daughter slept through the night and, yes, I am so so proud of her. But she also vomited on her sleeping bag, the armchair and my pyjamas during yesterday’s evening feed and I stayed up hours after she fell asleep just to watch her and listen to the sounds she was making because I was so worried she could vomit again. She also cried the whole morning after having slept through the night and wouldn’t let me lay her down for one minute. So, this picture pretty much helped me focus on the positives…

This pictures shows the only 2 minutes when Luca was actually sitting quietly next to my husband, watching the match. For the remaining 88 minutes, we were singing nursery rhythms and trying to make sure Luca didn’t kill himself jumping off the sofa, while my husband was trying to pull himself together and to focus on the (oh so important!) football match. But I wanted to keep this pic as this is how my husband would have loved the situation to be during the whole match. It’s this short “father-son” moment that made him proud.

I felt ugly, fat and in desperate need of some nice words at that time… Only picture where I look more or less acceptable and where my belly doesn’t look as if I was still 3 months pregnant.

My husband didn’t find it as funny as I did…

Bath time doesn’t always look like this… Since some weeks, little L is throwing major tantrums when he needs to get his hair washed… Screaming toddler, tired mummy, flooded bathroom – you get the picture. I still get the many good-night kisses though 😉

Oh yes, the getaway to the beautiful Banyan Tree Al Wadi for my birthday really WAS amazing. My husband husband made it happen that the whole room was decorated with rose petals and there also was a yummy little birthday cake waiting for me. What you can’t see on this picture is that Luca got ill on the day we were leaving for our stay cation… As soon as we entered the room he vomited everywhere and we spent the first hours in the hotel cleaning the room with the help of the friendly staff… He also got a fever and there was no way we could go out in the evening and get a babysitter to look after him as initially planned…

Must me my favourite: huge smile and some minutes later… huge poo that came out of the diaper, through Miss M’s pyjamas and on mummies clothes…

So, there’s probably no reason to be impressed by these gorgeous Instagram mums and their seemingly perfect lives. They most certainly have as many sh… moments as I do.

And still… I should probably stop watching their Instagram feeds on a day like this.

For the sake of my own wellbeing…

xxx

Tani