Out and About

A rarity... but so very beautiful.

A little while back I read an article online somewhere (can't recall, BabyBrain!) about a mother who classified herself as a 'Stay At Home Mum'. Not a 'I am a Mum who doesn't leave the house to work' kind of stay at home Mum, but the kind who stays at home with her kids. As in, everything she does with her kids is home based. I have friends who are the complete opposite to this and live with their kids in the car, zipping around doing all sorts of outings.

I confess, I too am one of these Stay At Home Mums. Why? The few times Millie has kicked up a fuss in the car seat for prolonged periods of time (68km is the new record as of last week) I'm scarred enough to not want a repeat performance. I rattle easily and a screaming, howling muffin in my back seat is really distressing and distracting and makes me feel unsafe driving.

I hear you saying 'Why don't you just stop to settle bub?' I have and I do. She is calmed when we stop and have a cuddle/feed/remove jumper/replace jumper/find a toy but as soon as we move again... BackSeatAgeddon. I prefer to grin and bear it howl along to just get where we're going.

Once we're at our destination she's fine. Has a blast.
Lunch by the river? Sure!
Playing with friends on the grass? Sure!
A walk around the shops? Sure!
Drive home? NOOOOOOO.

So we stay at home. We occasionally venture out into our town and slightly further afield, but again, the last time we did that she screamed all the way home.

Mr S takes her out on their Daddy Daughter Days and she's relatively fine, and when we go out together with M she's also fine, so I know it's just how I deal with it that's the issue here. I feel trapped a lot. I've let friendships fall by the wayside because I can't bear the thought of venturing out for an hour each way of potential screaming. I'm not proud of that and I hope that by keeping up with emails and phone calls my friends will still be there when we're on the other side of this.

I want to change this. I'm mentally planning all sorts of small outings on our days at home and I'll work up to longer drives.

I don't think I'm the only one that feels like this?

Are you a Stay At Home or a Out and About Mum/Dad?