Motherhood is a beautiful thing. Being a mother, you are constantly filled with mixed emotions. Feelings before becoming a mummy and those afterwards are totally different. Whilst motherhood gives you a tremendous feeling of joy and happiness, there will be many challenging moments along the way too.

For most people, most of the time, the positive outweighs the negative and you learn to manage the negative better over time. If you watch and listen when you are out and about you will hear parents everywhere loosing their patience. Patience can be tested with children and some parents find this a real challenge. At some point, everyone will lose their patience, even if you think you are as cool as a cucumber – it’s perfectly normal and a regular part of parenting. We all have different levels of patience, but this will also change depending on what else is going on that day. If you are in a rush for example, you might be less patient than normal, whereas if you are on holiday you might be super relaxed and go with the flow more as there will be less structure to the day.

There is no right or wrong way to deal with the tricky moments, some things work for some families and not for others, but giving them choices and a warning, being consistent in your approach and and informing them about the consequences, as well as rewarding them from time to time for their good behavior can work.

Mummy guilt is a common emotion. It doesn’t matter if you work full time, part-time, spend all your time with your children or try and juggle it all, we all suffer with this. The trouble with this is that the feelings of guilt can distract you from either enjoying the moment or concentrating on what you need to get done. The guilt isn’t productive or useful for anyone but it can also be hard to shake off too.

Feeling overwhelmed is another common feeling of motherhood. These days we are expected to be able to wear about 20 different hats all at the same time. We are professional plate spinners, who, most of the time manage to keep spinning those plates but occasionally one or more of those will fall and smash. It happens to us all. We sweep up the bits, take a deep breath and carry on.

I always think that if you can have a laugh at the situation that really helps and can go a long way towards bringing you back to reality. For some people it’s better to take out some time for yourself and dedicate that time to pamper yourself. You can use that time to do something that you like doing, it might be exercise, it might be just watching your favourite programme, or it might be something thought to relax you like yoga or playing a game of online bingo, which is said to be a great stress reliever. Visit Bucky Bingo site to find out more about it.

Feeling unattractive is another common emotion of motherhood. It is obvious that our body changes after pregnancy, leaving us with stretch marks, scars, extra skin or swollen. Even after some time, many of us are left a completely different shape to how we were pre-pregnancy. This can makes mums feel incredibly unattractive and uncomfortable in their own skin – there will always be the lucky few who snap back and never worry, but for the bulk of us this isn’t the case, so remember, you aren’t the only one who feels that way.

The thing about motherhood is that despite these emotions and all the challenges that we have to deal with, when you look at your children, you know it’s more than worth it.