Did you know, there are websites dedicated to nappy changing? Someone out there, took the time to compile paragraphs of words to deliver you information on how to change a nappy or diaper depending on your location. Information overload? Perhaps or perhaps not. Have you found yourself with a baby not knowing what to do. Maybe you were in a busy hospital where there was no immediate nurse available to show you how to do this? What do you do? Google, nappy changing.

Just in case you’re under any illusion that I’m sitting here knitting, baking, writing three books at the one time, I’m not. I’m stuck in a house with three little boys who cannot leave the house for anti-biotics or rain. I’m climbing in and out of the same day while the farmer calves the cows. Hey, it’s his job. But I’ve have corrected pooh pooh pants for the last time today, now I’ll ignore while I ponder on what a terrible mother I happen to be. That’s how it goes right?

If you listen carefully, that’s the refrain. As rapid as long skirts became minis, society is changing. From extended to nuclear family in micro minutes. In the absence of the mother/ mother in law barking at you in the corner to put a hat on that child or to start peeling the potatoes, we’re making our way through the maze of motherhood, often alone. Certainly, in the countryside this is the case. And what’s more, there is very little support in the way of care for your children, care for you or indeed facilities that will help you do either without a significant drive in the car.

I find myself feeling around in the dark mostly hoping that I’m taking a good enough shot at the target. It’s hard though when two of said children are still in nappies and all three seem to be preparing themselves constantly for war. Fighting, bickering, certainly not loving. And doesn’t it seem that everyone else’s children are perfect or at the very least grand? Come on though, it gives us all a pleasure to watch someone else’s child throw themselves down in the supermarket and have a good old tantrum. For a nanosecond, I watch and think ‘that mother, no control’ until a moment later, a toddler of mine is mine is re-enacting the same number.

I reach for the top shelf of a library of books on raising children. T for tantrum, a scan through a paragraph and find it’s perfectly normal. Right. Oh, nose picking, n, n, n, nnnnnose picking, right talk to your public health nurse. All of a sudden, I’m a walking encyclopedia of sometimes useful facts about motherhood but completely ignoring my own mothering instinct on how it should all work.

As I type there is a wide eyed boy asking me to pay him attention. It’s his turn in the queue of three. Listen, if you’re out there reading this thinking I have the answer, I don’t. My body gave me the strength on three different occasions to bring these little people into the world. And I forget that I come programmed to do this. I don’t have the answers, sometimes, if I listen carefully though, I have some for myself. I need to tell myself, they don’t need organic food or linen baby grows or me singing them Twinkle Twinkle Little Star on a loop, they just need me. Don’t look to me for answers. You, my dear friend, have them within you.

Don’t wait for an occasion to tell her she’s great, hug a mother today.

You can also read more this week at http://www.farmersjournal.ie/weather-watching-lessons-175258/

It’s amazing the vocabulary you acquire on a farm each season, or maybe it’s the vocabulary I put down each season in order to remember the new words. With this month, there’s springing, the filling of the udders or dugs as cows become heavy with calf. Apparently, the pin bones are softening, indeed. They hear tell, that things are shaping up, coming along nicely, they’ll be sick to calf soon.

If only. The farmer is skirting around the cows and like the Dad pacing up and down the aisle outside the maternity ward, he’s waiting for news. Anything stirring? We’re late, overdue, pin bones not so soft. Indoors, whilst, I’m enjoying the extended break, I know that it will intensify the really busy period when the bovine maternity ward starts filling up. For when it’s busy, it is really busy. Picture not actually seeing your husband awake for weeks on end. Now that I’m an auld pro, I know it really can’t last forever, just a few weeks. A few weeks of nudging him awake at the breakfast table, dinners going cold, answering ‘where’s Daddy?’ pleas.

Springing. Sleepy farmers. Cows delivering lovely new calves. A Daddy less dinner table. Busy farmer’s wife. Days getting longer, weather improving. Fun outdoors, birds hatching, hedgerows growing.

Springing, any day now.