Rebel, Rebel
It’s a crisp, cold, cloudless August day. I wrestle my squirming, worming three-month-old into the pram. Neither of us slept the night before. Her ravenous little mouth would not unlatch from my stinging, red-raw, blistered breasts thanks to the clusterfuck that is cluster feeding. I am a deflated cow, my tits hanging like airless balloons, aching and burning, ready to refill to the point of bursting the moment I hear her cry. I cuddle-curled my daughter all night long and I have tried to de-pretzel my twisted body without success.
Overnight, a plump haemorrhoid has formed right at the entry of my anus and the pain is excruciating. It might be worse than labour. At this moment it most definitely is. In the wee hours of the morning, I shoved a creamy, gloved finger up my own ass, to relieve the pain. The medication has since worn off and sitting on my bottom is hellish.
We are going to this council-run Mother’s Group, facilitated by a maternal child health nurse, if it kills me.
And it just might. I’m so tired I feel sick.
Somehow, I safely drive us there, with a donut-pillow wedged under my cheeks. I walk into the hall to be greeted by a circle of women sharing their “sleep triumphs”.
My daughter slept through the night!
Oh, I’m so glad we sleep trained! Gentle of course!
My daughter only woke up twice. She self-soothed straight away.
Do you want the number of my sleep consultant?
It becomes apparent that I’ve entered the second circle of hell. My inflamed ass being the first. I wince as I take my seat on the cold plastic chair and smile politely at the blur of women before me. Eventually it’s my turn to share.
“Oh shit. I think my daughter slept maybe thirty minutes total last night. She’s cluster feeding. She’s never slept-through. I’ve read that’s biologically normal though, but I don’t fucking know…I don’t fucking know anything…”
There is a pause. Then a sea of responses crash over me.
I wanted to breastfeed so badly. But the midwife gave my baby formula straight away.
You should sleep train. It’s a lifesaver. Gentle of course!
Do you want my sleep consultant’s contact details?
Mummy’s mental health matters too!
I know they are all kind and well-intentioned, but I am overwhelmed and realise I might be doing everything just a bit differently to everyone else. I’m also fast realising that I’m the oldest mother in the room at age 42.
I feel completely and utterly alone. A stranger in a strange land.
As tears well in my eyes, I am hit by a stench so sharp, my eyes water and I pinch my nose instinctively. The smell of fresh shit permeates the entire room. My daughter makes a delighted gurgling sound as the magnitude of the realisation dawns on me. I slowly look down into the pram to see the storm that has raged below me. My daughter has unleashed a Category Five shit-cyclone from her milked-up bowels, and I am in a frozen fawn response.
Suddenly, I snap out of it.
“Fucking fuckety fuuuuuuck!”
Sensing my sharp tone, my daughter lets out a murderous wail as I whip the pram around, out of the infernal circle and try to deal with the crime scene before me. I am ill-equipped, but I do my best with the wipes and plastic bags I have at my disposal, as my daughter screams at a pitch I’ve yet to hear until now. A scream so subhuman and otherworldly I am certain I am no longer of this Earth, but that I have in fact entered the netherworld of the damned.

With shit splattered and speckled in spots all over me, I rejoin the circle. I try to smile back at the sympathetic faces surrounding me, but I have nothing left. No shits left to give – I guess because the shit is literally dotted all over me like a demented Pollock painting.
Mothers with older babies are now sharing about baby-led weaning and who has tried what and who follows which baby-feeding expert on Instagram and who is making homemade purees and who has had some allergic reactions and who hasn’t and why haven’t you started solids yet and within seconds a savage and seething rage engulfs me. I sharply turn to the poor unsuspecting mother next to me.
“Are you listening to this shit? Is this shit for real? Is this what this shit is going to be?”
I am shocked to see her smiling wickedly back at me.
“It’s fucking bullshit, isn’t it?”
“Complete bull-fucking-shit.”
She laughs. I laugh. We laugh together. I can’t remember the last time I laughed this hard at something.
In this moment, I realise, speckled with shit, that I’ve made my first mum-friend.
I’m so happy I could cry.
And I do cry.
At 2 am the next morning. When my daughter is cluster feeding once again, when I can’t sit down because my haemorrhoid is even more angry and inflamed, when I post a photo of my sleeping daughter to my Instagram story after two hours of relentless rhythmic rocking and a reply pops up in my messages. Four simple words.
“You got this, mama.”
It’s my new mum-friend. Sending me a lifeline when I needed it most.
“You got this too!” I reply, tears streaming down my exhausted face.
She hearts my response and although I really don’t know if either of us “has it” or has anything for that matter, I have a feeling that together, we just might have something.
* * * * * *
The sleep training noise is loud in the circles I run in – my friends with children, my mum-friends from Mother’s Group. It’s always followed with the disclaimer: Gentle of course! Sleep training does not sit well with me, so I don’t do it. Though I absolutely do not judge the mothers that do it, out of sheer desperation and exhaustion. Instead, we co-sleep. I feed on demand. My husband sleeps in the spare room. I know of only one other mother who co-sleeps. I am fast accepting that I’m in the minority and after some time, I feel fine dwelling on the fringes.
In the quiet hours of the morning, through squinted eyes peering at my dimly lit phone screen, when no one has any business being awake, I research the history of sleep training. I read about the Industrial Revolution, the Victorian Era and names like Dr. Emmett Holt and Richard Ferber. I realise that sleep training is simply a “solution” prescribed by ignorant white male doctors who have turned their patriarchal gaze to the raising of children, an historically female-centred space.

But then, I read about biologically normal infant sleep and the work of Greer Kirshenbaum and the Nurture Revolution. About following your intuition and instincts. I join some Facebook groups that align with my values and understandings. In these rebellious spaces I learn about the mother-baby dyad, that infants need proximity to their parents to sleep, that babies need frequent feeding through the night. I learn that infants wake because it’s a biologically protective mechanism. Babies don’t need to be taught how to sleep, just like they don’t need to be taught how to walk.
I understand that infant sleep is not a problem to be fixed. It’s evolutionary.
In the artificial phone light of 3 am, this feels revolutionary.
And rebellious.
I am a rebellious mother.
And it feels fucking powerful.
* * * * * *
The first time I change my daughter’s nappy I am paralysed with an emotion I cannot name. The sight of her naked body fills me with such forceful panic, I almost pass out. I do it as quickly as possible, sweating, shaking, dizzy, and on the edge of tears.
I feel this each time I change her. This lasts for weeks. I put it down to severe sleep deprivation, but I know there is more to this. Scared of what this might mean, I don’t tell anyone. Instead, desperate to overcome this intrusive, full-body panic, I quietly recite a mantra to myself. It becomes my daily prayer:
Let the thoughts come, let the thoughts go – they have no power over me.
You are safe. You are safe. You are safe.
If you’d asked me what my thoughts were at this time, I would not have had a response. But now, almost four years later, after time, distance, and reflection, I know.
Looking at my daughter’s naked, vulnerable little body – her private parts specifically – was like looking at little me. Child me. Abused me.
How could anyone do this to a child?
Why did no one protect me?
Months later, a tidal wave of sorrow suddenly washes over me. I let it. I release it. I hold my daughter in my arms and sob. She is little me, five-year-old me. About-to-be-abused me.
My howls are painful and primeval. The wailing releases an apology I never received:
I’m sorry no one protected you.
I’m sorry no one protected you.
I will protect you.
Within weeks this panic subsides. The intrusive thoughts disappear.
I am re-parenting myself, one monumental motherfucking, mothering moment at a time.
And it feels fucking powerful.
* * * * * *

My daughter is two and a half years old. I’ve been conned by some Momfluencers to buy an online three-day potty training course – train your toddler in just 3 days! It really works! Ditch the nappies for good! Money back guarantee!
The fact that the course has the word “training” in it, should have been the first red flag. My daughter is not an animal to be trained. She is a complex and highly sensitive little soul. This intensive and gimmicky approach feels wrong. Nevertheless, I persist.
My daughter ticked all the readiness boxes “required” to begin, so one long weekend we began. We have a small potty placed in the lounge room and my daughter is underwear-free.
It’s day three and my daughter has been holding her urine for close to eight hours. She is whimpering and distressed, compulsively running around in circles. Miraculously she managed to poop in the potty for the first time just moments ago, but she is still holding onto her pee. As per the course, we are instructed to prompt her gently every few minutes and it is clear we have prompted her one time too many and her anxiety has imploded.
Things have taken a terrible turn.
If my haemorrhoid was the first circle of hell and the Mother’s Group sharing circle the second, this is without a doubt the third most diabolical and ungodly ring of them all.
She is currently rage-throwing her shit-filled potty around the room like some kind of WWE WrestleMania contestant called the Shitinator. She is screaming and crying. She is utterly traumatised. As are we.
We pull the pin.
I’m so disappointed in myself for blindly following the Mum-Pack. For joining the baby and toddler race. Just like the wild west of the unregulated sleep training industry that preys on exhausted and vulnerable mums, I got sucked in by the promise of “expert” charlatans.
Why does my daughter need to learn toileting in three fucking days?
What’s the rush?
I spend most of my days as an older mum wishing for time with my daughter to slow down, to stand still. Yet in this instance, I wanted to speed things up. To force things that will only happen when she is developmentally ready and not a moment sooner.
My daughter truly is traumatised. She holds for hours each day, whimpering in pain. I’m terrified she will get a UTI, something quite commonplace as an apparently ‘necessary response’ to toilet training. That all seems pretty fucked up to me.
We go back to nappies. I take all the pressure off. Within months she has toileting down pat.
I am a rebellious mother.
And it feels fucking powerful.
* * * * * *
My daughter is two. Her meltdowns are fierce and fiery. This meltdown has found her red-faced, spit-screaming and growling, as she scratches at our timber front door like a cornered wild animal. This has been going on for close to forty minutes. The last time this happened she banged her head repeatedly on the wall, until I scooped her up and placed her in the cot to keep her safe until the storm passed.
Inside I am panicking. Outside I remain calm.
I approach her gently, kneel and offer my cupped palms to her.
“Can you show me your hands? They must be very sore. Show me your hands.”
She hisses, growls, and swipes at me. I sit down, just out of her arms’ reach, still offering my cupped hands. Eventually she takes a deep breath and shows me her tiny, dirt-stained fingers. There is blood beneath her nails. I cup her hands in mine. Within seconds, I can feel her tense body relax. She collapses into my arms.
I hold her – my tiny two-year-old tornado.
“I love you.”
“I love you, mama. I sorry.”
“You don’t need to be sorry. You had big feelings. We all have big feelings sometimes. But I don’t want you to hurt yourself.”
“I sorry, mama. I love you.”
She repeats this in her tiny toddler voice, until it slowly trails off into silence as she falls asleep in my arms.
I am her safe space.
I am breaking generational cycles, far beyond my own childhood experiences.
Tiny two-year-old tornado me is proud of the mother I’ve become.
I am a rebellious mother.
And it feels fucking powerful.
One Response to Rebel, Rebel