The Quiet Wins

At first you are probably like huh? What are you talking about? I poured my baby’s sterilised water into my coffee cup this morning. Genuinely thinking I was making a coffee. I have an automatic coffee machine I should add. It was like I could see myself making the coffee but there was no coffee ( or almond milk, or machine whirring as per the norm)

Not next to the kettle. Not by accident on the way to somewhere else. Into the cup. With intention. I watched my own hands do it. The funny part? I genuinely do not know how I got there. One minute I was sterilising bottles, the next I was standing at the bench holding a coffee made from water I’d boiled for someone who can’t turn on a tap. Just water - no coffee. I even went to drink it like it was my coffee.

I stood there and laughed. Actually laughed, out loud, alone ( with my babe) in my kitchen at 6am, because what else do you do?

Here’s the thing nobody tells you about the mental load: it doesn’t feel like exhaustion. Exhaustion would almost be easier — at least you’d know what was wrong. It feels like static. Like running fourteen background apps with three percent battery, where the bottles and the daycare bag and the “did I reply to that text” and the dinner that needs defrosting are all running at once, and somewhere in all of it, your own coffee gets cross-wired with the baby’s water and you don’t even notice until it’s done.

And I want to be really clear: this isn’t a story about how I’m failing. I made a weird coffee. The baby is fed, warm, loved. I’m upright. By every measure that actually matters, this was a good morning.

Plus it’s always good to laugh. No matter what causes it.

I think we need to start naming the static for what it is. Not a personal failing. Not “baby brain” — I hate that phrase, it makes it sound cute and small. It’s the cognitive cost of holding an entire small human’s existence in your head while also being a person. That’s not nothing. That’s a job. Several jobs, actually.

So if you’ve put the milk in the pantry this week. If you’ve called your child by the dog’s name - or any other name, which again I do all the time. If you’ve walked into a room and stood there, blinking, with no idea why — same babe, same. You’re not losing it. In fact this can happen whether you are a Mum or not, tired or not.

The water was reusable and was eventually transferred into my daughter’s bottle and mixed with formula. Yes I do the form’, she loves it - and soon she moving onto full milk. I’ve been transitioning her and it’s fine.

Anyway - this story is for anyone who puts their keys ( or phone) in the fridge, leaves the house with no bra on ( sadly very often), snot or vom on my jacket or jumper, forgets the one thing you went to the supermarket for and return home with a bag of other stuff. That’s me, and it’s totally fine.

Love you x

- togetHER

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Originally published on Substack.