For You, Mama
She woke up before everyone else. Not because she wanted to. Because someone needed her.
The baby first. Then the toddler, who appeared at the bedroom door before seven, already full of questions, already needing things. She answered them. She made the breakfast — two different breakfasts, because one of them has decided they no longer eat toast — and she wiped the table and found the shoes and remembered the nursery bag and got everyone out of the door by eight.
She did all of this before the world had properly started. She did all of this on four hours of sleep. She did all of this, and nobody said thank you, because this is just what Mama does.
And on the days the toddler is at nursery, it doesn't slow down. It just gets quieter. It's her and the baby and the laundry and the food shop and the emails she hasn't answered and the forty-seven things she has been meaning to do since the baby was born. She moves through the hours thinking I'll rest when they sleep, and then they sleep, and she doesn't know where to start, so she stares at the ceiling for eight minutes and then the baby wakes up.
And at the weekend? The same. The morning routine. The breakfast. The shoes. The snacks. The nap that didn't happen. The bedtime that took an hour longer than it should. It doesn't stop for Saturdays.
And somewhere in all of it, she is also supposed to work. To be good at her job. To look after herself — whatever that means when you haven't had an uninterrupted shower since October. To see her friends, to be present, to be fun, to be her.
The woman she was before all of this. The one who had thoughts that weren't about nap schedules. The one who finished a hot drink. She misses her. She wonders sometimes if she's coming back.
Nobody tells you what it actually feels like. They tell you it's hard. They tell you it goes fast. They tell you to enjoy every moment — as if every moment is enjoyable, as if there aren't moments where you lock yourself in the bathroom just to breathe, where you sit on the stairs after they've both finally gone to sleep and feel completely, utterly empty.
Nobody tells you that the toddler will choose the week the baby arrives to stop sleeping. Or to start biting. Or to say I don't want you, I want Daddy at the exact moment you have nothing left.
Nobody tells you that you can love them both so completely that it knocks the air out of you, and still have days where you don't recognise yourself in the mirror. Nobody tells you that the loneliness can come even when the house is so loud you can't hear yourself think.
Maybe your partner is away. Maybe they're there but you're still doing most of it. Maybe your mum lives too far away, your friends don't quite get it yet, and some weeks the only person who asks how you are is the health visitor, ticking boxes on a form.
Maybe you're touched out by midday. Maybe the toddler had a meltdown at nursery pick-up and the baby screamed the whole way home and you sat in the driveway for three minutes before you could face going inside.
Maybe you whispered I can't do this into the dark last night. You can. You are. You have been, every single day.
This is a place that sees you. Not the version of you that has it together. Not the Mama from the photos. The real one — the one with the baby on her hip and the toddler pulling her sleeve and the cold tea on the counter that she made two hours ago and never got to drink.
The one who checks on them both before she goes to sleep and feels something so big it has no name. Love and exhaustion and fierce, aching devotion, all at once. That Mama. She deserves something that says: I see what you are carrying. I see how hard you are trying. I see you.
Mama I Got You was made for her. For the quiet seven minutes after they're both down. For the evenings when you need something small that is entirely yours. For the days when you need to remember that you matter too — not after everyone else, not when things calm down, but now, exactly as you are, in the middle of all of it.
Because some mamas are carrying more than the rest of us can imagine.
That's why £1 from every sale is donated to a charity supporting women and families in crisis. Not as an afterthought. Because this community believes that when one mama struggles, we all show up.
One baby step at a time.
You are not behind. You are right on time.
Mama, I got you.