What mood is Mum in today?

This is how my children felt yesterday. It's something that I have been desperate not to do - I did not want my children to have to tip toe around trying to make sense of how I may or may not react. But this weekend it happened - and I was super difficult to be around. I was difficult to be around in my own head, let alone for my poor family.

For the past ten or so years, my hormones have been fairly calm and stable which has been super fantastic. Breastfeeding my babies one after the other kept my body in a near-constant state of oxytocin bliss. But I'd forgotten the true reality of being a female! Now no longer in that season of life - I have been thrown abruptly back onto the monthly rollercoaster of emotions I haven't felt since before I had children.

I can go from - the world being a wonderful place where I am in love with everyone and everything - to feeling like I want to curl up in a dark room and cry, all within 24 hours!

I don't want to be the sort of person who just blames it on the hormones though. I used to worry that acknowledging it felt like a cop-out or somehow anti-feminist. But it's really important to understand that our biology plays a massive role in our mood and the way we feel about ourselves as parents. It is exhausting trying to hold ourselves to a standard of consistency that our bodies simply weren't designed for.

If you look at the science of it, men operate on a predictable 24-hour hormone clock. They wake up with high testosterone and energy, it dips by the evening, and they wake up the next morning to a complete biological reset. The expectations of our entire modern world were built around this exact rhythm. Women, on the other hand, operate on a cycle that lasts roughly 28 days. Throughout the entire month, our hormones are constantly rising, falling, and shifting. In the first half of our cycle, rising estrogen boosts serotonin and dopamine in our brains, which is what gives us that patient, sunshine-and-unicorns energy. But right before our period, our natural calming hormones drop off a sheer biological cliff, taking those mood-stabilising chemicals right down with them. That sudden urge to hide in a dark room isn't a parenting failure. It is a very real, physical withdrawal of the hormones that keep us feeling grounded.

I really wish my children didn't have to tiptoe around me to work out what mood I'm in. But this is exactly where the repair becomes so necessary to keep the demon of guilt away after snapping over something ridiculous. My eldest is old enough to understand this now, and I explained it to him plainly. I told him that my hormones have dropped off a cliff, I'm a grumpy, sad mess, it has absolutely nothing to do with him, and I am really sorry. I think he can understand this quite well being very very very nearly a teenager and having a similar rollercoaster fluctuations himself!

If I can work out what mood I'm in first, and why I'm in it, then I have a perfectly valid explanation up my sleeve. It is not a get-out-of-jail-free card for being miserable and horrible to everyone because we can all at least try to choose kindness! It is simply an explanation to everyone that today, I just need a little extra space (and a few less 'M-U-U-U-U-M-M-M-Y!'s). Tomorrow I will be back to myself, but all the while, my love for them hasn't changed.

We need to track our months so that we can make sense of this for ourselves, rather than being caught off guard by the dark clouds every few weeks. Understanding is the absolute key to compassion. And if we want to be better parents, it has to start with understanding our own biology so we can finally be compassionate to ourselves. Maybe then the children can get back to stomping round me doing whatever they please until I growl at them for it in a slightly less dinosaur like way!

Oh, and don't even get me started on peri-menopause! I'm of that age where my algorithm likes to remind me every second how absolutely horrific it will be. But let's just take it one day at a time. Focus on compassion. And breathing - don't forget to breathe.

If navigating these emotional rollercoasters and making sense of your triggers feels like an uphill battle some days, you are not alone. If you would like a little extra support, you can [click here to download Chapter 3 of the Nurtured Roots Guided Journal completely for free]. Let's start finding that self-compassion together.