Advice

|9 May 2019|4 mins

3 InstaMum Accounts Keeping It Real (And Us Laughing)

Sharing the best and the worst of #MumLife.

There’s something special about #Mumlife. And it’s not the warm fuzzies and shiny happy faces that most Mother’s Day campaigns and nappy commercials are made of. It’s not the picture-perfect Instagram feeds. As anyone who is a mum, or knows a mum, will know – there’s the real, unedited version.

The never being able to go to the toilet alone.

The vomit-in-the-hair, don’t-have-the-energy-to-care scenario.

The calls from daycare when you have finally made it back to work asking you to please pick your child up because “there has been an outbreak of nits”.

Most mums we spoke to told us they rarely left her lounge room for the first few months of being a mum. By all accounts, it’s full-on. And while it takes the proverbial village, said village isn’t always on call at 2am when you need that help most.

And that’s where Instagram comes in. Hear us out on this. Sure, it can’t leap out of the phone and rock that baby to sleep, nor can it stay up all night finishing that school project you swore you wouldn’t do this time, but it does – we’re told – go even a little bit of the way to remind mums that they aren’t alone. That others have been where you are. Are still where you are. Be that trying to become a mum, being a mum or being a friend / partner / neighbour to a mum.

So, we asked the mums in our lives who they follow on Insta to make your screen time that little bit more comforting…

Mums (and now, we) follow: @notsomumsy

The Instamum: Marcia Leone
You know how sometimes you get a DM of the same forwarded post from just about everyone you know? In our inbox, more often than not, they’re from people sending over the work of mum blogger Marcia Leone, the Sydney-based mamma behind Not So Mumsy.

At first look, her feed is like something from a high-end mag. A gorgeous wash of blonde and pink and blue skies. But it’s her captions that are driving the DMs.

Hers is the voice of someone perpetually wearing their heart on their sleeve while raising two kids under the age of seven along with her business. And the struggle it took to get there.

She shares everything – two years of trying, two losses, IUI then IVF, being told she had “one viable embryo”.

“So to all the fertility warriors out there, I know it’s hard. I know some days you can’t even pick yourself up from the floor, that you cry alone in the shower and feel an ache to your very core... I also know some days you just need a hopeful story, a word from someone who has been there. Keep going. It’s worth it. Every jab, every heartache, every loss, it’s worth it.”

It’s her quotes, though, that crack up those with kids – or anyone in the near proximity of kids – the most.

@notsomumsy

Getty Images. Mums (and now, we) follow: @zotheysay

The many businesses person / mum: Zoë Foster Blake
She calls her two bubbas bananas, has built a skincare empire and an app that helps with a broken heart and, oh boy, is former beauty editor Zoë Foster Blake funny. LOL, ROFL type funny.

Her new-look ‘party’ porridge, for instance:

@zotheysay

“I’m not the mum who makes fun, inventive food for the kids. I make pasta and cheese sandwiches and pasta and omelettes and pasta. We get by. They’re fed. It’s fine. But yesterday, noticing a critical lack of flour for our usual Pancake Sunday, I made something I told them was Party Porridge (oats, milk, few drops of food colouring, coconut, Greek yoghurt, honey and sprinkles) which raised delight levels exponentially, and finally made me feel like the kind of kooky kitchen witch they could be proud of. OMG TRY IT!!! Especially you, cafes! (Please.)”

Foster Blake is also super real about the whole work-life-baby-sleep-food balance (or lack thereof). A massive support for anyone staring down another sleepless night.

@zotheysay

“As anyone with kids knows, when you become a parent, you forfeit your membership to the Sleep Club for a while … Some days it feels like I'm on 6% battery, and sleep has hidden all the goddamn phone chargers.”

Mums (and now, we) follow: @mother_of_daughters

The midwife / mum: Clemmi Hooper
As an NHS midwife and mum to four, she’s seen it all - Clemmi Hooper is the woman who encourages us to be kinder on Instagram, shares books she’s reading along with hilariously real, with-kids styling comments. Of one look, she wrote:

“Precisely 5 minutes after stepping outside the bob turned into what can only be described as Monica’s holiday hair.”

She also shares what it’s really like to deal not just with the terrible twos but the “the horror” of a three-year-old and uplifting thoughts (like “count your orgasms, not your calories”). She brings to her posts the kind of know-how that goes way beyond firsthand experience. She is, after all, a professional and sees women become Mums on the daily.

Another reason why she’s on our mums’ list is that she believes in body positivity. Sure, she shares how reformer Pilates can help that pelvic floor, and what a physio can REALLY do for you post-birth (seriously, it’s incredible, look into it), but she also shares unedited mirror selfies to remind you to love the skin you’re in. Important, our mums told us, to survive an Insta feed that is otherwise Photoshopped.

@mother_of_daughters

“Here’s to celebrating women’s bodies in all their shapes and sizes, to nourishing ourselves by cooking delicious food to brilliant kitchen discos, to moving and stretching more and to wearing matching underwear that makes you feel proud enough to show off on Instagram.”

Putting the mum in mum jeans...