'I'm giving my kids the master bedroom, and I've never been so ashamed.'

It's impossible to know what kind of parent you'll be before you’re actually a parent. For most of us, our hypothetical parenting exists in the negative: a list of behaviours we've seen, either in our own parents or in others, which we swear we'll never repeat. 

As we grow from children ourselves into adults, we collect "never will I evers" to add to that list. We move on from experiencing ourselves being parented to watching our contemporaries parent, and we're acutely aware of what they're doing wrong, and why we'd never make the same mistakes. 

Back before I had my kids, there was one item on my "never will I ever list" that I held sacred above all else. If we're delving deep into my psyche, I probably first considered it the day I watched the movie Mean Girls: specifically, the scene where Regina George tells an overawed Cady that her bedroom is so enormous because it used to be her parents, but she "made them switch". Regina is, obviously, the kind of child that nobody wants — spoiled, cruel and selfish. She's been raised to think she’s the most important person on Earth, and to top it all off, she's been given the master bedroom, relegating her parents — actual adults! — to a lesser room. 

Image: Supplied.

Even as a teenager myself, I could tell there was something so humiliating about that situation for Regina's parents, turfed out from the best part of the home that they had paid for by a teenage girl. 

That would never be me, I decided the moment I saw that scene. Never would I ever give my kids the master bedroom.

As I watched women around me parent, my aversion to the style of parenting which involves sacrificing your own wants and needs for your child's every whim only solidified. I watched mothers who I liked and respected give up "big" things — their hobbies, their passions, their beloved zippy cars — and "small" things — their yoga classes, the last piece of pizza, their monthly facials — in equal measure. 

Not me, I thought. I would love my kids. I would give them what they needed, and a lot of what they wanted. But not so much that it meant I would have to give up things I needed and wanted for myself. I wouldn't be the mum who bought new clothes for her kids and nothing for herself. I wouldn't be the mum who drove her kids to different sports all weekend and ran out of the time to go to the gym. And if I worked hard to buy a house, I — the adult, the payer of the mortgage, the person who is tall enough to require a king-size bed — would take the biggest room, because that was fair and reasonable. 

Image: Supplied.

But now I'm a parent to two kids, living in a two-bedroom apartment in the centre of Sydney, and I'm realising that not very much of being a parent is fair, or reasonable, at all.

Our master bedroom is, by a very long way, the nicest room in our house. It's north-facing with big windows that catch both the morning and afternoon sun. It's spacious and airy, and reasonably clean. Our second bedroom is, to put it politely, poky. It only has a single window, a skylight, which catches no sun at all, with a slanting ceiling which means an adult can't stand to full height in most of it. It is the wrong shape and size for two cots, but equally, the wrong shape and size for a king bed. A tiny, dark room was a great choice for a first baby, but is transpiring to be a very poor choice for a toddler and an almost-toddler who would quite like to be able to see each other when playing in their bedroom. 

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And so, while it pains me greatly to say it, we're going to switch. I'll do exactly what I always swore I wouldn't: give my kids the master bedroom, and take the poky second bedroom as a consolation prize. I'll forego the luxuries of a bedside table (there's no way one will fit), natural light, space and airflow so my kids have more, well, room. Oh, and that's not to mention giving up the bigger wardrobe, which makes sense because — to add to my intense shame — I buy my kids way more clothes than I buy for myself. 

I am, honestly, embarrassed about the whole thing. I swore I would always be the parent who put myself first, and yet… here I am, ducking my head just to climb into bed because the 10,000 strong legion of soft toys which accompany my older son everywhere needed new digs. 

I can’t say if I’m doing the right thing — my past self would surely be raging — but it feels, for now, like the right call.

If you need me, I'll be crouching in the dark.

Feature Image: Supplied.