Pregnant Aussie woman breaks down after 'screaming' at her toddler son: 'I feel disgusting about it'

An Aussie fitness influencer was fighting back tears on Wednesday as she recalled the moment she 'screamed' at her three-year-old son. 

Steph Claire Smith, 30, who is pregnant with her second child, shared a video to Instagram which showed her looking very tired after stepping out of the shower.

She told her 1.4 million followers that she felt incredibly 'tired' and 'disgusting' after screaming at her toddler the night before when he struggled to sleep.   

'I screamed at Harvey last night and I'm not meaning like I raised my voice a little bit, I like fully screamed,' she said.

'I'm not boasting about that. I feel just as disgusting about it now as I did in the moment.'

The KICPOD co-founder went on to say Harvey came to her and her husband Josh Miller's bed on Tuesday night, asking to sleep with them.  

'I woke up with him next to my bed asking to get in... I would love to be able to invite him into bed and just go to sleep with him,' Steph continued.

'However, 99.99 per cent of the times that we have done that, he does not go back to sleep. 

'He lies there for about 15 minutes pretty still and then he'll do about 15 minutes of kicking and screaming and then it escalates to him wanting to get up and play.'

Steph said she offered to stay with Harvey in his own bed, but he 'wasn't happy about that' because he was worried she would go back to her room when he fell asleep. 

'It just set off a massive meltdown in him and he and I both became incredibly disregulated. It escalated so much,' Steph recalled.

'I was so tired. All I was thinking was, "Of course this is happening the night that I'm going back to work."'

She continued: 'It got to a point where he just kept repeating himself saying he didn't want me to make his bed warm. 

'Eventually, I realised what he was saying was, "Don't make my bed warm because my excuse to come and sleep in your bed was that my bed was cold." 

'At the time, it wasn't making any sense to me and I screamed. I fully raised my voice and I screamed and I scared the living day lights out of him.'

Steph added that her partner Josh, 34, heard her 'screaming' at their toddler son and came upstairs to try and help them both calm down.

'I just breathed and it kind of clicked in me—I'm disregulated and he's disregulated. Neither of us are going to get better if we both stay this way,' Steph said.

She and Josh then 'stood there in silence' in Harvey's room, waiting for him to stop crying.

Eventually, the tot calmed himself enough and agreed to lie down to sleep again, but Steph laid awake with him for another hour because her 'heart rate was so high'. 

'I tried my best to repair it in the moment but it probably didn't come across as sincere,' Steph told her followers.

'So, this morning, when he wakes up, I'm going to try and repair it as much as I can before I go to work. I hate it. I hate screaming at him.'

She said she wanted to share the raw parental story with her fans because 'it's so normal and so fair enough and sometimes our patience is just tested'. 

'I just don't want anyone else feeling as gross as I felt last night for being that way and thinking they're the only parents who do it,' Steph added. 

Steph has been very open on social media about the struggles she's faced as a mother. 

In July last year, the fitness influencer broke down in tears on her Keep It Cleaner Podcast as she revealed 'the worst thing' her son Harvey had ever said to her.

The model, who shares her child with husband Josh and has a second one on the way, could barely keep her emotions in check as she shared the story.

She admitted that Harvey had recently told her she 'scared' him when she got angry.  

'I don't like this. I feel like s*** when I blow up in front of him,' Steph explained to her guest speaker Lael Stone.  

'The worst thing I think you can hear a kid say to you is, "Mummy, you scared me". 

'[They are] my least favourite words I've heard him say, but it's happened. I'm crying now. I think it is that you put all of this pressure on yourself as a parent to do it right.'

A month earlier, she shared yet another parenting struggle when she uploaded a screenshot of a wellness app page which showed she only got three hours of sleep.

Calling it the 'worst night' she's ever had as a mum, Steph shared a heartbreaking update about her son's sleeping patterns.  

'Well that was the worst/most challenging night in the three years of being a parent,' she captioned the graph. 

The co-founder of fitness program Keep It Cleaner then shared a photo of herself lying in bed next to her son looking very unimpressed.

'Got home from the theatre at 11pm, hopped straight into bed. 11:30 Harvey woke from a nightmare, Josh resettled, we thought he was back asleep, ten minutes later he's awake yelling out,' she began.

'Josh tried to resettle but Harvey was set on sleeping with us. So I got into his bed, and 20 minutes later he told me he wanted to go into our spare room, didn't want to sleep in his room. So I did. Only to be awake for another half an hour with him until he was patting me hard and wouldn't stop, honestly like he was stuck and couldn't hear me.'  

Steph went on to explain that Harvey was then 'adamant' that if he went downstairs to sleep in his parents' room, he would finally fall asleep. 

However, as soon as Steph relocated to her bed with Harvey, things went from bad to worse as the toddler continued to 'kick' them and 'climb on their heads' until he finally settled into sleep at 3.30am.