I recently read THIS GUEST POST after it was shared by The Veggie Mama. its funny, and I was inspired. With my various feeds busting with pregnancy announcements
and brand new babies cute-ing up the atmosphere I have decided to write this
post.
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So you are having a baby!
I have expelled three of my very own from my uterus, so that
makes me qualified to cram advice down your neck. I know, everyone feels like they are entitled
to cram advice down your neck, even people whose eldest two children are in
gaol and their youngest now 28, is currently completing a degree at Clown School
will have advice for you and will be visibly busting out of their masseur sandals
to point out what it is you could be doing better.
It’s important to think of this post, not as advice, but
more…….the things I want to tell you, whilst I grab you by the shoulders and
shake you with great force and shout far too close to your face.
Firstly,
I advise you to take the advice of others with a grain of
salt. Even mine, Read this post and then ignore me and go about your business,
stop only to think of this post when this stuff actually happens to you.
I took on all types
of advice from every Tom and Dick on the street when I had my first child,
because.....Scandal of all scandals, I had no idea what I was doing. Then I had
two more, and I STILL had no idea what I was doing, what I did figure out was,
that no two babies or alike, not even if they came out of the same vagina and
had the exact same parenting. So I learned fairly early on, to take everyone’s
advice and cram it into a cram it jar, if its particularly annoying and out
dated advice, then give the advice crammer the forks when they walk away.. Follow
it through with a fart noise, it will make you feel better.
Like any parent, I’m
just hanging on by the tip of fingernails… and my fingernails most likely have someone
else’s poo underneath them. Who are you going to trust? Me? With poo under-nail?
Or You?
(To aid in your
decision, you should know that I’m just hoping my children don’t end up in gaol
or clown school now, because I would look quite the fool.)
Moving forward, the second thing that I would like to tell
you, Is stool related. I apologise
This WILL happen. You will become stool obsessed, and not
just with your baby. Your own toilet time will become sacred, It could very well be the first time you have
sat down all day and it gives you a minute to check your Facebook and read my
blog posts, even though I’m in here, talking to you while you do it, this here….
Take a look around… is your new retreat. Now, I’m not promising that your
retreat will be a personal place or that you will toilet alone for the next…(
going on, let me see… thirteen years now) but I promise you will reach a point
that you will not feel guilty for ignoring your kids and pretending that they aren’t
there whilst you do.
This brings me to …Thirdly.
If your child is
sleeping in your bed/still has a dummy/ is not walking-toileting-reciting Shakespeare…
and you tell people? There… for some reason foreign to me... is a percentage of
the population that will hear these words and take personal offense.
Something as simple as...“Our little Poppy is
still in our bed and I haven’t had relations that did not involve the couch for
three years”
is converted in the ears of these people, as a very real request for
your child to start sleeping in the bed with them.
They will be outraged, then begin to list the eight thousand things that
you have already tried or, considered and decided against to get your child OUT
OF THEIR BED.. I mean YOUR bed, despite the fact that they are not the ones
carrying their child at a 45% angle whilst reciting baa baa black sheep
backwards and in the key of F# Sharp just to get their child to sleep, or the
fact that you might actually enjoy the comfort and deep sleep of knowing that
your child is right there next to you. I have done both of these things and my
children are so far doing OK.
For dealing with
these people, refer to The forks in paragraph one, But please don’t let these
people stop you from sharing your experience with other mothers, because for
every bad day you are having there is someone else who’s arm is too tired from
holding their child at a 45 degree angle to raise it and say it aloud too.
Fourthly… Is fourthly a word? It sounds wrong… never the
less… FOURTHLY!
Never say that you are NEVER going to do something as a
parent. That pretty much guarantees that you will.
There was once a time that I vowed NEVER to give my child a
dummy, in hindsight... which is a fabulous thing…. this was because I had a
child who wasn’t very interested in a dummy. I had a child who settled easily,
fed well and slept soundly without the aid of a dummy, right next to me in MY
bed mind you, and as long as that kid had a firm sticky grip on my person, or
something attached to my person, like a necklace or my pant leg, then I was
mother of the year with a perfect child.
In my mind, the fact that I was awesome enough to have a
child that was not comforted by a dummy was the sole reason that MY kid never
put anything they shouldn’t in their mouth...
Soon enough MY kid almost choked
on a barbie shoe, and I realised that my kid didn’t put barbie shoes in their
mouth because we didn’t have barbie shoes at our house……Then I had another baby…
and that baby screamed blue murder whenever there wasn’t a nipple in the near vicinity,
and I found myself cramming a cherry shaped latex one in his little mistakenly
famished squawk hole and the relief for both of us was even better than a poo
alone in the retreat……… and then I fell a very long way of my lovely high
horse. Her name was Martha and I loved her.
There was also that time that I judged another mother for
not giving their child a regular high cut, this was purely because I was yet to
have a child with an aversion to haircuts. My child now regularly sports a
stack-hat like hairstyle I don’t even bat an eyelid. His development to date
has been pleasing and does not seem to be tidy haircut dependant.
Lastly, Because Fifthly sounds ridiculous and if it is a
word it’s probably already used in a porno somewhere.
Take the time to smile at your little one from another room,
another chair, out of the window, from the front seat of the car... blow them a
kiss even when they don’t want one, sing them a song in the key of F Sharp,
carry them at a 45 degree angle, give them a dummy, don’t give them a dummy.. Co
sleep, don’t co sleep, breast, bottle WHATEVER you have to do to make this time
as easy and enjoyable as it should be, that’s your way.
In as many years as there are intelligent points in this
post, (Five) your little bean will be going off to school, and you will be
sniffing into your hand, not to check for any traces of poo but because your
baby has grown, and so begins a series of waving to them.
Congratulations.
Love love love it!
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