Navigating a bumpy road through parenthood
Everyone will have advice for the first-time mammy. From in-laws to strangers on the bus to smarty pants Life/Style writers. Every baby is different and what works for you is whatâs right for you.
I read every book, magazine article and mummy blog going when I was pregnant with my first baby. I was au fait with everyone from Gina Forde to Dr Spock, but one contradicted the other, until I just gave up and tried to remember the way my nan did things.
People will give you advice whether you like it or not. Donât use a dummy, theyâll give the child buck teeth! You must use a dummy, it prevents cot death! Baby-led weaning is the best way to get them on solids, or do you them to be a coeliac?!
Let the baby cry, you donât want to spoil them! Pick the baby up, theyâll feel unloved! Blah blah blah. Just be kind - to yourself, to your baby, to your partner. Also, make up some theory to have as a backup if someoneâs really annoyingly know-it-all.
âWe plan to follow the Snederfugen method of child-rearing. Oh, you havenât heard of it? How quaint.â Then waddle off and have a cup of tea for yourself and immediately forget everything they told you.
People tend to think your bump is public property and itâs ok to rub it for luck, like youâre Buddha or something. The next time someone does this, extend your hand to their breast, and - this part is important - without breaking eye contact - replicate what theyâre doing to your belly.
Pat, polish, pet, whatever. Continue talking, no blinking, until they remove their sweaty hand from your bump. See how they like social norms being violated.
This has the potential to break your partner. Do you want to see a grown up cry? Get them to practice putting it in and out of the car. It will be time well spent.
We live 47 seconds away from the maternity ward where our children were born. It took us 3 hours, 45 minutes, to get home on baby number 1. My husband was terrified, suddenly aware of all the maniacs on the road. He was also exhausted from trying to get the car seat to click onto the holder thingy. He didnât do the practice.
Dump it, you wonât be needing it now.
Lawks, the palaver over how babies are fed. The pressure! The misinformation! The slow realisation that there is going to be milk coming out of your body soon after a human has also emerged. Isnât nature grand? If you can breastfeed, great.
Do try it, give yourself a bit of time to get the hang of it, itâs not this natural easy peasy thing that just happens. Thereâs a knack to it, itâs a brand new skill you and your little one have to learn together, but once it clicks, oh itâs just magic.
So do give it a chance, but if it doesnât work, there is a fabulous invention called formula that is perfectly fine. Donât let anyone force you to do either. Your boobs, your baby, your decision. Utilise another f here if anyone gives you guff about either method: âFeck off, you.â
They rock. Use them as much as possible. Let them spoil the kids. So what if they give them expensive Magnum white ice creams that are bigger than their actual stomach?
...and all the other things you meant to learn but never got around to, Itâs terrifying being responsible for something you love more than yourself. Youtube teaches all.
That first one, when you have to hold your precious baby down while a doctor jabs a giant needle into their little thigh is horrendous. I cried more than the baby.
But the ones that come when theyâre toddlers and realise you are complicit in this torture and they look at you like the dirty traitor you are, as they wail and struggle and fight and youâre holding them down ... uggh.
Just pretend you have a gynaecological appointment and get your partner to bring them. Let the child associate him with that horror for the rest of their days, not you. You give them a lollipop when they get home.
Make like a clown and try and keep all the balls up in the air. Life/work balance! Calorie intake! Birthday party invites! Baby Einstein CDs! Playdates! Balls!
Call food by more interesting names. Red kidney beans are super turbo boost beans and grapes are sweeties. Badabing badaboom. Donât bother looking at the kiddie menus in restaurants. Save yourself time and just get the chicken nuggets.
You need to be a good liar to be a good parent. From enthusing about their amazing artist endeavours (when, truth be told, thatâs a rubbish hedgehog by anyoneâs standards) to pretending to your partner youâre doing a poo and youâll be another 5 minutes but really youâre just sitting on the toilet, studying your split ends, waiting for him to realise thereâs a code brown in the baby department and let him deal with it for a change.
It comes back. Eventually.
These are plastic pretend nipples that are used for women who have inverted nipples that are not conducive to breastfeeding. I was thrust a pair of these by an impatient midwife 20 seconds into my first attempt at feeding my first baby.
You could tune in Fun Radio, 94.3 Fm Bratislava, on my nipples. I did not need help in that department, I just needed someone to give me 5 minutes to show me how to get the latch right.
But I got completely paranoid that I couldnât feed the baby without these yokes, but they chaffed and made me bleed and the baby had to work extra hard to get any milk out and I ended up with in A&E on Christmas Eve with a fever and mastitis.
Like cows get. Oh, the pain, but I was determined to feed the baby myself. I used to cry great fat hot tears, plopping onto the babyâs head every feed, that was every 2 hours because he wasnât getting enough and I wasnât emptying each side properly. So stay away from nipple shields, if you can, the name is misleading.
Also, I should say on baby number 2, I had this wonderful, patient, relaxed midwife who showed me a couple of little tricks and stayed with me until I was feeding successfully and it was a dream. Midwives are overworked and underpaid and I just thank my stars she was able to give me her time and experience, it made a world of difference to me.
You can get everything you need delivered so donât go out until youâre ready.
Be prepared for lots of poo and poo-related worries. From waiting for that first weird green poo the baby does to changing cartloads of shite to anxiously counting how many hours the babyâs been constipated.
Then suddenly theyâre out of nappies and you find yourself doing the poo-poo dance of a Tuesday morning when your little darling first evacuates his bowels in the potty. But itâs not over. You could well be doing the âcheck wipeâ when theyâre five. Iâm just warning you, itâs years of dealing with another personâs excrement.
Be inventive, be fun, lie wildly. They wonât remember it anyway.
I story time, itâs the best. There are so many awesome books for kids and itâs such precious time with them. Peepo by Janet and Allan Ahlberg, Elmer by David McKee, all of Dr Seuss, Dear Zoo by Rod Campbell, Tiddler by Julia Donaldson. A joy. Some are brutal though. Avoid.
Same advice applies. Youâre going to be having a lot less of both for the foreseeable future. Youâll miss the second one but at the same time, youâll be too tired to care because of the first one.
You can get gels and powders and icerings and amber jewellery but itâs going to awful for the poor little mite, a drooly, bawly, slobbery few months, with red cheeks and rotten nappies but this too shall pass.
Learn to duck.
So much vomit. Facebook popped up an On This Day status update for me recently. âGot puked on from a height today. Iâve never had puke in my eyes before.â I honestly canât remember that incident.
Before I had children, Iâm pretty sure being temporarily blinded by someone elseâs undigested food would register in my memory banks. But cleaning it up, scraping it off sheets at 3am, finding old crusty bits in your hair, all par for the course. And you know what, âtis grand.
The inane boring things you think donât matter. The huge milestones that you think youâll never forget. It all blurs into a hazy montage of you and your baby at the park. Keep a diary, print out photos, youâll treasure them.
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If every baby ABC book can trot that one out, so can I. Babies like xylophones.
Youâre not as cool or relevant or important as you once imagined. You are old, you are old, you shall wear the bottoms of your trousers rolled.
And other fun places you will get to go as a mother. Iâm not talking about those indoor places that call themselves GoGo Superslide Zoo or whatever, where everything is slightly sticky and smells of damp foam and Febreze. I mean proper fun days out youâd never do if you didnât have the rug rat. Get a Fota/Dublin Zoo annual pass. It is so worth it.
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