Esther McCarthy: A mammy’s pleas for change — one per stage of childhood

I was reminiscing with a friend recently about how lovely it was when our kids were smallies, but then she went a bit quiet. “Remember the playgrounds, though,” she muttered.

A harried midwife once handed me a set of silicone nipple shields, told me to get on with it, and moved on to the next bed. That was it, no time to show me how to actually latch the baby, just a plastic not-so-fantastic solution and an air of exasperation that I wasn’t managing it myself. For a few weeks after, those shields were the single most important object in our house. And that, I think, is the thing nobody tells you about parenthood: There’s a stage where an item becomes the most important thing in the world to you, and then, almost overnight, the most inconsequential.

So here, in order of appearance, are the official asks of mammyhood — one per stage. You might have different ones, that’s ok, there’s room for all our moaning in pretend fix-it land.

Baby blues

I’ve since learned those shields are actually meant for women with flat or inverted nipples — and mine could have taken someone’s eye out around a corner, so I’d say I was misdiagnosed. But, I’d been sent home convinced I couldn’t feed the baby without them, so for a few weeks they ruled our house.

I’ve also since learned midwives are working under incredible time pressure, and sometimes they genuinely don’t have five minutes to show a new mum how to latch a baby properly. From that crucial five minutes came hours of stress, guilt, torment, and eventually mastitis. All of it, I think, avoidable.

The ask: Please resource our maternity hospitals better, and give the midwives everything they need to do their jobs properly. If this includes Taco Tuesdays, free gin bars on bank holidays, and a proper pension, so be it.

Wobblers and toddlers

I remember having a five-year-old, a two-year-old and a new baby, and getting out the door was a bit of a palaver. We’re not talking big day out or anything. Even just driving to a shopping centre where you could stroll around for a change of scenery, or bung them into the free play area to lick the communal bricks to build up their immune system while you sat there dazed, pretending not to see a kid squatting in the corner who may or may not have a nappy on.

This day could be turned on its arse if, when you arrived at the shopping centre, all the family car spots were taken, thus forcing you to squeeze your recently c-sectioned stomach between your car door and the neighbouring car to undo two car seat buckles, designed by sadists, and then try to unclick and haul the car seat with the new baby out to click into the pram without scraping anyone’s vehicle.

I used to be sweating like Bertie Ahern at a CMAT concert.

The ask: Please do not park in spots with strange chalk-like drawings of prams, kids, and mothers (where’s the father in the picture, by the way?) unless you have a pram in the car.

The playground grind

I was reminiscing with a friend recently about how lovely it was when our kids were smallies, but then her face darkened, and she went a bit quiet.

“What’s wrong?” I asked gently.

“Remember the playgrounds, though,” she muttered in a manner not unlike a soldier suffering from PTSD.

We both shuddered and changed the subject. For, while playgrounds are marvellous places of stimulation, social connection, exercise, and making new friends for kids, for parents it is the badlands.

Sure, with the first two kids, I did the hide and seek with them, I did the ‘you can’t get me!’ on the swing and pretended to love it when they kicked me up the arse on the upswing arc, I did the catch them at the end of the slide and swing them around 17,001 times, but by God, it gets tedious after the first couple of years.

By the time the third little dude came along, I was making him tuck and roll out of the car before skidding off to find the nearest coffee dock. The galling thing? The other two remember nothing of my incredible patience and brilliant parenting.

What a waste of time.

The ask: Please install some sort of AI device that allows your children to behold you sitting on a seesaw for half an hour, making it go bump for them, every time they pick a fight with you as a teenager.

As part of this, fine parents €10k if they use their phones in the playgrounds. They’re either taking too many blurry photos of their kid on a mini trampoline, checking their emails, or looking at other parents doing more fun things on social media, making them feel bad about themselves.

They don’t need their phones. Take it from someone who has done all three.

Teenage kicks all through the night

The ask: A time machine to take us back to the pram days, please.