Friday 14 February 2014

Things I Have Learned On Maternity Leave.

CPD's got nothing on this...
  • How to dress a baby in a nappy and three layers of clothing as it crawls away as fast as possible, whilst ensuring a xylophone beater stays in its left hand at all times
  • Household flotsam that previously had no discernible use (lid-less Tupperware, boxes of ping-pong balls) will hold a baby’s interest longer than the entire stock of the Early Learning Centre. Rule: if it has no small parts and makes a noise when struck, don’t t throw it out
  • TMI warning: If, pre-baby, you have ever had negative thoughts about the snotty offspring of others, this basically acts as a curse ensuring your children will always have an impossibly large glistening string of snot swinging from their nostril. This will be a permanent facial fixture until their 30th birthday.
  • Extreme TMI warning: If this snot forms a crust upon your child’s nostril, do not, I REPEAT DO NOT attempt to remove it. It is there for a reason. To hold back the tsunami.
  • Never leave the house with a baby and fewer than three correct sized nappies for that baby. Never.
  • Re. the above, apparently even the cutest baby has the capacity to poo so hard it ends up shooting down trousers and into socks without even grazing the legs...
  • ...so it might be worth putting a change of clothes for yourself in that change bag.
  • Anybody wishing to purchase a singing/talking/shrieking plastic toy for somebody else’s offspring should be forced to sit in a locked room with it playing on repeat for 48 hours before purchase is permitted.
  • People tell you maternity leave is all sitting in coffee shops eating cake. This is because coffee shops now function as drug clinics where you can get a supervised hit of the caffeine and sugar you are now hopelessly addicted to, with a bit of counselling on the side.
  • Also, nobody ever warns you that somewhere between 6 and 12 months your child will become mobile, these coffee dates will stop dramatically, and you will be forcibly catapulted into the seventh circle of hell: SOFT PLAY.
  • You will want to call whoever brought you up and tell them you’re sorry on a daily, sometimes hourly basis.
  • But for some preposterous reason, once you’ve been immersed in this crazy, puke-splattered, saggy eyed, puree-smeared world, you may never want to leave. And even if you do, things will certainly never be the same again...

4 comments:

  1. Ha ha, oh my word... very much laughing at the snot tsunami I'm afraid! (My other half has a total phobia of this with people's children! We'll see how that turns out in the future!)

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  2. wah! this brought back so many memories .... soft play becomes ever so slightly better when they can go off on their own and you can enjoy a coffee uninterrupted but it is absolutely hell on Earth. xx

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  3. Oh my - this was very funny xx

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  4. Enjoyed this post - all very true! My children have had a number of poo related incidents whilst out and about... having to retreat back to the house to put said children straight into the bath! There was also the odd occasion where daughter started doing a poo mid-nappy change and it ended up all over the carpet!!!

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