15th Aug 2017
It’s been a bit of a quiet and uneventful few days really. Well apart from about an hour ago on a walk back along the river from the town. I almost lost the pushchair in the river- minus Polly luckily! She was walking along holding my hand and her hat blew off. I did one of those split-second reactions without thinking and of course picked up said hat, letting go of the pushchair in the process. Letting go of the pushchair on a slope by a river. What followed was a ninja leap in Polly’s direction to scoop her up in the hat hand while I made a frantic lunge/run for the pushchair. I caught it in time which was a relief. Unfortunately, the embarrassing incident was witnessed by many! Face palm moment indeed.
So anyway, I thought I’d do a little piece on some of my general reflections of my first year and a bit of parenthood. I thought I could pick a topic whenever I have nothing really to discuss in my own wild life.
Today- parenting advice. Welcome to parenthood where as soon as you acknowledge you are in the club you also open the doors- well floodgates- to the experience of ‘parenting advice’. It’s a minefield. It really is. Everyone and I mean everyone is happy to throw the most random titbits of ‘help’, info and just general musings in your direction.
One of my favourites (I think it’s most people’s as it’s just so ridiculous) is- “just sleep when the baby sleeps”. Let’s just take a moment to analyse how stupid this comment is.
1. Does this mean that I should save the cleaning, laundry, cooking, catching up on Game of Thrones etc for when the baby does that too?
2. I’ll take a nap just after I’ve watched my sleeping beauty for just two more minutes as they look so precious I could just eat them up, oh just another minute… oh shit it’s been an hour and the little rascal will be awake any second now so there’s not much point.
3. It’s now been so long since you slept that you’ve actually forgotten how to do it.
4. I can guarantee the moment your head touches the pillow/cushion/soft area of floor you’ve collapsed in a heap on…. the baby will hear this horrendously loud noise even though they’ve just slept through the fire engine that just whirled past, the hoover that you’ve finally dragged out the cupboard and the shriek you gave while watching the ‘Red Wedding’ and they will wake up.
I could go on about all the other hilarious snippets of advice that you’ll get, chances are you’ve got a bank of them hidden away in your brain to serve as humorous anecdotes at the next BBQ you go to ( I was going to say dinner party but I think my dinner party days are somewhat suspended while I raise a tiny human). And for those about to enter the realm of parenting advice the only advice I’ll give is this- start googling your witty responses now to the 658 times you’ll be told to just let them cry/just put them down so they get used to you being away/don’t let them watch any tv/let them play with the iPad to distract them/feed them baby rice at 2 weeks old/don’t let them sleep on you and of course ‘sleep when they sleep’.
And for anyone wondering what my favourite all time ever ridiculous, well bat shit crazy, piece of advice I received was actually while I was still pregnant. I was very visibly pregnant working in the little bank in the town when a charming old lady started telling me that having children is the worst thing you can do with your life and that on reflection she wished she’d just drown hers at birth. Still leaves me slightly speechless all this time later.