The same level of frenzied rage because I won’t let him go to the one shop he so desperately wants to. More often than not, this will be somewhere totally random. Like Vision Express.
Jude crying because he wants a yoghurt, then crying some more because he doesn’t want a yoghurt. Basically, it’s the yoghurt’s fault. Bastard inconsiderate yoghurt.
As above, but substitute ‘Heinz biscotti’ for ‘yoghurt’.
Henry walking deliberately sloooowwlyyy back from town. Not because his little legs are tired but because I’ve made the mistake of telling him we need to get back to feed his brother. Cue a pointless ‘Let’s have a race!’ attempt from me (he’s not daft) followed by the obligatory ‘I’m not going to tell you again,’ (as I tell him again).
Teething (enough said).
Both boys whingeing for forty minutes in the car, at a volume just above the Disney song that’s on repeat. A patient mum would recognise that her children are just overtired and sing along to distract them. She would certainly not resort to under-breath swearing.
I kidded myself for a while that, if I hadn’t been so keen to return to work and rejoin the career ladder, I would have enjoyed devoting more of those months to full-time motherhood. I think I may even have used that line once or twice (‘It’s a shame I can’t have more time off, but I need to get back to work’). It wasn’t a shame. Returning to work was the easy option for me – even the most testing of work days seemed somehow easier than being at home. At times, it feels like a holiday.
I have also spoken to so many mums via the blog who have admitted that, for a whole host of reasons, work feels like a holiday for them, too. It’s a holiday, they’ve explained, because when you’re at work:
You can drink a cup of tea without having to scream, ‘Watch my tea. Watch my tea!’ as a small person toddles precariously close to it.
Your lunch is your lunch. It is not stolen. Or sneezed on. You don’t have to hide behind the fridge door pretending to look for a yoghurt while secretly stuffing your face with a Mint Club.
You aren’t followed to the loo or watched while you are on it.
You get to wear something that doesn’t have vomit-crust on the sleeve. Okay, sometimes you will still have something crusty on your sleeve (although you will be surprised at your depths of resourcefulness in the face of adversity – the old wet-wipe-and-Febreze garment freshen-up is surprisingly effective). I wore a proper blouse and statement necklace to a meeting recently and kept playing with the necklace until somebody commented, ‘I like your necklace.’ (I can’t wear it at home because the baby tries to asphyxiate me with his grabby hands.)
Nobody in the office climbs all over you (unless you want them to, which is, of course, your business). You won’t feel the need to sit at the bottom of the stairs with your fingers in your ears shouting, ‘Time out! Mummy’s having a time out!’
You can converse all day with adults about Strictly, diets and affairs. (‘She didn’t! So she wasn’t at Zumba?’)
You can go for a walk on your lunch/coffee break. Alone. Without carrying a bag.
Admittedly, these benefits of a day at work don’t apply to all jobs. Teachers, childminders, nursery workers and the like don’t get a sabbatical from the chorus of screaming children (busman’s holiday right there), and not everybody has time to enjoy a hot cup of tea at work. That said, I have had several messages from parents with extremely stressful day jobs (and some who do night shifts) saying that there are times when work still feels like a sabbatical compared to a day at home with their children. Perhaps a change is as good as a rest.
It’s not all one-sided, of course – there are many less-appreciated benefits of being at home: not having to make small talk with people you don’t really like, eating what you fancy without being silently judged by colleagues who are on the 5:2 diet, watching Homes Under the Hammer. Above all, simply spending time with your little ones is a privilege: being there for first steps and first words, for example. Despite my eagerness to get back to the office, both times, the end of my maternity leave still brought with it the realisation that I would miss my children so much my heart would hurt. ‘Hurty heart,’ I call it. I’m pretty sure it’s a medical condition.
I have, however, learned to accept hurty heart as part of my life these days, because I am sure my heart would hurt in a different way if I gave up work altogether. Besides, I’ve discovered first-hand that I’m not cut out for the alternative: I am not patient or resilient enough to cope at home every day.
SAHMs, I truly do salute you.
* * *
‘I’m a nurse and a twelve-hour shift in Intensive Care with monitors and ventilator alarms going off, delirious patients and patients with profuse diarrhoea is like annual leave compared to fourteen-month-old twins.’
Janine, Shrewsbury
* * *
Sod’s Law for Parents
Here are some ‘bloody typical’ moments guaranteed to happen at some point in your parenting life:
Bumping into somebody you’ve not seen for ages when you look like shit, accompanied by snotty, unruly children (‘Yes, these are mine …’)
Sod’s Law states that, if said someone is an ex-boyfriend (or girlfriend), you will look exceptionally shit. Like a dog’s dinner after it has been rained on.
This law is particularly painful if you knew that person in your life pre-kids, because it’s possible they will hold a memory of your tamed eyebrows and/or your legs minus leggings. If this chance encounter happens in the supermarket, every inch of your body will scream at you to dive head first into the lettuces. But you cannot abandon a trolley laden with kids, so you will nod, and say, ‘Hi, you all right? Yeah, good, thanks. You?’ while wanting to die.
The one day you do make an effort (wrestle into skinny jeans/slap on some BB cream and lip balm), there will be no such old-flame encounter.
The zip on the gro-bag/snowsuit/pram hood breaking or getting stuck mid-baby-meltdown
Or, as we like to say in our house, when the baby has ‘gone savage’. The zip, etc., will never break or get stuck when your baby is in a good mood, it’s always when his world is ending and/or you are in a rush. You will be left trying to fix a broken zip underneath the chin of a crying and kicking, beetroot-faced baby. Upon experiencing such zip-breakage, I challenge you not to shout, ‘You good-for-nothing piece of shit! I’m writing to the manufacturer to complain!’ (You will never actually get round to this.)
Your children ‘sleeping in’ on the days you need them to get up
Saturday morning with nowhere to be? Oh, they’re awake at 4 a.m., jumping on the bed shouting, ‘Bundle!’ and telling you they have a snotty nose. And can they watch Ben 10?
But when the Thursday 6 a.m. alarm goes off for the childminder run . . . they are in a sleep coma. What is that about?
It also goes without saying that, the first time the baby sleeps through the night, the otherwise sleep-trained toddler will wake at least twice. That’s a rule.
NOWOs (Naps of Wasted Opportunity)
You can be driving for an hour, hoping your child will drop off so you can listen to the radio in peace, but he will maintain a constant whinge until you are five minutes from home. You will then find yourself sitting in the car outside your house, drinking in the silence while at the same time thinking, This is another sodding NOWO. If he just napped in his goddamn bed you could put some washing out. And watch Judge Rinder.
And when he does have a nap in his cot or bed? Well, either the sound of the kettle boiling will serve as an alarm clock or, just as you do sit down with that cuppa, the doorbell rings and half your family turns up. ‘No, we’re not up to anything,’ you’ll tell them. While mourning that lost moment of unexploited peace and quiet.
The Sod’s Law timing of naps extends to babies at important events or functions. My best friend, when recently debriefing me via WhatsApp on the two weddings and a funeral she had been to with her small baby, reflected, ‘She managed to sleep sound
ly until the exact moment the bride/coffin arrived. It’s like she could smell the importance.’ They just know.
The baby choosing to poo at inconvenient times
You will spend a ridiculous amount of your life muttering, ‘For fuck’s sake!’ while angrily getting another nappy out (usually when you have only just changed the previous one, as babies seem to love nothing more than pooing in a brand-new nappy). For this reason, you must allow at least a forty-minute margin of error in any target house-departure time. Of course, when you finally are all out of the door (and the small people are strapped into car seats), he will somehow manage to squeeze another one out. Or be sick. At this point, you will deny all knowledge and drive to Sainsbury’s.
Other Sod’s Law poo-timings include the moment your food arrives in a restaurant, the moment you are called in to see the doctor and the moment you are anywhere without wipes. I know it is pretty inconceivable ever to be anywhere without wipes (even without the kids; bloody love a wipe, me) but, one time, this did happen to me. Loo paper does not rectify the aftermath of a shit explosion in Pizza Hut.
The family lurgy striking when you have a night out planned
Your one night of freedom will die a germy death as one or all of the family starts vomiting before you’ve even had the chance to dry-shampoo your hair. Probably for the best, as you are all out of Febreze for those jeans.
The same lurgy fate will also strike on the blue moon when you have managed to secure a babysitter and just as you head off on holiday. Splendid.
Hen dos, thirtieth-birthday parties and general organised fun activities occurring when you are eight months pregnant
If you stay at home, you will sit on the sofa drinking raspberry-leaf tea and watching Strictly, feeling like you are missing out. If you go, you will be fat, sweaty and sober (and will have paid for the privilege). There is no winner here (except everybody else, who gain a designated driver).
If the non-pregnant you does brave a G&T (or four), your children will almost certainly be up half the night. Eight-month sleep regression? How about the ‘Mummy and Daddy tried to enjoy a normal adult evening, the stupid buggers!’ sleep regression?
I’m telling you: they just know.
And the biggest and Soddiest Law of all …
Your children behaving impeccably for others
Perhaps less Sod’s Law and more Fuck My Luck, this one. Not FML that your child behaves nicely, because, of course, good behaviour is welcomed with open arms. Rather, the injustice lies in the fact that your child will appear to save this exemplary behaviour for everybody else. You will get the shitty end of the stick, the end with the tantrums and the crying and the sometimes actually exploding shit.
‘He’s been such a good boy, a total dream!’ people would tell me after looking after Henry.
‘Sorry, what?’
I’d let it sink in for a moment.
A total fucking dream.
Surely he wasn’t a dream when he refused pointblank to sit in the pram and threw his beaker in the road on purpose and deliberately banged his head on the table because his sandwiches were not Just So? When he wouldn’t nap but then cried all day because he was so tired from not napping? When he wouldn’t let you change his nappy, instead kicking and screaming and trying to roll over as if you were torturing him when actually you were just trying to wipe up the poo, the poo that had now spread to all the places he’d rolled?
‘He didn’t do any of those things with us.’
‘Right,’ I’d say, while thinking, Well, that’s just bloody marvellous. I initially concluded (much the same as always) that it must just be me. He must be picking up on my unmumsiness and preying on my moments of nappy-changing incompetence, perhaps living in hope of securing a bag of Quavers. He acted up on the days I had him because he knew I was an accident of motherhood.
But a few years (and another baby) later, I’ve started to accept that, for most of us, that’s just how it is.
Parents simply get the worst of it.
I know for certain I am not alone in this; the hilarious tales I’ve received from other parents have reaffirmed this. Like the time a dad I’d met told me that, at one stage, he and his wife were genuinely convinced that their son had a vendetta against them. Granny and Grandad reported he’d been ‘good as gold’, and staff at the nursery said how easy he was to look after. This was a conspiracy, he told me, because at home their son was the toddler version of Kevin. From We Need to Talk About Kevin.
Oh, how I laughed as he told me all about Toddler Kevin, but, amidst the humour, I could sense their genuine concern, coupled with their incredulity that the same boy could be a total shit with them and an absolute angel with others.
Mostly, I think we should remember it’s not a true FML moment at all and just be thankful that our children are behaving. The fact that my boys are ‘an absolute dream’ most of the time means people are happy to look after them. The alternative doesn’t bear thinking about …
However, in the spirit of honesty, I’ll admit (and it’s not something I’m proud of) that there have been times when I have found myself almost willing my children to behave badly for somebody else. Longing for somebody else to say, ‘Jesus, they were hard work today!’ so I can return a ‘welcome to my world’ shrug and relish the corroboration of my story. Maybe I just need to feel validated in my assertion that it’s all so bloody hard.
Have I mentioned that yet?
Get Out, Get Out, Wherever You Are
Looking back at some of the absolute worst days I’ve had as a parent, days I have felt completely lost, frustrated and bored (and subsequently guilty about feeling lost, frustrated and bored), there is definitely a pattern regarding the nature of the day I’ve had and what I have been doing.
It took me a good year or so to recognise that, on these days (those ‘I hate every minute of this!’ days), I have usually spent most, if not all, of my day at home.
I haven’t ventured out.
As a new mum, I regularly made the mistake of thinking I would find a day at home easier. Even with baby Henry, when I had one less child to wrestle in and out of the car, I regularly came to the conclusion that hanging out in the living room would be far less hassle, not least because getting out of the house at a reasonable time is a massive ball-ache when you have small children. You said you’d meet your friend at ‘elevenish’ and it’s already 12.30 and he’s due his lunch soon, and if you get there much after one o’clock it’ll be time for his nap, so there’s just no point in going …
There have been times where, in my tired and slightly delicate state, I have also felt that a day at home would be the safer option.
Much less risky.
No observable tantrums, no baby vomiting over a stranger in Starbucks (yes, that happened once), no embarrassing spectacle as you battle to get your child (who has contorted his body into a floorboard) back into the pram, shamefully resorting to bribing him with a Freddo while resisting the urge to shout, ‘I know he’s been shrieking for half an hour and doesn’t deserve a treat, but I don’t know how to do it without the sodding chocolate frog!’ (while crying). Venturing out could lead to all of these things. It’s best not to chance it, right?
Wrong, I think, actually.
I’ve come to realise that staying at home all day is almost always a terrible idea.
When I weigh up the hundreds of days I’ve spent at home versus the hundreds of days I’ve spent out and about, there is no doubt that the latter have been easier. Despite the obvious challenges attached to leaving the house (like packing a mountain of stuff, risking the meltdowns and worrying about the weather), nothing is mentally as tough as confinement in the house with small people.
I always have this vision that our ‘home days’ will be cosy and snuggly and full of Fun Mum craft activities, but the reality of a whole day at home is more often than not just a bit shit. I can usually be found running around trying to sort out endless piles of washing while supervising the baby�
��s choice of teether (‘Not the phone charger – Henry, take the charger out of his mouth!’), standing by for bum-wiping duties and reboiling the kettle for the umpteenth time.
When I do sit down with a probably tepid drink somebody is guaranteed to cry.
A day at home just feels soooooo loooooooooooooooooong.
Each minute feels like four when you are trying to hold a conversation (about the yoghurt raisins you have just found posted behind the radiator) over the background hum of the Early Learning Centre Lights and Sounds Keyboard in Demo Mode.
Fun Mum crafts are a fate worse than death – usually, a glittery and gluey fate – where I feel the rage boiling in me because my child specifically requested ‘five paints and five brushes’ but now I’ve set up the sodding paint station he only wants to use a highlighter pen (my highlighter pen, one of only two surviving ‘work pens’ I have to my name).
I have usually already lost the plot by the time This Morning starts. I don’t even get to watch Schofe the Silver Fox interview somebody with two penises because Henry starts complaining that he wants to watch his telly and I realise the children are at risk of Square Eyes, if there is such a thing, so I turn it off.
Some days, I start preparing lunch at 11.15 because, once lunch is over, it’s officially the afternoon, isn’t it? I know that’s bloody stupid logic and, in reality, I’m just dragging out the afternoon. But at least ‘after lunch’ sounds nearer to Daddy Rescue Time, nearer to the pyjamas/milk/book/bed sequence otherwise known as the ‘home straight’. I always feel awful for wishing the time away when I should be appreciating each moment (hello, again, Mum Guilt), but clock-watching is an easy habit to fall into when you are bouncing off the same four walls you bounced off the day before, and the day before, and …
The Unmumsy Mum Page 12