10 things no one tells you about parenthood

Check out this amusing list of things you only learn once you have kids, from the US.

It's a pretty good list, although I think he's left out some very important ones, such as:

11. You were never really tired before.

You thought you were exhausted when you used to stay up all night drinking on Thursday then work all day before heading out to another party on Friday. You believed you were shattered during a week of exams at school. But then you had a baby and realised that it's possible to drift through an entire year drifting in and out consciousness without any proper REM stage while simultaneously working the straps of a Baby Bjorn or singing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star as dawn breaks. You now know what it means to have tired bones.

12. Half-eaten nursery food is still palatable.

A biscuit - sodden and gummed for 20 minutes - can still be popped into your mouth after being passed on from your toddler. Cold chips and abandoned fish fingers are perfectly fine, if eaten while hovering over the sink before loading the dishwasher. In fact, almost any manner of food fits into your diet as long as it is handled and spurned first by your offspring.

13. It's not so important to be 'cool'. (pictured)

Kids demonstrate that it's a lot more fun to roll around on the floor, make animal noises and funny faces, and generally act goofy than to pose in the corner, sneering and making snide comments about other people's outfits. But beware - from their teens to their own parenting years they'll forget this rule. Be prepared to soldier on in your unhipness.

Got any of your own?

Comments

[mstarr]

you want to be much more like your mother than you ever thought

[jay]

Babies do not sleep like a baby ;)

[Lazy Mummy]

They never tell you that once your child is walking, you'll get in the habit of talking them through road-crossing etiquette ("Look right, look left, look right again" or the other way round as I now have to remember in the US) and you'll still be doing it when they're 18.

Since realising that I repeat the same mantra every time we cross the road (she's nearly 4 now) I have a lot more sympathy for my mother who put up with our groans of "MUM! We're not 5 any more and we know how to cross the road ourselves now" for years during our teens.

(And is it just me who has realised the little ditty "Whenever you got to cross the road Always remember the Green Cross Code" has surfaced from their subconscious since becoming a parent? Or does that date me too much?)

[HGFC]

They never tell you that you WILL hold your hand out to catch that vomit....

[Sue]

Good point! Did anyone ever try those shoulder carrier jobbies? We did. Tiddler loved it for about ten minutes then howled non-stop until we took him out and went back to the 'proper' way of transporting him - ie, held up close and personal against the parental chest.

But I have known parents whose babies adored being carried for hours over fells and up Munroes in the things!

[Weaselwords]

Bah, three-wheelers and that "off-road" advertising rubbish. Sure you can take 'em "off-road" - but you're pretty much snookered when you come to a stile - especially if you're on your own. I took my MacLaren cross-country all the time when dog-walking. And when I got to a stile, I could fold the buggy and chuck it over the stile with one hand (baby under other arm, foot on dog-lead). My brother wasted a load of money on a three-wheeler for his first child and then went out and bought a lightweight folding buggy and didn't even bother ever getting the three-wheeler out of the loft for his second child. Anyway, MacLarens are just as good for buggy-racing (er, or is that just my family??).

[Sue]

I loved my good old MacLaren buggy - lightweight, folded easily with one hand and rested peacefully behind my front door when unwanted without falling over too often.

I quite like those three-wheeler jobbies though, that you can take off road! Bumpety bumpety bump. What fun for tiddlers! Faster mummy faster!

[Kim]

Weaselwords - I imagine they're bought by the same people who buy 4x4s, which are expensive to purchase, expensive to run, and presumably unwieldy and difficult to park, as well as utterly unnecessary in a flat urban environment. The idea must, I think, be one of self-aggrandisement: to take up as much space as possible to the inconvenience of as many other people as possible.

[Weaselwords]

On the subject of pushchairs: I find the popularity of these gigantic new pushchairs (travel systems?) completely bemusing. A lightweight folding buggy will fit through most supermarket checkouts, but these new tank-style pushchairs have to be taken throught the extra-wide checkout lanes. And surely you must a car with the most enormous boot to put those things in. And as for dragging it up and down steps etc...

[Kim]

Agreed, Sue - I had that sudden insight into what life was like for wheelchair users. I spent a lot of time feeling a kind of fury at shops that had doors that were too heavy to push open with one hand, while you wheeled the pushchair in the other, or which had steps. Also shops that had very narrow aisles between the racks so you couldn't get through with a pushchair. And heaven knows what it must be like with a double buggy.

Also, our local John Lewis had just one lift, which was very very slow, and that drove me mad too. I was never keen on the idea of putting the buggy on the escalator, though I know some mums do.

[Sue]

Kim - one thing I really became aware of with a pram, which is how physically difficult the world is when you have wheels. I think it made me wise up to the difficulties that wheel-chair users have to face far more. Suddenly, you are desperately looking around for the nearest slope, not to mention the automated doors.

on the other hand, shopping with a buggy was quite nice as there was always a hook to hang the bags on, which I missed when the buggy was outgrown. Though of course you had to be careful not to make the bags too heavy, as wehn you took your hands away - Ker-rash! And tiddler half upside down yelling their head off and everyone going BAD MOTHER at you all around!

[Dectora]

Elunid: even Margaret Thatcher admitted that she recalled very little of the first fortnight after having twins--and she had a nanny.

[Kim]

Nobody told me you needed a degree in mechanical engineering: all that fiddling around with baby slings, putting prams together, setting up travel cots, etc etc. Good job I had someone else in the house who could make sense of it.

One of the other things I didn't realise is how much physical hard work is involved - babies get very heavy very quickly! And carrying a baby around in one arm and a pushchair in the other is no picnic.

[Natasha]

The sheer contradiction of motherhood. You yearn for your own time back, a lie in, to be able to put on your make-up without sticky fingers in your blusher, to not have slobber or chocolate on your clothes to have your own life back and to not feel harrassed 24/7. Then if you ever do get away, you miss it and you can't wait to get back to it, cause it is all that really matters!

[sakura]

I used to be not exactly the practical type. Cue two children and 5 years on. I can not vomit myself when cleaning it up, pick up a floating poo from the bath, clap and cheer when youngest one does a wee on command, I dont mind grubby fingers on my dinner plate, and Im not as fussy as I once was.

I think the thing is, children makes a woman grow up, and fast. Self obsession is replaced rapidly by obsession with the child/ren.

Mine taught me what the word love really meant, as soppy as that sounds.

[KM]

You can orgasm during childbirth?

I would never have had that elective C-section if I'd known.

[Gipsy]

oh yes, what a great list. Except for number 9. No worms, dear lord, please no worms.

I particularly relate to number 8. I just let those non-parents go, smile, nod and go ah ha, mmmm, and other yes I'm listening to you noises that you make when your children spout meaningless rubbish. If another parent is standing there, I wait till the non-person is gone and then carry on the 'real' conversation. As in 'I'll never let my kids watch tele tubbies' and then after they're gone the parents can swap advice on which are the best programmes to get that precious 20 minutes in which to cram shower/teeth brushing/toilet going/breakfast eating/putting on makeup/getting dressed.

Or, and this is more fun, listen to them and then just continue the same conversation above with the parents as if what they said didn't matter (because it doesn't).

[mumoftwo]

LOL, Caroline!

[Jane]

That breastfeeding can be very difficult and not it's not just because the mother is a feckless, lazy minx who can't wait to get down the pub.

I spent months with my nips stuffed into a turbo suction electric pump. The right one for some unfathomable reason, only produced a dribble. And I got so tired of being reminded by well meaning relatives that I should "keep trying because it's the best thing for baby". You think? And there was me pouring curry and lager down her throat.

Come to think of it, I kept hearing sentences from relatives beginning with words like:

"It's none of my business but . . "

"I've just read that babies shouldn't . . . ."

"Not interfering but . . ."

[caroline]

That Clarins Beauty Flash Balm does not transform your grey exhausted sleep deprived pig eyed palour into a fresh faced rosy glowing healthy skin. The only 'flash' you get is in your mind of your former self before kids!

[Carol]

By the time baby #2 comes around, you realise that it's not going to kill said child when you pick the binky up from the floor, pop it in your mouth and give it back to the child. You can indeed run the sweeper when your angel is napping, in fact, it helps them nap....as does the dishwasher and the washing machine.

You also realise that a crying child who has been fed, diapered, and burped will indeed survive for the ten minutes you take to go to the loo or take a shower.

If only my oldest child had the benefit of my laid back attitude I had with my second child......we both may have gotten more sleep that very first year.

I've survived raising 2 girls and look forward to grandchildren. Why? Because they go HOME of course.

[Eluned]

No one told me how much more tiring and difficult having twins would be. I had such an easy time with my first two boys and then the twin girls came along and oh.my.god. The logistics of breastfeeding/burping baby twins on your own are just ridiculous, I actually, at one point, had to resort to the dreaded routine style of parenting. Eeps. Real low point. Thank God for village communities and big families!

Also, I wasn't told that breastfeeding hurts your tummy at first. Or that you can orgasm during childbirth. haha.

[Sue]

One thing I remember learning was why the first mum in my department gave a semi-hysterical laugh when, on her returning after maternity leave, I remarked that she must have had a lovely easy time doing nothing but going to NCT coffee mornings....

(I also thought she was joking when she said the best thing about coming back to work was being able to go to the loo when she wanted. I really thought she was joking.)