Things Parents Won’t Tell You Until After You Have A Kid

I don’t know if its simply a case of being oblivious, or a world-wide conspiracy worthy of shape-shifting lizard Queens, but who can honestly, hand on heart, tell me that parenting is exactly how they imagined it to be?

I might be a special case –  I wasn’t exactly in the parenting zone quite yet when I got pregnant – or I might just be a horribly selfish crappy mother (likely) but it seems to me that certain things get…left out shall we say. I certainly didn’t hear any of this stuff BEFORE I got knocked up. Hmm. Here are a few things I wasn’t told until after I’d had a kid

Yeah, forget sleep. Like forever.

Obviously I knew young babies woke up in the night, I’m not completely dense. But I was under the distinct impression that after the first 6 weeks they started to kip properly. HA HA HA. Try 22 months of being woken up anywhere between 3 and 17 times, either by wailing or wails of BOT BOT. And it wasn’t just me – no-ones kid sleeps. You get the odd freak yes, but at least 80% of the kids I know were APPALLING sleepers. I nearly had a break down over lack of sleep. This was the point where suddenly every one with older kids was like, oh yeah, totally normal! Gee, thanks for the heads up.

Breastfeeding is NOT the most ‘natural thing in the world’

Sorry, but if it was surely it would be easy?! It wouldn’t involve cracked open, bleeding nips and your baby posseting rusty coloured sick because of said nips? Crying because it hurts so much? No one told me that it might be like that. The only reason I stuck it out was because I couldn’t be arsed with sterilising bottles.

You’ll never be alone…everrrr

Please, child, will you not just let me wee in peace?!

Bye bye, autonomy! See ya later!

Who ever told you that once you have a kid that’s it, game over. Your entire life is at the beck and call of a pint sized dictator. And heaven forbid you give them the wrong coloured sippy cup or offer them a vegetable. Expect Armageddon in a potty. Who told you kids were irrational little monsters before you had one? Anyone? No?

The Fear

Now, you get told about how much you’ll love them (I’m not a complete witch, that one is totally true) but no-one told me about The Fear. The constant, underlying worry that something bad is going to happen to them. This is compounded by the fact that children have absolutely no regard for their own personal safety. You’ll turn around for one minute and your previously unmoving baby will have done a triple roll right off the bed.

I love my son, and being a Mum is great – but it’s definitely a LOT harder than I had been lead to believe. And you know the worse thing? I find myself doing it! Labour? Nah, wasn’t that bad. Sleeping? Hey, you get used to it and he’s a great sleeper now (apart from refusing to go to bed and coming in our bed in the night and getting up early and falling out of bed and…)

What did you think it would be like?