Really Truly.

There are so many things no one tells you about becoming a parent, but even more common are the things they DO tell you but you can’t comprehend. Lily is 9 weeks old in about 7 hours and there hasn’t been a moment in that time where I didn’t feel amazed and wondrous being a part of her world.

You go through stages with them on a daily basis.. There are times when you need them, when they need you, when you need to be away from them, and when you just don’t know what either of you need or want and just have to keep guessing till you get it right. Even when I need to be away from her for even a few minutes, I still end up lingering near her door. I still have this inner need to be close to her, to watch her and just be there.

When I need someone else to take care of her and my husband takes her (at this point I now have my first chance in the day to do anything I want or need to do, have a shower or just even check my mail) if I had a dollar for every time that the most pressing thing I can think of to do is to watch her with him, I’d have a lot of dollars.

How silly is that?

You hear about mothers becoming attached to their children and then having trouble letting them go. It’s not so much that, although I can certainly see how that could happen if you don’t take early precautions. It’s more that my priorities have changed so much that even when I have a chance to, I just get so much out of being near her and watching her that nothing else compares.

It’s overwhelming. How did I exist before her?

Y.K.Y.A.P.W Week 8

You Know You’re A Parent When,

1: You’d rather they throw up on you than themselves, you’re easier to change.

2: Your laptop screen has baby feet print on it.

3: All of the baby gear you own has been held in your mouth at least once.

4: Your day’s “to-do” list is no longer something carefully written in the morning. It’s now a “things I didn’t do today” list that you write at night.

5: You are still holding out hope to find a way to breastfeed and nap at the same time.

6: You’re prepared to watch Eddie McGuire on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire if it means you get 30 minutes to yourself with the baby asleep.

7: You start playing Lotto again.

8: Someone you don’t know, notices your baby-less rocking back and forth in public and says.. “I did the same thing for years after I had my babies..” ..

… years?… oiy…

9: Wearing your hair in a style not safe from the little hands that pull it strand by strand is just a fantasy. Till then it’s headbands, ponytails and bobby pins.

10: The Xbox controller has become a paper weight.

Fighting it out..

A baby, a toucan and a cowboy walk into a bar…

Sounds like the start of a mediocre joke I know, but what I’m about to tell you is nothing of the sort. I have the baby and the toucan, admittedly no cowboy, and I never thought the combination could cause such rough and tumble.

It was a beautiful Wednesday afternoon. Our baby girl had just finished having her afternoon feed and was spending her time swinging away in her rainforest swing. Now just to be clear, the swing comes with a mobile that has attached a monkey, a red frog and, the animal of the hour, a troublesome toucan.

As usual, she watched them go round with glee, greeting each one with a smile, a ‘hi my name’s Lily” coo and sometimes an erratic looking jolt-of-the-arm wave depending on who was coming round. There are times when she looks suspiciously at each one as they make their 20th or 21st round, but for some reason, not today. Today, she was equally impressed to meet each one time and time again. I glanced over every now and again, watching as she even made the occasional giggle as the conversation between them turned some what playful. Apparently she was quite fond of the red frogs redness.. and he in turn a fan of her mobility and lack of string attachment. With the flirtation strong, it was a match made in heaven.

Everything was going according to plan when along came that pesky toucan. Now Lily has told me before about this sneaky toucan, describing his shifty eyes and suspiciously over colourful facial features. Lily cooed a frowny coo that got my attention from the kitchen. I knew there could only be one rotating stuffed animal worthy of such a threat. Sure enough.. it was the toucan. They spent a few seconds exchanging blows, Lily with furrowed brow, Toucan with… still colourful beak. Then it was over, she was once again comforted by her other hanging friends, telling each one the story of what had happened, each time a little more exaggerated than the last.

Then the toucan came round again. I heard her coo once more telling him he was simply pushin’ his luck now. I come back out from the kitchen to supervise the encounter but before I could make it there, she was giggling. Apparently the toucan, now sweet hearted and just misunderstood, cracked a joke that turned the whole relationship around. They took a moment together and then parted their separate ways.

As the monkey and red frog come around this time, she tells them of how she has given the toucan a second chance, although she still thinks he has shifty eyes.

A baby and a toucan walk into a bar and the baby says to the toucan, what’s with the beak? When he comes around again, she says, no seriously, what’s that about?… Don’t give me that look… Don’t make me come up there.

Oh it’s on now…

Catalog Danger

It turns up at your door and flirts with you in the middle of the day when your partner isn’t home. It’s seductive and relentless and known for it’s tempting ways. It get’s to you, infiltrating your weaknesses and sparking your excitement.

 

It’s… the catalog.

 

It was this tiny little ad above that sucked me in. I saw it in the K mart catalog this week and thought gee that looks good. I was sucked in by it’s cuteness and Winnie the pooh.. SO I decided to go and buy it. Big mistake.

 

I arrived at Kmart at 10am.. they only opened at 9am and I went to little little Westfield nearby instead of the bigger ones to avoid any crowds. I get there and we have to park all the way at the back of the parking lot because there are people lined up for spots everywhere. I get inside and it’s like the easter show and Disneyland and the supermarket on Christmas Eve combined.. Seems that my new frame of mind where I skip over everything accept the baby section saw me conveniently miss the massive sign on page one that had 25% off all clothing store wide… eh.

 

Now I am not a people person at the best of times. I am the kind of woman who sees no problem doing Christmas shopping with a tazer and the ‘elbows out’ philosophy. Boy was this not the place for me.. there were people everywhere and suddenly I knew that my fight for a parking spot was only the beginning.

 

From here, I have two choices. I can leave, auction off my parking spot to the highest and most desperate bidder and leave in vein but slightly richer.. or, I can stay, get what I need (and possibly more) and make it home before midnight. What to do, what to do..? I saw someone walk to the checkout to join the queues with my pooh outfit. The fact that the queues were battling the great wall of china for length escaped me.. and I simply had to have what I came for. Since this checkout woman was protected by a community of her own children crash tackling her was out of the question so I trekked further and further into the black hole of the unknown.

 

Finally arriving at the baby wear section, after a slight detour past the women’s section.. and women’s change room and shoes… I’m confronted by thousands of mothers with strollers very unwilling to budge so I can get through. I am still in the newborn phase of stroller navigating.. I still offer courtesy smiles when I am in the way.. putting myself in an awkward position to save others.. and so on. Apparently most women hit a point where they think the world owes them something and screw anyone who gets in their way. So I wait, and wait and wait while other people clogg the aisles and push past each other, knocking things off the shelves as they go. After a while it kicks-in that I am just going to have to go for it. I adopt the uncertain approach of ‘my pram is bigger than yours’ and go for it. I reach my Romper outfit and grab it in two sizes because you can bet your boots, I ain’t doing this again.

 

The checkout is a whole other blog post, so is the part where we come out with bags and bags, it’s raining and I am running across the rooftop car park with baby, pram, shopping and end up in the car wetter than if i’d had a shower or two. I’ll spare you from it and jump to my conclusion.

Unless you are looking for something or need something.. DO NOT.. I repeat.. DO NOT bother looking through the catalogs that come to your mailbox. Everytime you circle something in them, the company who sent them is rubbing their hands together and thanking their lucky stars that technology hasn’t yet exhausted the cheaper-than-ever mailbox-drop avenue of marketing. If you DO in fact look through them and find something you like.. read the rest of the damn booklet and make sure there is not some huge, crowd drawing sale that you will inevitably become a part of because the $16.95 isn’t all it will cost you.

 

 

Disposable Vs. Cloth

I was one of these people who thought before the baby came that they would be using cloth nappies when possible, saving time, money and energy (both mine and the planet’s). But, like most preconceived ideas, after Lily came along, it became very obvious where I was going wrong. I figured out that it’s not a lie, babies do go through close to ten nappies a day and some of them are so messy it’s a toss up whether or not to use the $30 worth of baby wipes you just bought (which is about 5 of them by the way) or to just get out the hose and ask your husband to hold the kid out in the back yard.

 

But why not a bit of both? The trick to this decision is to buy both of them in advance because there will be an application for both. If your looking for a suggestion, I’d go with disposables on her bum, easy, quick, cheap and compared to having to do all that laundry as well as the mountain she gives me already? Nightmarish…

 

Disposable nappies go on their bum and the cloth nappies are a god-send for just about everything else. Bath time, burp time, feeding time, sitting up after feeding time, spew time.. the works. They even triple as a good kitchen tea towel if you are struggling for a use; although I am sure you won’t be. These things are fabulous for everything. Even when you just want to let them get their gear off and have a naked kick around, just whack one of these down first.

 

Do yourself a favor and save the good things you have in the cupboard from becoming baby spew towels and get some cloth nappies, they are designed to get dirty and wet and washed a million times after all. Your Ralph Lauren Polo that you’ll grab in a pinch if you have to on the other hand, was not.

Review: Fisher-Price Rainforest Swing

Or…. as I like to think of it, the quiet chair. Yes, they are expensive. Yes, you need to find yet another place to put them. Yes they are big, but, if you are like me, and enjoy your baby’s.. quieter times with the added bonus of watching them smile, you’re insane if you don’t have a swing.

This one is the Fisher Price Rainforest swing. While I was pregnant, I wanted the Papasan Fisher Price swing because it would have fitted in with my living room decor with it’s neutral colours.. Silly me, I somehow thought I would avoid the bomb site of baby gear enough to worry about my pre-baby decor?.. Now I see the light, or better yet, the colourful rotation of toucans.. And yes I am told they are a real bird, I have my doubts.

Our baby girl could sit in this thing for at least half an hour just watching the mobile and the world around her while she swings; even longer if she starts to fall asleep. If the timer turns off the mobile and the music though, look out, because sometimes it’s the only thing holding her smiley-faced good mood together until it turns off and she explodes like crazed banshee. Often a state she won’t recover from.

There are tons of different ones out there but this one works for us, the swing changes direction from a side to side movement to a front to back one and has at least two non-retarded sounding music options that are simple rain or forest sounds. Excellent for those occasional suicidal moments of if-I-hear-pop-goes-the-weasel-one-more-time hell..

This one is available in Australia for about $250 - $220 depending on where you go.. If you notice, I range pricing going downwards to satisfy the optimist in me, which now that I have had a child, is soon to be squashed like a bug in the baby retail world, so let me have my last moments.

So, if you value your sanity and lack of Menendez style rampages, nurture it and get the quiet chair.

Y.K.Y.A.P.W Week 7 Top Ten

You Know You’re A Parent When:

1: You find yourself putting aside savings money for expenses, Mortgage, Rates, Electricity, $1000 a month baby wipes…

2: Given a sale of 50% off Vera Wang or 50% off all Huggies Nappies and only being able to choose one, you choose Huggies and while the parent in you says ‘Vera Who?” the non parent in you cries…

3: The thought of your baby getting her immunization shots makes you want to cry more than her.

4: The taste of vodka becomes a distant memory that you remember fondly.

5: You give up on any form of respectability and start answering the door in your dressing gown, knowing that you have time to complete only 2 tasks before the person at the door gives up and leaves. ‘Pick up the baby’ and ‘put boobs away’ take up those first two slots.. Leaves no room for ‘dress appropriately’.

6: You’re booking up family visits, 6 weeks in advance.

7: You don’t remember the last time you used your oven.

8: You learn the language of Baby Grunts. Grunt once for shower, Grunt twice for swing. Grunt once, then smile giggle and frown for boob… Poke yourself in the eye and then grunt for mobile to be turned on.

9: You live 5 minutes form the ocean and have forgotten what it looks like.

10: You look at the Real Estate section of the paper, not because you want to, but because your house now has 7 toys for every pair of shoes you own.

Ode to the Onesie

Before we have babies, playing dress up sounds like the most fun in the world. Friends and family are buying you sailor outifts and fairy wings, left right and centre, and you have enough money to be chipping-in for a few unnecessary tiny outfits of your own.

Then, we have the baby. Suddenly we can’t even keep one tiny sock on the kid, and looking in the wardrobe just isn’t as exciting as it used to be. Your eye runs past all the things you were waiting to try on your little one and goes straight to the magic of baby wear. The Onesie. The Onesie is a gift, given to us by the gods of convenience and sponsored by the friends and board members of the anti-suicide board. It comes with a flawless design, and comes with a 75% less head-against-wall hitting guarantee. Someone needs to add to the pre parenthood manual with “Clothing - Maximum 3 studs!” all with a page of it’s own for emphasis.
Reason’s we love the Onesie:

• It’s all in one piece, which means it goes on and comes off faster and doesn’t need to move anywhere to change a nappy.
• It has three studs and is easy to do up when you have tiny arms and legs waving around like they just don’t care.
• It stays down!! Meaning that whatever your activity, eating, sleeping, playing, even ‘flying baby’, will leave your baby still looking respectable, and not like she’s wearing a seven layer scarf and matching socks.
• They are usually iron free! When you have a baby, the word “ironing” might as well be Pakistani for “spaghetti” because if someone said it to you, you’d reply, “huh?”

The good rule of thumb here is save outfits for big occasions. Day in day out?.. Buy 10 different weather appropriate onesies  and save yourself the pain of a four layer baby outfit that by the time you get it all on, it needs to all comes off again.

The Poop vs Fart Conspiracy

Which is it? Thing is, even if you think you know, you have to check just in case. This is a time when a good box of nappies that can be sealed and re-sealed is a must. Although, that being said, I can’t recall a single time in seven and a half weeks when I have checked my girls nappy, even minutes after it has been freshly put on her, when it hasn’t had at least one wee in it. So I don’t know who these lucky bastards who are checking, getting nothing, and leaving them on are. If I find one of them, I think it only fair they pay for a portion of my nappy costs in the interests of unofficial parenting communism.

So, you hear the noise, feel the popping feeling that we all know could mean anything from, ‘look mummy, I can fart’ to ‘oh mummy.. you need to change my nappy, and my pants, and your shirt and then you might want to wash your arm off.’ Which is it? I look for indications on her face but I get nothing.. I would say if I combine the facial expression results from all those recorded I would find equal numbers of pride and upset faces for both candidates. One thing I do know for sure is that this is one conundrum that certainly can’t be pin pointed on the basis of smell. Some of the non poop ones are the worst smell-wise and could clear a room with a single giggle and pop. - No snap required.

In summer, this problem is not so bad, a singleted two stud onesie and your done, but in winter.. well crap. You have the blankets, and extra socks, the bottom half of the jumpsuit onesie and then the nappy, but with the added gauntlet of your baby getting cold and making an impromptu performance that could contain a lucky dip of outcomes. The best of which being everything gets wee on it and your baby needs to be stripped, cleaned and the process started again.. At worst it could require the bathing of both you and your kid, as well as some sort of carpet scrubbing. And if your really unlucky, all at about 3am on a Tuesday morning in about 10 degrees Celsius, (conversion: fucking-cold-for Australian’s degrees Fahrenheit) The insult to this injury is when the poop you were looking for in the first place turned out to be just another fart and all of this was avoidable.

Wee is easy.. I know when my little schmoopa has wee’d because the front of her nappy changes in feel from a paper towel feel to more of a magic play dough wrapped in paper towel feel. But she still seems to stump me time and time again with the other. When will I grow into an experienced parent who can tell the difference?

And they say there is no mystery in the world anymore…

Y.K.Y.A.P.W Week 6 Top Ten

You Know You’re A Parent When…

1: 6am is a sleep in.

2: Getting the laundry AND dishwasher done makes you happy.

3: You STILL catch yourself rocking and swaying even when you are not holding your baby.

4 : You catch yourself humming baby songs even when you’re not with your baby.

5: You go to get your baby out of the car seat and then remember you left her with her father at home.

6: You have an opinion on which brand of baby shower lotion is the best.

7: Having a shower alone becomes a distant fantasy.

8: When you finally have a chance to sleep, you end up staying awake thinking about your baby and everything you need to do the next day. With a hint every now and again of wondering why they don’t make more domestically available household robots to do your chores.. one Roomba just isn’t enough considering the magnitude of concept.

9: You’ve watched the same episode of Gilmore Girls at 4am every morning for the last week and only just noticed.

10: You’re too tired to finish your blog posts.

Review: Fisher-Price Rainforest Mobile

This is our first Must-Have product, and trust us, it’s fabulous. It seems far too expensive when you’re in the market for a mobile, but in our experience, if you’re in the market for a play toy, sleep aid, calming tool AND mobile, it’s just the ticket.

It moves and plays music (four to choose from) as well as two levels of volume. Best of all, it has a remote that you can use from any line-of-sight to turn it back on when your little one gets restless. After the 18 minutes of playing time and she won’t even know that you’re there!

The unit attaches to your cot or crib in a rather specific way, there is not much room for adjustment. Although it says not to add any extra straps to attach it, I had to use some ribbon to make sure it was strongly fastened. The top-heavy design didn’t suit my cot, but I made it work anyway and it is magical. I was expecting an overrated music box and I got a wonderful accessory that keeps my girl happy when she is awake, asleep, sleepy or agitated. And the rainforest sounds on one setting are so calming they could even send me to sleep.

Here in Oz, it’s available for about $79.00 in most places and worth every cent.

But! it DOES go through batteries very fast, taking 4 D batteries. So, when you’re trying to get your little one to drift off to sleep, or they have sleepy eyes, make use of the ‘music only’ function and save the power of using the mobile when they aren’t going to see it anyway.

Review: Woolworths Select Nappies

After clearing out the supermarket of the Huggies nappies that were on sale for $28.00 a box.. (104 inside) Awesome. Josh and I saw the Woolworths Select brand on sale for $5.95 a box (54 inside) That was about $16.00 off. So, we thought, ‘hey, now is the time to give these a whirl’. All I can say is they would want to be even cheaper.

They didn’t work out for us at all. My daughter leaked through them three times in one day, wetting her clothes. I wouldn’t buy these again for more than something to wipe up with. Actually come to think of it, they are almost cheaper than a roll of paper towel. Maybe that’s the destiny of the other 50 still sitting in the box that I am otherwise never going to use.

So, after all, Huggies it is. They are not that much more expensive, in fact, doing the maths, they are almost the same being about 40 bucks for 100. But Huggies are so much better quality. If you’re tempted to try them, wait till they are on sale, that way you won’t feel guilty about not using the remainder of them as more than a tea towel.

Review: Heinz Baby Basics Pacifier

When you finally decide that you can’t deal with the screaming any longer and you will give a dummy/ soother/ pacifier a whirl, sometimes, you find they just don’t want to know about it! A lot of the dummies we have tried seem to be the same, and equally disappointing to my little girl, but this one seems to have taken her fancy on those late and dark I-just-want-to-suck-something nights. It’s the Heinz Baby Basics pacifier and the only reason I have one is because it was left over from a baby shower game. It’s fantastic and works almost every time when I desperately need it too. It has a funny new shape to it that is almost angled flat on the bottom.

To be honest I have no idea what the magic is, but it works for us. From what I can see they can be a little expensive, but worth it if you’re struggling for some sanity. So if you are trying to find something that might just work when nothing else seems to, give this one a go.

Dinner for Breakfast.

When I first got pregnant, my Mother in Law told me that when she first had my husband, she used to set the table for dinner first chance she had in the morning.

Before you have your babies, people tell you these things, but somehow, they just don’t sink in. It’s not that you don’t believe them or that you think you’ll be better, or even that it’s all an exaggeration. It just doesn’t make it through to scare you as much as it should.
They say you’ll never have time for sex and not have time to miss it much. They say you’ll have no time to yourself. They show us the stereotype image of a first time mum looking tired and haggard, spit-up on clothes, messy unwashed hair, unchanged out of track pants for days… Somehow, this also doesn’t scare us the way it should.

But right now I find myself sitting here, 5:30am, expressing because my morning milk supply is so strong it hurts, husband’s bathrobe with unwashed hair, baby throw up on my neck, thinking about what I am going to make for dinner, and writing my to- do list for the day. And if I have time before the baby wakes up again, I will fantasize about getting even one thing on that list actually done this week. The worst part? They told me this would happen! But, it just didn’t sink in… After being cleaned up completely yesterday, in about 18 hours or so, our house once again, looks like a bomb site. How does this happen every single day?

So I understand if you can’t, but if you can, take my advice..

- You WILL look like the stereotype mum and dad so do yourself a favor and go and invest in some classy looking track pants now because you WILL live in them and when you start with trackies that are close to ten years old you’re not giving yourself a head start.

- You WON’T have enough time for your pets. No matter how much you love them and convince yourself before hand that you will make the extra effort and still be able to take them out all the time.. nope. Believe it now and save yourself the surprise. I say surprise instead of guilt because the guilt will come either way. It’s not that you won’t be able to walk them once a week or so, it’s just that the pats and talks you had with them all day long beforehand, those are what will be missing.

- Even if you had time to drink it, you won’t have time to make coffee. Or tea or anything else. In fact, you may find yourself drinking out of the original packaging more than ever although the baby books say drinking directly from the tap is bad for hygiene. So if you can, try and shop for drinks that you don’t need a glass for.. juice boxes, cans.. even small bottles of water.. Everything helps.

- You won’t have time to make any food. Ok, this one is tricky.. Make and eat are two completely different things. Making food is very tough with a baby.. Even a sandwich is very hard to get together.. Where the problem here is, that a packet of chips on the other hand, is very easy to eat with a baby. It’s very tempting to fill your cupboard with the kinds of things that you can pop the bag and snack away. This isn’t a positive nod to your already unstable sense of post pregnancy body image.

Important Note: So the aim is one handed foods that aren’t going to make you cry later on.

I made a huge mistake early on, I convinced myself I was going to be good and filled my fridge with good things, healthy sandwich things for lunch, yogurt, vegetables, salad.. etc. Two days later I ended up with a packet of Doritos from the servo because it was easier to drive down with the baby and buy them AND eat them, than it was to make and consume any of the healthy things I had bought.

Come to grips with these things before the birth.

Now the baby is calling.. then I have laundry, dishes, feeding, working and if we had time to eat at the table for dinner, I’d be setting that now too.

Photos.. Don’t do it

Something I wish someone had told me before today. I should have known to be honest but it just doesn’t occur to you really until your doing it. When your home, alone, tired and looking and feeling like a mess, under no circumstances think this is a good time to look at old photos of yourself. It will not end well.. My breasts were higher, my face was thinner, I was lighter, nicer hair, more time to do my hair, nicer, smaller clothes.. less stretch marks.. it won’t end. Don’t let it begin.

Thing is, you will feel like this ANYWAY, but seeing them, eh it sparks something else that makes you feel like shit. All of a sudden the day time infomercials for lap band surgery don’t seem so out of reach and their payment plan really does sound reasonable. Most likely, for the moment,you will swear off food, vow to exercise and throw out all the junk food in your house.

Old pictures of you and your partner = water and celery diet that won’t last making you feel even worse.

Don’t do it to yourself.

New Outfits for Mummy.

The last few months of your pregnancy, you dream about new clothes, fitting into something other than your almost worn out pregnancy moo moo and having more than one pair of pants that fit. However, there is a catch to the post birthing shopping spree that someone left out of the government sponsored “make time for you” hand book. It’s called…

.. Baby Proof Clothing.

Once you have managed to loose the baby weight, if not the baby inches, and you’re back out and ready to look for some new clothes there are a few new things to keep in mind.

1: No one told me that even though the baby and associated weight would be gone that my chest would be so ginormous that I could no longer find any piece of clothing to fit my enormous bosoms AND the rest of my body.. My departure from moo moo land, not as hasty as I would have liked. The next few months while breastfeeding I am destined to be three sizes different between my chest and body measurements. Hell, at this rate I could still have a baby under there and no one would know any different.

2: When your dying to get back into the plunging neck lines and feel sexy for the first time in a long time (especially if unlike me, you are enjoying your new bustline you always wished you had) you don’t think that the excitement of buying your first lusted after neckline will be closely followed by disappointment of it being covered in baby throw up. But how is that different to anything else you wear, you ask? I’ll tell you. When your baby is on your shoulder, usually mid burp, if some spew escapes, it NEVER just soaks into the towel you have carefully covered yourself with up there.. instead, unlike the movies, it trickles down over the top like running down glass. Down your shoulder, down your chest, down your cleavage and making it’s final escape into either the buffer of your bra, or soaking into the stomach part of your tops material. This is damage that can not be covered with a cardigan my friends. All of a sudden, all your sexy new top makes for is more laundry, and before it even makes a public debut.

3: Your days of black are not over. Time for colour and pattern now that your not the size of a house you think?.. no.. sorry, Because between baby spit up, leaking breasts and the extra sweat you get from the work of carrying around an extra 5 or 6 kilos of baby, you need all the concealing help you can get.

I could go on, but I may have scared you all enough.

My “Stuff” Table

I have a little table next to my chair in the living room, in fact it is more along th lines of an ottoman with a flat top. Before Lily came its contents included my work diary, my laptop, a myer catalogue, bills, lip gloss and a pen.

Now it is a much different story. My lap top remains but most of the time is just an extra flat surface to house anything that I need to balance, including a drink or finger food when I have a baby in my arm and breastfeeding pillow taking up all the space. At the moment as I look over, it has a tigger rattle, a baby gund wrist rattle, 2 cloth nappies (used for feeding, not as nappies) an unused disposable nappy, a toys r us baby catalogue, baby nail cutting scissors and a left over thank you card I still haven’t sent.

The bills don’t even make it over here now.

Babies Are Expensive.. But Do You Know Why?

Everyone will always tell you babies are expensive. From the moment they are conceived, it’s one thing after another. But one thing they don’t tell you to factor in, the reason you may go broke, the straw and the source of resentment?..

…Batteries.

No one tells you this. When you are scrimping and saving to buy that swing before the baby comes, or the mobile after she arrives, or the breast pump or the monitor or anything else you buy it’s safe to say you can factor in another 15 or 20 bucks in batteries that are never included. Since the companies hate to include a wall plug attachment for power, most of the time you stuck being a battery companies bitch with their over priced, not long lasting bulk packaged product.

They are in bed with the baby companies, in cahoots to make sure that you need 3 x DD’s that only come in a package of 2 and 4 (meaning when you replace them in two weeks you have to buy another pack to make up three.. and again the time after) as well as 1 AA (sold in fours) and 1 AAA (sold in fours as well.)

So if your buying a few toys in one go, go ahead and tack on another 20% to the price before you go and buy because that is your battery tax. It’s stuff like this that makes you think you could make your own baby swing.. with lights.. and sounds.. and movement.. and… damn it here, just take my whole wallet.

Y.K.Y.A.P.W - Week 5 Top Ten

You Know You’re A Parent When:

1: You stop noticing that wonderful smell of regurgitated, slightly acidic milk that your baby kindly donates back to your face, hands, chest, back, hair, any kind of clothes (yours or theirs) and furniture. When it just becomes one of those things that you no longer notice or think about when you leave the house.

2: The sound of the once infuriatingly upbeat music that accompanies the fisher price swing, now calms you down as much as your baby. And on the other hand frightens the life out of you when you notice that it has stopped as you wonder how many seconds you have to turn it back on before the crying starts.. Will you make it?

3: When you think of your days and outings using nappies as a unit of time measurment.. today is going to be about a 5 nappy day.. unless we go to the supermarket aftrerwards in which case it could be easily end up a seven or a sixer.  “I’ll be home in six nappies huney!” as you run out the door.

4: When you give up on showering for yourself and take your baby in with you, this way anything that gets on you washes off.. both of you. Gone are the days of conditioning treatments and face masks.

5: You finally get some Mummy & Daddy time in the bedroom.. Dads look out! it is time.. You get naked, cuddle in, get under the covers and put the fan on so it’s cozy under there.. Share a few kisses.. But somehow, without noticing it, both of you slowly turn the conversation to unscheduled baby things and to do lists. By the time you realize, you just know you don’t have enough baby nap time to enjoy each other and from there it comes down to a mini nap or the laundry. That is if one of you didn’t fall asleep already.

6: Your shopping trolley is half full of nappies, one quarter cleaning products, one eighth batteries and one eighth food.

7: You catch yourself rocking  and bouncing even when your not holding the baby.

8: You start to think that they should make mobiles for adults.

9: Everything baby is expensive so you start thinking “I’m sure i could make something like this myself.. at least once a day. Before you know it, the worst offenders are DIY-ing paper towel and sticky tape nappies and trying to macqyver a walker out of cardboard boxes and your old bbq’s caster wheels.

10: You get home from a full day and see that you forgot to wipe some of the baby poop off your arm from that morning, and part of you just isn’t surprised or phased..

Parents with Prams Parking

There are limited spaces at the supermarket that cater for parents with prams, and at our local supermarket it is often packed. I have come to rely on these spots not because they are close to the front door, but because my fellow pram wielding parents seem to be part of the minority who are capable of parking in a straight line. Granted we all have a common goal, to get in and out of baby seats and manage our strollers as best as possible on top of shopping and the cars around us. But, it seems to me that this works out for everyone and the five spaces available are usually the only ones occupied yet straight and evenly spaced.

In case you got this far and are wondering, no, I don’t have a small life that should require a short bus, I’m getting to the crux of my point slowly but surely.

So, long story short, they are an important few spaces of car park, wherever you are. Bringing me to my point. My boen to pick is this. If you don’t have a pram, stroller, car seat, child, or even know someone in any country who has a child, what the fuck are you doing in my spot?

If you are one of the people that do this, I discourage you to read on as this will not bode well for you.

You have the ENTIRE CAR PARK to park your dirty banged up rubbish car, throw your cigarettes on the ground and swear loudly and proudly like you belong in government housing commission for all the wrong reasons.. Is it so hard for you to walk the few extra meters and ruin someone else’s shopping experience, are you that lazy?

This comes about because last week I was gearing up to do the shopping, we got there, parked up the back because it was packed with school holidays tag alongs , no problem. I strap Lily in her carrier and off we go. i get half way down the parking area and a woman packing up her car in one of these spots catches my eye. She is looking at me with a disgusted face on.. ok.. then the looking turned to staring, intensional or not. When I walked past her, I couldn’t hold back.

“Glad you have a pram there..” I say with sarcasm and a repulsed expression of my own, she didn’t know who she was trading facials with obviously.. She will not win.

“What?” she says, clueless to what I am saying.

“Do you have a kid with you? A pram? A stroller? Since you in a parents with prams spot?” Then I paused and stopped walking.. It was only fair that I give her obviously under developed brain time to compute the words I ahve used that are more than one syllable.

Insert her cats-bum face here when she says, “Well actually… ” She goes on to tell me that she does have a 5 year old at home and at least she doesn’t bring her kid to the supermarket.. Umm.. Ok. She is parked in a Pram spot with no kid.. and I am the bad mum for taking my baby to the supermarket, so terribly taboo obviously since they discourage it by giving me, and my kind, our own parking spots? Right. Glad I got that straight. I didn’t realize all these years that the key to these and disabled parking spots was just that if you had ever seen a person in a wheel chair, then well, by all means park in our spots for the rest of your life.

The woman yells some things in my direction as I walk away. I care.. I can read. She asked me if I had something to say to come back and say it, then called me a name.. Ahh the irony as I turned back as an experiment and she quickly got in her car. So brave.

My message here is this, if you are one of these knobs that parks in specified parking because you are just simply too lazy to drive around, keep going around till you get a regular one. The universe will look more kindly upon you. Is it really worth it to be that selfish?

Sleep or Awake?

One of the most surprising parts of parenthood for me so far is sleep. Not the sleep they tell you about, or lack there of, but what happens when you do in fact get to close your eyes.

We spend so long during our days caring for our newborns, loving them, feeding them, getting them to sleep, holding them.. the works, so it’s no wonder that the caring doesn’t stop when we go to sleep. Every night for the first few weeks of our daughters settling in at home I would dream about holding her and feeding her, doing the general things or even being in bed just laying in the same position, but whilst holding our little girl. Sounds sweet I know, but then I wake up. In a few moments of mini terror, I enter panic mode as I notice my baby girl is suddenly not in my arms.

I remember saying to my husband over and over, “where’s the baby?”, “Have you got the baby?” … several times a night.

After a few more seconds I realize I am in bed, it’s ok, she is in her cot… but that does not help at the time I can assure you. When it happens I’m seconds away from looking under the bed and under the sheets thinking I have dropped her or lost her in the bedroom.

It makes for less than restful sleep.

It’s taken over a month now before I can say I only have these dreams a few times a week, you’d think it wouldn’t last this long but for me, it has. It’s the things like this they don’t tell you about.