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365 days in the motherland
Your relationship will undoubtedly change, it will get worse before it gets better. Your conversations will be dominated by poo colour, poo frequency and whose turn it is to do those buggering bottles. You will get irritated with each other. A lot. You will snap at each other. A lot. You will want to file for divorce on the grounds of once again being interrupted as you are half way through counting out the formula scoops and having to start over. You will look back and laugh at this episode but at the time it is a
You will look back (often through rose tinted glasses) at your carefree, childfree life. You will remember when your evening out would start at 8pm and continue well into the small hours. Your evenings now still continue well into the small hours but you are bleary eyed and mixing bottles at 3am rather than cocktails. Staying out past 8pm post baby is just plain rebellious and you know you will pay for it in the morning.
You will look back at hangovers and wonder what the fuck you were ever
Aside from the above trials and tribulations of motherhood, it is the small details that will be the most significant memories of the year just gone.
The previous 12 months are not measured in pay rises and promotions or material gains. The cherished moments we will remember are no longer of drunken nights out or long afternoons at the pub and the photographs we will look back at fondly are mostly of a small bald
So yes you do change. In many many ways that you tell yourself you wont before you have kids. You swear you will not saturate your Facebook page with pictures of your gummy offspring as you know no one really cares, but you cant help yourself.
You promise you will not have a house full of plastic, colourful crap – twelve months on and our lounge looks like a multicoloured tsunami has rolled through it.
You promise you wont let a baby change your life, but it does, and you are suddenly OK with that.
The
Of course you will remember those first few really tough months of parenthood – trying to breastfeed and your baby having none of it. Starving your own child as she just wouldn’t latch on. Sitting cross legged trying
You will recall sitting in a heap texting a friend at the crack of dawn asking them how to sterilise and make up bottles as in your sleep deprived, hormone induced state this seemed like the most complicated thing in the world to do. Within two days it became
You will never forget the hours upon hours, days upon days of your baby crying to the point of insanity. You will remember the guilt you felt at screaming back at her in the irrational hope that she would see it from your side and just give you a fucking break. The time you had to pull over as you couldn’t see through your own tears as the relentless screaming had actually got you teetering on the edge.
You will also remember not being able to sit up after the C section and not being able to lift your own baby or walk up and down
You will remember standing naked in front of a mirror for the first time after giving birth and not recognising your own body. You were in equal parts horrified and in awe of what stood before you.
As time goes on the memories start changing and those darker months begin to fade as they are replaced with fresh, much happier recollections of new motherhood.
You will remember when you got your first proper smile (not a wind induced grimace),
You will remember when that gorgeous gummy smile was suddenly taken over by a first tooth, you will also remember your heart breaking during the sleepless nights when there was nothing you could do to soothe the pain.
You will remember being worried when other
You will forget the sheer exhaustion you felt when you were up every few hours through the night feeding, but you’ll never forget gently nuzzling the back of her neck while she fell asleep in your arms thinking there was nowhere else on earth you’d rather be.
You’ll remember
You will lose count of the times you and your partner find yourselves bent over the cot marvelling at the beauty of your baby while she sleeps, or stopping in the middle of the street just to lean into the pram to check she is still as perfect as she was when you left home 10 minutes
You’ll remember how amazing it felt when your baby started to properly communicate with you. The pride of teaching them to point and clap and hi five. The feeling of pure love when you are driving, rocking out to Heart FM and your baby holds her hand up to hold yours.
You’ll eventually forget how bloody awkward it felt turning up to baby groups on your own and scanning the room looking for someone that didn’t look like they were A) into eco parenting (as quite frankly I didn’t have the energy to justify the Aldi nappies hanging out of my
You’ll look back with pride on the first time you took your baby abroad. For us it was a three week trip to Australia and New Zealand so not for the faint hearted, but all the pre flight anxiety slips away when you and your mountains of luggage leave the ground and you embark on your first adventure as a little family. Yes it is harder with a baby but the heart full of Kodak moments you will return with are worth the month long packing ordeal.
You will start to feel bittersweetness as your
You will remember the excitement you felt the day she stood on her own for a nano second before promptly collapsing on the floor. The time she took the bottle from you and fed herself, you were
You’ll recall the delight you felt the first time your baby held their hands up to be picked up and cuddled, you’ll also remember how upset you were the first time they pushed you away. Parenthood is a constant tug of war with your emotions.
You’ll look back on each phase and realise how quickly they came and went. One minute you have a totally dependent, immobile little person who you can put anywhere and they stay just
Sometimes the speed at which they are changing is overwhelming, every body says it but you really cannot understand until you have a little person altering daily right in front of your eyes.
Sometimes you want to freeze time and just enjoy each phase for a little while longer. The daily practicalities of parenthood often mean phases come and go whilst you are busy
On Christmas Day this year our daughter took her first proper steps, an epic milestone that every parent looks forward to but
So the moral of the story is to remember the ordinary moments of parenthood as you’ll look back and realise they were
We are still relative newbies to this parenthood malarkey with only fourteen months on the clock but it has without doubt been the best (albeit hardest) thing we have ever done. Our situation is a little bit unique so maybe we cherish each moment with slightly more gusto than we would if our future as a family was more certain, but I’m glad we live this way.
Today is NYE and we had planned a big night out with our friends (well
So at midnight tonight I will be counting my lucky stars and thanking the big man upstairs that I have a beautiful wife and a freshly bathed head to kiss.
The added bonus to this unforeseen change of plan is that we will not be arguing over who is more hungover at 5.30 in the morning when it comes to changing the first dirty nappy of twenty eighteen.