Lifestyle

‘Mom, will you come and wipe my bum’

We all love our children more than life itself, but your life will never, ever be the same once you become a parent.  You will wipe bums, wipe noses, referee fights, and tackle more challenges than the contestants on The Crystal Maze. Here are a few things I’d wish I’d know before I had mine.

 

Shopping will require the speed of Mo Farrah

You will fear shopping the most because this is where your constantly hungry child will be tempted by a whole array of sweets and toys, but it’s your job to inform them that they can’t have them! It’s torture for them, but its more painful for you. I can only liken shopping to the Tough Guy assault course – you fear it before you embark on it, try and do it as fast as you can, but have a real sense of achievement when it’s all over. Some days it all seems to be going too well, even if you have just fed your child half the contents of your trolley. You’ve just about got everything you wanted, even that extra jar of Gherkins and the Pedigree Chum your child has decided you need for a non-existent dog, but there’s one last hurdle- the checkout!!  Your Victory is short lived as Supermarkets put even more temptation in your child’s reach just before you are about to get out of there alive! It’s a big conspiracy against parents and they know they have you by the balls, because you have no choice but to buy the family bag of Skittles that will give your child an unwanted fix of E numbers for the car journey home.

The obvious one-  Lack of sleep.

You will never sleep well again! You thought you knew what being tired felt like before you had children, but now you will be even more tired than a tired person who is well, really, really, really tired.  You will then feel compelled to use Facebook and Twitter to gain as much sympathy as you can about how little sleep you have had, and you will compete with your partner daily about who has had the least amount of sleep.  Of course you will meet people who will smugly inform you that their darling baby slept through the night from day one. You will feel the urge to punch these people in the face, but you will learn that however tired you are, you can still exercise restraint. In my opinion these people are fibbing or have their own bottles of something to help them sleep through the night.

You will never enjoy a meal out again.

Going out for a meal used to be a fun, romantic or even a sexy event. It was even foreplay if you were lucky enough to be taken out on a date. Now you have children it will be an event to be feared; feared if you are made to wait for food, feared if you are in a quiet restaurant, feared if there’s no chicken nuggets and chips on the menu, and feared if it doesn’t have some kind of soft play or something that your child can break. You will also learn to eat your food at a super fast speed. I can eat a three course meal faster than Adam from Man V’s Food and that’s before the couple on the next table has had the chance to peruse the menu or even take a sip of their wine.

Of course the positives of having children far outweighs any negative, and they are the ones who will be looking after us in our old age. We should remember that one day things will change and we will be able to get our own revenge on them. The curse or the beauty of the circle of life is that when we’re old and decrepit, we are the ones who are will be pleading with them to ‘come and wipe my bum’!!

Click to comment
To Top