Week 4. Wine.

I sincerely hope you're feeling well enough by now but chances are that you aren't. Fun recovering from baby expulsion isn't it? And then spending a month averaging 3 hours shut-eye a night. 

I have fermented grapes in my Arsenal (take what you will from that). A medium glass a day at circa 6pm takes the edge off shirty comments, poo in the plug hole and mass histeria that comes with bath time 'a trois'/quatre if you count the wino banshee running the show. Try it. Early quaffing ensures maximum enjoyment before an inevitable pre 9pm curfew. 

Week 2-3. Shit got real

The small human is here to stay. It doesn't sleep and it screams. They are all very different but fundamentally they take quite some time to adjust to not being secure and wrapped up on the 'inside'. The hosts body should start to settle down, slowly. Eat.a. Lot. It's very very tempting to launch into or try to establish a routine but (gooooood for you if you've acheived this) cut your losses and enjoy the marginal freedom that no routine gives you.

My comment of the week came from an ernest H Bomb..

'Mummy, mummy - you must come and sit down (ushering me over to a scant pile of cushions and a baby wipe) I have made you a chair - SIT - you need to feed the (yet to be named) baby from your (massive) booby'

Week 1. Undignified yet MAGIC

**** one for imminent or brand new mums, a monolgue of my pertinent, patchy memories ****

'Well that was fun!'... Said no one ever. Your body has just grown and expelled a (not so) small human. Your slowly shrinking uterus flops around in front of you in the form of a deflating bouncy castle attached to your navel. 

Stock up on paracetamol and nurofen and take them every few hours in turn. As the blighter reverts back to its original size you might feel like you're still having contractions. Well you are actually. Bonza. 

Sanitary towels the size of mattresses house your granny pants. Rock hard melons. Get cream in case the nips crack as the sleep-thief gnaws away for hours. 

Possibly get daddy to sleep in another room.. Everyone finds their own arrangement to fit around the whirlwind of newborn excitement and sleeplessness but it really helps to have one person who is running on (almost) full batteries to actually engage in proper conversation with people and get stuff done whilst you recover from the phenomenal feat of childbirth and you start to grow the human on the outside. 

The above being said, the tiredness aside, delight in the arrival of this tiny person. Don't be afraid. You will always do the right thing, trust your instincts. Plus there's midwives, health visitors, books (Your Baby Week by Week is my 'go-to'), friends, family and dare I say it: Google. You don't need to see anyone if you don't feel like it, close the doors on the world and relish in the utterly precious first few days with the new human. Welcome people when you feel ready but the outside world is going nowhere yet these first days will slip away.

Philosophy on children

On Children

 Kahlil Gibran

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.

Hymns to hims

Dear boys and father of mankind,
I'll forgive your churlish ways,
If you reclothe when asked for once on time,
and poke me less as I pour my wine,
I will shout less one of these days,
I will shout less one of these days...

Just eat your crusts without a word,
And eat that flaming pea,
The gracious cooking of your mum,
Makes you, like dad, a man become, 
Don't catapult it at me, 
don't catapult it at me..


Oh Sunday lie-ins, where are thee?
Oh peace of days gone by,
The suns not up, this is my plea,
A sticker, Pom bears and CBBC,
Lie quietly, go on try,
Lie quietly, go on try...


I did not cut the apple right,
Nor buy the mauve toy car,
I try my best and call me tight,
The purple one was half the price,
Cows go 'moo' not 'baa baa baa',
Cows go 'moo' not 'baa baa baa',


Sweet and thoughtful, I adore,
You urchins and you know,
Hence you're feral more and more,
And mighty tantrums you can throw,
Your tenacity, I implore,
Your tenacity, I implore.

Gobsmacked

Feeling slightly (!!) less impartial this morning. In fact our bedroom replicated the opening scene from Four Weddings and a Funeral, made even less palatable when parrot Freddie appeared at the door 'Fok, Fox, Fok, Fok, Fok'. Note to self - vocab restraint to be administered across the board with immediate effect.

That said, utter shock aside, we can't change the decision - only force answers and positivity going forward. What a fascinating few weeks and months and years lie ahead .... 

In, out, in, out, shake it all about...

OK so I would probably do pretty well at the Beeb, I am invariably outwardly impartial, it helps avoid bitter and negative reactions - especially when I start a diatribe on a subject I am wholly unconfident about (despite/because of the unremitting streams of information blasted from every direction)... I sifted through the sh1t and made my decision. Tick. 

It has been fascinating this referendum though - hasn't it? Grating, in your face, unavoidable and actually pretty important. I think that for me is the major silver lining of the entire sandstorm. It has certainly engaged a nation, there's barely been a garden centre, supermarket or high street (all the crazy places!)  I have pounded in the last 3 weeks without catching glimpses of relentless EU/Brexit/Referendum conversations and debates. Ordinary people trying to make sense of the rhetoric and propaganda: the Brexit barrage from Farage and the EU rave from Dave. Surely a positive outcome (whether 'in' or 'out')  will be that in my time, our nation seems never to have been so captured by the politics that push and pull and fundamentally slam us in certain directions affecting the future irrevocably. Hopefully that means we are all a little more educated and interested and aware of how this nation runs and in which trajectory - with us hamsters at the wheel. 

In?
Out?
In?
Out?

They've certainly shaken it all about.