Crying, vomiting, endless mess… all part of being a parent. Little kids are hard work, but here’s a way to survive.
You need a lot of things to get through your kids’ early years. Things like, family, coffee, alcohol. You also need your own mantras to help you when there’s no one else around. You know, something to whisper to yourself when things get real. And these have been mine.
“This will all be so much easier by the time summer comes.”
Or winter. Or Christmas. Or April 29. When I had my first baby, someone told me that crying peaks at six to eight weeks. Someone else told me that vomiting after a feed tends to stop at around six months. Having a baby who cried every time I tried to put her down and brought up milk like a human Niagara Falls, I found both these statements comforting.
It helped to know that what I was going through was only temporary, and to have an end date in my head… even if it didn’t turn out to be quite accurate.
“If teen mums can do this, then so can I.”
Occasionally motherhood felt a bit overwhelming. Then I’d think about those 16-year-olds having babies and somehow coping, and I’d get my back up. If they could do it, I could too. No teenager was going to make me feel inadequate.
"When you have a two-year-old, everything takes twice as long, but it’s twice as much fun."
At two, my daughter adored the supermarket. She always wanted to stop in the cat food aisle (or “cat food island”, as she called it) and look at all the kitties on the tins.
Meanwhile, my son, at two, was obsessed with the vacuum cleaner, and always insisted on “helping” me, very slowly. I just had to learn to give myself more time to do everything and try to enjoy it through their eyes.
"If my kids don’t need a change of clothes at least once a day, it hasn’t been a good day."
Kids are meant to get messy. Mud. Flour. Water. Paint. Getting messy means they’re having fun. It means they’re being active. It means they’re not sitting in front of a screen.
