I remember being at a business luncheon, running to the toilet as they put my meal down as I felt really unwell. I have no idea what the speaker spoke about from that moment on. My brain was running through everything I had eaten the past 48 hours trying to work out why I felt so sick. But this felt a little different, everything smelled disgusting, and I was getting waves of hot flushes then waves of nausea. Then it hit me. OMG, maybe I am pregnant. I was out of that lunch so fast, stopped at Woolies, grabbed a test and headed back to the office to force out a pee. The stick instantly showed a positive, I smiled and laughed, then panicked and cried as my current life flashed before me. I was going to have a baby.
The thing is, even if you are trying to have a baby, no one can prepare a mother to be for this moment. In fact, nothing can really prepare you for parenthood full stop.
With two boys, now aged 6 and 9, I never expected the things that I was going to learn. The gross things I would learn. The things I wish I really didn’t learn.
- That babies can poop really far with a nappy off. Like, meters. My first month home with baby in the middle of the night, I recall dodging just in time to miss my face, poop that hit my shoulder and the clean washing behind me.
- That baby boys get erections from birth. Like, all the time. As a mother, it is very disturbing and difficult to change a nappy forcing a little stiffy to point anywhere but up so the pee doesn’t fly out the top
of the nappy next time. - That boys will stick their doodles from a very young age into pretty much anything. Even the arch of a book spine to see if it fits whilst reading.
- That they never grow out of sticking weird stuff in their mouth and licking stuff that makes you dry reach.
- That personal space is gone, probably forever. Kids have a special radar that goes off when you pull your pants down, sit down to eat or rest, pick up the phone, or hop in the shower.
- That little people can excrete smells that make you think something has died inside them. It seems to occur only when you are in public, especially small shops and elevators to have the most impact, and when people can’t tell if it’s you or your kids.
- That children have no filter. They will say anything that comes to their mind. Like “Mummy, look at that OOLLLLDDD MANNNN, is he going to die?!” Really loud. Kids (especially boys), in a nutshell, really are gross.
Our job is to try and get them to be not so gross as they grow into adults… But I think most women who have a man in their lives will agree, that unfortunately some of these traits are life long skills. Us women would never excrete a smell in public, we save that for the confines of our home and it always smells like roses anyway.
