So I have written a few blogs now and they have been a little on the heavy and emotional side so I decided to try one with a bit of a lighter feel to it. Mothering, after all, isn’t always hard work; it can be hysterically funny and sometimes just downright ridiculous!
You know; before baby when you were too cool to talk about bodily functions when others who may have actually known you were in the room? When a bad hair day meant staying an extra ten minutes in the bathroom to try to rectify the situation? When staying out late meant you could just close your eyes for a few minutes at lunchtime or skip out on a class and catch a few zzz’s? Well times have changed, haven’t they!
Bad hair days are everyday for me, except the first three days after I have gone to the salon trying to prolong the professional appearance. Sunday brunch with girlfriends has been traded for Mom and baby group and Tuesday movie and date night has been traded for laundry night and re-runs of Friends.
Could extra sleep help to de-stress .To help you find humour in a situation? Ha-ha good luck with that! Extra sleep will not happen for a few years and then it’s not the kids who wake you; it is you staying awake to make sure the kids are home safe. But babies keep irregular hours and therefore so do Moms. Sleep deprivation can make you do silly things I tell you! Put paperwork away in the freezer; brush your teeth with the hand soap sitting beside the toothpaste on the sink; forget where you parked the car at the mall. You know you’ve seen that mom! Bad hair, sleep deprived, crying child under her arm pushing the button on the fob on her keychain looking every which way for the lights and sounds from one of a sea of minivans in the parking lot? Funny right? Relatable right?
Mix matched socks, on you. Looking for your sunglasses frantically, then realizing that they have been on your head for the last twenty minutes. Can’t find that baby bottle? Have you looked in the drawer at your computer desk? Or by the front door in a child’s boot? And just wait, it gets better!
The older they get, the more people notice your, um, moments of insanity. The secretary calls from the school because you dropped the wrong kid off at the school. Showing up for a parent — teacher interview thinking it was child A and actually its child B, or, better yet, showing up on the wrong day! I’ve actually shown up at the right place on the right day, in the wrong month! And children, who can talk, can repeat these moments to their friends too!
Ahh, take stock and laugh now because in a few years these moments will be shared with everyone your child engages with and beyond! Every speeding ticket will be announced as if being reported on CNN. Every word you utter will become public knowledge because it’s been repeated on the playground, and darling child tells the teacher that Mommy said that bad word when she spilled coffee down her shirt this morning! Oyi!
Everything you do your child is watching. It fills the ego because you don’t share the stage with anyone else; you are his or her superstar! But it can have moments of paparazzi- filled dread. Not even a moment alone in the bathroom! And the questions they ask when at a public pool! Wow! Nothing prepares you for that!
So while the miss-matched outfits and diapers put on backwards may not seem funny in the moment, take the time to laugh. Laugh at yourself. Laugh at the situation. Laugh because it feels good. Laugh because your baby will laugh at you laughing and that can lead to a giggle fest. Laugh because it reduces stress hormones in your body, which is good for you and your baby. Laugh … because it’s funny! Really! It is! And in this day and age and in our day-to-day grind, isn’t it nice to have something funny to laugh at?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Nicole Andrews
The Cridge Young Parent Outreach Program
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Young Parent Outreach is a dynamic resource program providing services and support to young pregnant women, young moms and dads, and their children in the Greater Victoria area.
These services – provided by The Cridge Centre for the Family – are designed to give young pregnant women and young moms and dads the help and support network they need to have healthy babies and to be effective, successful parents. Whether it’s housing, income assistance, food back or dealing with child custody or substance abuse, The Cridge Young Parent Outreach program can help.