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Welcome
to the first ever issue of Mum's the word, hopefully the first of many.
So where do I start? Well it's been 18 months since I joined the Mommy
club - yes that club who's membership benefits include free access to
stained shirts, spittle trails, upchuck and sagging eyelids - 'where do
I sign?', I hear the uninitiated ask! In those 18 months I have seen time
drag by at a rate akin to grass growing… and I have also seen it
fly by like a supersonic jet as my little girl grows at the rate of knots!
How did she get big so quickly?
There are three types of Mommy that come to mind… Firstly, there's
the Executive Mom - busy busy busy, full time career, but still finding
time to come home and create a replica of a typical Zulu village - to
scale. I don't think I could ever find the organisation skills to be one
of these moms - I struggle to remember who wants milk and who wants sugar
- having asked just five minutes ago. Forget about heading up a board
meeting! Then there is the Has it All Mom - part time job to keep them
sane, but still taking time out to do all those mommy things - fetching
and carrying, organising healthy meals (be them woollies or home cooked),
refereeing sibling rivalry and taming toddler tantrums! Then there is
the Stay at Home Mom - those of us who spend all day, every day, with
our children. Some of us try and do the work from home thing… but
with kids in the house, well we know how that works. No sooner have you
sat down to do some work when toddler demands to sit on your lap and "help"
- defined as pushing buttons on your laptop, windows flying open and closed,
text being edited to "sdfkjesoih", and in my case, the "control"
key being unceremoniously ripped off its spring - the School of Mommy
did not go so far as to teach me hardware maintenance, so off it has stayed
ever since. When childless friends ask "So what do you do at home
all day?" (with a slight stress on the "all day" part -
you know they are imagining baby perched glamorously on one knee, a Cosmo
on the other, while you have your nails buffed as you enjoy your low-cal
latté). It becomes hard to explain how you can spend an entire
day chasing after a toddler, trying to keep them fed, bottled, bathed,
burped, slept and entertained - sometimes the hardest part of the job!
Never mind the shopping that needs to be done (can't run out of fishfingers
or chicken nuggets can we!), the veggies that need to be pureéd
(thank goodness I don't have this problem - my monkey won't touch anything
vaguely mushy), the bottles that need to be washed, supper cooked, etc.
etc. But this doesn't sound very glamorous at all! So the stock reply
escapes our mouths: "Oh you know, we keep ourselves busy! Doing Mommy
Baby things!"
But of course we all know, no matter what category we fit into, that we
would never change it for anything in the world! Through all the sleepless
nights, walking up and down passages trying to get baby to sleep, cleaning
up upchuck and changing nappies, dealing with the tantrum that comes with
removing something off limits - nothing can compare to the tiny arms around
your neck and the soft cheek nuzzled into your shoulder, the open mouthed
gobby kisses, the discovery of a new word, and my favourite, the sweetly
called "Mummmmeeeee" first thing on waking up (yes, even at
6 am, having been woken up two hours before).
So this newsletter is dedicated to all you moms out there, united at 3 in the morning doing bottle / breast brigade, comparing eating / sleeping / toilet habits, and proudly relating what baby did next - in more detail than a non-mommy would care to hear! Here's to us - and please feel free to send your suggestions or contributions to this newsletter to me, just as soon as you are finished with those wetwipes!
© Sally Hetherington .
