Congratulations New Mum!
So you got the baby out of your body one way or another, successfully latched it onto your boob or a bottle and are probably just about starting to realise that life as you know it, will never be the same again.
Enter the infernal clichés that will dog your existence for the next six months to 16 years of your life. It’s unfortunate that right at the moment that we become parents (and officially the most under-slept, verging on homicidal maniacs in the community), that we are then targeted with the repetitive banalities of well-meaning relatives and strangers. It’s important to try to remember that they are merely trying to make chit-chat and are not trying to goad you.
10 Clichés New Mums Are Sick of Hearing:
1. “Sleep when the baby sleeps.”
So what, like, in 24 months time?
2. “Forget the housework.”
This is nice and all but unless you’re actually willing to clean my house for me, then I kind of can’t “forget the housework”. I’m the one who has to live in this filth-hole.
3. “Sleep deprivation is used as a form of torture you know.”
Oh REALLY???? How FASCINATING! I did not know that because I have one of those magical newborns that sleep 43 hours a night, even though a night is only TEN HOURS LONNNNNNGGGG. *Kills person*
4. “Soak up this time.”
What really gets to me about this one is the suggestion that I’m not that focused on my infant. Like I’m just kind of casually phoning in the parenting while rewatching the entire series of The Hills and occasionally doling out a bit of milk to the baby when I think of it. I don’t know if they’ve ever met a baby but you basically have no other option BUT to soak it up. We are immersed, literally submerged in our babies people, no need to remind us to soak it up.
Having said all this, eight months later I promptly forgot all this and told a new mum to “soak it up.” Sorry new mum.
5. *The horror story*
I always wonder if the Horror Story phenomenon is a uniquely Irish thing or if all nationalities enjoy relating terrible anecdotes along the lines of “Oh god, he’s got colic? Mary’s bridge partner’s daughter, Saoirse’s youngest had colic, and it went on for 18 years.” Keep it to yourselves b*tches.
6. “Are you feeding him yourself?”
I used to quip that I’d outsourced all his feeds to an amazing lactating cat but after a while I didn’t have the energy to be affable on this topic anymore. I just really wanted people to stop asking me about the feeding thing. This is one thing that I would never ask a new mother about as, after a hard road to successful breastfeeding, I was super sensitive myself on the matter.
7. “You’re giving him bad habits.”
This is usually in response to some fairly innocuous behaviour like too much cuddling. As if from age 0 we should be instilling them with independence and self-sufficiency to survive in the crazy jungle of childhood without bothering us with any of their pesky demands for affection.
8.”Mary’s bridge partner’s daughter, Saoirse’s youngest slept through from 2 days old.”
F*ck Saoirse. The perfect lives of the perfect parents will always be wildly overstated by annoying relatives. Guaranteed Saoirse’s hearing all about your perfect baby and she wants to kill you as much as you want to kill her. Also the phrase “Sleeping through” should be banned.
9. “You’re making a rod for your back.”
Ah, the bizarre resistance to co-sleeping. I was co-sleeping in secret until I grew a pair and began to retort when the old rod comment reared its head: “No, I’m not making a rod for my back, I’m making a cosy, cuddly place for us to get the best rest we can.”
10. “When are you having another one?”
No joke. The first one is not ten minutes out of your vagina when the knowing smiles and creepy nudges ramp up with a frightening intensity. They’re like a chorus of Mrs. Doyles, “Go on, go on, go on, you will, you will, you will.”
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