I look at my non-parent friends with pity whenever they recount how sick/hungover/f*cked they were last weekend.
Not because their lives are not as rich and fulfilled as mine is, now that I’ve generated some loin-fruit, but because I feel genuine pity for their weakling ways.
You don’t even know what pain IS until you’ve powered through a hangover as a parent.
“Ow my head hurts.”
“I was so nauseous I couldn’t even look at food.”
“Ugh, I was so wrecked I had to stay in bed all day”.
Pussies all of them. Try having a toddler standing on your face when your head hurts. Too nauseous to even look at food? How about handling someone else’s excrement. And as for staying in bed all day. Poor thing had to stay in bed all DAY. BooHOO.
Rant over.
Here’s 10 hard and fast rules to surviving a hangover as parents:
1. Make sure you are as drunk as each other:
Preparation for the morning after starts the night before. If your co-parent falls behind in the drinking stakes, they are likely to not suffer as much in the morning and, therefore, be unbearably superior. Drinking water between each round or trying to dodge a round will NOT be tolerated. Everyone needs to be on the same level of extreme pain.
2. Don’t hold back:
If you will be parenting alone through your hangover DON’T, for gods sake, hold back on the booze. You’ll need this residual booze in your system to buoy the spirits and see you through the day. If you are going to do this, go full throttle. Parenting hungover is painful no matter what degree of hangover you are suffering, so there’s no point in compromising on fun in an attempt to minimise the inevitable pain.
3. Tag team the sh*t out of this:
This is an organised if somewhat lonely approach to parenting hungover, basically pass the baton (baby) back and forth between you and take the parenting in 45-minute shifts. This works reasonably well though The Man has a nasty habit of heralding the end of my break period by depositing the baby directly on my face. He is also known to pretend that he didn’t smell the poo that the baby did on his watch so that I have to deal with it when I take over.
4. Stay on the move:
Keep changing locations. My son has a 16-minute boredom cut off. Each time he tires of one place we move to another spot in the house where I can resume my lying down.
5. Hang out in the loo:
If things get really bad, store the baby in the bathtub with a selection of toys and snacks and lie down on the cold tiled floor. Everyone enjoys lying on the bathroom floor when hungover, right? Important side note: Don’t fill the bath with water.
6. Keep things in perspective:
Don’t turn on each other that is what the hangover wants you to do. A hungover person is highly sensitive and liable to snap at the slightest provocation. It is important to remain united as a couple when faced with hungover parenting. Someone may find themselves hysterically shouting, “You were the one who wanted a baby”, while the other might respond, “well, you were the one who wanted the babycham.” You’re both wrong, now focus on your mutual enemy: The hangover.
7. Sleep when the baby sleeps:
This is a fairly common sense piece of advice, however if you find that you are too plagued by The Fear to actually take a nap while the baby is napping then eating an entire loaf of bread in toast form will likely put you straight into a carb-induced coma. And will go some way towards curing the nausea.
8. Hypnotise the baby with trippy kid’s YouTube:
Maybe the rest of the time you might have certain standards about your kids and screen time but, accept it, right now, all standards are out the window – you woke up this morning with one hand still partially submerged in a tray of curry chips. All you want to do is slob out and binge on This American Life, to this end we have found the perfect solution. Put on one of those six hour In the Night Garden YouTube compilations, mute the sound and play the podcast of your choice over it. Proceed to enjoy a few minutes chill time before the baby gets fed up and demands parental effort once more.
9. Go to visit relatives:
This strategy is really only for when you are so backed into a corner by the monumental task of parenting while hungover that the lesser of two evils has actually begun to look appealing. By going to visit your parents you will be forced to deal with the schadenfreude all parents can’t help but express when encountering with their delicate hungover offspring. “Oh is the head KILLING you?” your mother might ask with faux sympathy. Resist the urge to throw a strop and accept that tolerating this will pay off… when you leave the child with her while you slip upstairs for a sneaky lie down on her bathroom floor.
10. Drink more:
This one is usually a last resort but can be effective in curing the pain of extreme hangovers. Important note: Do not operate heavy babies while under the influence.
