HEY, IT'S OK. WHAT EVERY MAMA NEEDS TO KNOW
BY SUSIE VERRIL
Hey, it’s OK if you’ve done nothing today. Your ‘nothing’ probably involved quite a lot of ‘thinging’.
It’s OK if you only pretended to be enjoying playing boo. You probably play it… oh I d’know, on average 36 times a day and let’s be honest, it’s never a bloody surprise. They’re right there! They don’t even put sufficient effort in to hiding.
It’s OK if you teamed building a Lego kingdom with answering emails one-handed or emptying the dishwasher.
It’s OK if you left your little one in the jumperoo for probably longer than advisable. It’s the one time you just get to sit. You don’t ask for much; you just want to sit. And maybe do some staring. Treat yourself to a flick through Instagram or an extended yawn.
It’s OK if your fanny squarks like a French accordion whenever you run up the stairs.
It’s OK if you can’t remember things when people ask. If you’re not sure what day it is. If you didn’t hear what your other half said after four repetitions. If you find yourself staring at your laptop. It’s OK if you get flustered. It’s OK to feel overwhelmed.
It’s OK if you can’t remember if the pants you had on today are the same ones you were wearing yesterday.
It’s OK if you let your toddler play with breadknives in restaurants because if they end up doing damage with something that blunt, then you’ve bred someone exceptionally resourceful and that should only be congratulated.
It’s OK if you sometimes want to do a little ugly cry.
It’s OK if you really look forward to bedtime, only to spend half an hour scrolling through photos of the exact baby who’s lying twenty feet away from you because you miss them. Even if 20 minutes ago you were Googling minimum age for boarding school enrolment.
It’s OK if you hated the feeling of breastfeeding. It’s OK if your boobs hurt so much when you tried that bitch-slapping your feeding child became a near-necessity.
It’s OK if you take your little one to mum and baby groups and detest them. It’s OK if you find making friends in your twenties and thirties a ball ache because quite frankly you already have friends and don’t want anymore thank you.
It’s OK if your baby literally never manages to keep their poo inside their nappy.
It’s OK if you sometimes want to beat your other half around the penis when he declares he’s tired. It’s OK if twenty minutes later you can’t imagine loving anyone else because he made you a strong cup of tea without you asking and ignores the fact your hair smells like dry shampoo and stress.
It’s OK if you lie on social media because everyone else has managed to put on lipstick and casually wander to a farm with real life animals and feed them with teeny tiny bags of seeds they bought from the kiosk. It’s OK if they’ve made a whole album about it while you’ve not moved from your Duplo spattered living room.
It’s OK if Ewan The Dream Sheep, baby massage, sleep training, dummies, anything known to man hasn’t helped you get your baby to nap without a fight bigger than anything WW2 saw.
It’s OK to have one good day out of three.
It’s OK if you opt for normal potatoes over sweet potatoes.
It’s OK if the total ignorance from your toddler towards weaning means you offer them up half a cinnamon bagel as they climb the fireplace and consider it a triumph if they lick it.
It’s OK if your baby sneezes in to your open mouth and you get in no way retchy.
It’s OK if you now hate going anywhere with a doorway too cool, edgy and CHUFFING NARROW TO FIT A PRAM THROUGH I WILL JUST GO TO PREZZO THEN F*CK YOU VERY MUCH.
It’s OK if you let your toddler play with your iPhone all the time. Like, all the time. Literally all the time.
It’s OK if you sometimes actually want to cry when you do the fake cry because your baby hit you really hard on the shin with a plastic banana and you don’t want them thinking you’re a pussy but it’s really zinging and sore.
It’s OK if your trigger for less swears around your toddler stems from them muttering a word resembling ‘bugger’.
It’s OK if you don’t get your baby changed out their pyjamas when you’re in a rush and they look cute anyway.
It’s OK if you’re giving off a chill vibe in public but inwardly faffing and wondering why your baby keeps arching his back in his pram.
It’s OK if you literally can’t think of anything less soul-depleting, more body-knackeringly uninspiring than sex with your other half but give it a good crack anyway because you’re a trooper and you know you’ll be happy you did it. Seriously, like you’d rather lick all the work tops in McDonald’s. Rather suck Donald Trump’s hairy earlobes. Rather be bummed by an ox. You get it.
It’s OK if you don’t feel grown up enough to be in charge of another human.
It’s OK if you always lose your keys in your changing bag.
It’s OK if Peppa Pig really narks you off.
It’s OK if you don’t do frequent date nights.
It’s OK if your body isn’t what it used to be.
It’s OK if you declared you’d try not to become one of those mums who didn’t bleat on about their child over social media and now you’re juggling apps like Kim Kardashian juggles plastic surgeons.
It’s OK if you go to bed when your baby goes to bed.
It’s OK if you’re dreading going back to work once your maternity leave finished. It’s OK if you can’t bloody wait strike up the bells!
It’s OK if your non-parent friends asked what you think of a programme and you have no idea what they’re talking about because your child interrupted you at a very pivotal moment.
It’s OK if you’d happily punch a grandma if she even threw your baby the tiniest bit of shade.
It’s OK if you cut up blueberries in case they’re too big despite constant mocking from family members about how your child will never live outside of a cotton wool swaddled kingdom.
It’s OK if you sometimes don’t change the duvet cover because ‘it was only a little bit of sick and anyway, it’s dried now’
It’s OK if you put a lot of effort on the regular in to getting your child to sit/stand in a specific way just so you can get good photo for Instagram
It’s OK if there’s certain books you enjoy reading to your baby while finding others shit hot boring.
It’s OK if ‘oh that’s my dog’s name’ is the common response to introducing your child. People just have cool dogs.
It’s OK if you’d legit rather do the worm over broken glass than endure teething. Molars in particular.
It’s OK if you like to keep it real by refusing to give your toddler the rest of your lemon muffin because it’s bad for their teeth and also you want it.
It’s OK if you shout ‘oh look! A plane! What do planes do?’ by accident when you’re out without your toddler because you’ve forgotten what’s it like to not narrate EVERYTHING.
It’s OK to wonder how everyone on social media has such clean, monochrome houses when yours looks like Smyth’s toy store mixed with a landfill site.
It’s OK if you don’t ever quite feel like you’re doing enough, being enough or managing enough.
It’s all a-OK.
Follow UK based Susie Verrill’s musings on parenthood on her blog Milo & Me.