Mum’s the word
Mel Buttle staggers across the line to her first Mother’s Day.
Baby showers should have a section where your parent friends deliver PowerPoint presentations on core topics, such as putting a baby in a car seat whilst managing a shopping trolley and a coffee, why your first phone call after two blue lines on a stick should be to a day care, and how to not commit a criminal offence when people say, “Oh, a redhead. If that was my kid I’d have dyed his hair.”
I’m your typical new mum. I still use two hands to fold the pram up – what an amateur. Sometimes, when he wakes up raring to go at 3am, I wonder if we should’ve just got a third dog instead.
I’ve realised my new mum naivety has at least been entertaining to my parent friends. Before my son was born I told them how he would play quietly with his Montessori wooden toys – only when not strictly adhering to his sleep schedule or eating my organic home-made purées. He ate the bottom of the rates bill this week – gummed it clean off. A month or so ago he would’ve been rushed to the doctor after such an incident. Now I’m just thrilled he’s getting some roughage.
When he was a newborn I raced him to the doctor. “When he sleeps he sounds like an in-sink-erator with lips. Does he have a breathing obstruction?” The doctor assured me the gurgling was normal. Exasperated, I uttered: “Why did no one mention this?” He turned back to his computer and silently printed out a script for Valium – it had my name on it, weird.
I’ve made all the new parent mistakes. Yes, of course I thought he was gifted. I showed him a video of a song about the alphabet, he watched it intensely, clawing at the screen and smiling broadly. “He gets it, he’s so clever,” I smugly thought to myself. I then saw him interact the exact same way with my empty water bottle. Oh.
Do I still get a Mother’s Day present if I found a rusk in the wash yesterday? What about if I screeched – “Ed Sheeran is a redhead and he’s very successful!” – at the fifth woman to crack the hair-dye joke this week?