Shit they don’t tell you before you become a parent

There is some stuff I wish people would have told me before we became parents.  Not that “it will change your life” nonsense because, you would have to be mentally challenged if you don’t realize that.  Also, then it might not be the best idea for you to have children and perhaps you should first start with a small pet or a house plant.  The things I wish I were told before becoming a father is not unlike that T&C’s and/or fine prints you find in contracts.  Or the leaflets you find accompanying your medication.  We all know that we really should read them but, very few of us do.  So in case any of my readers are planning on or are becoming parents here are a few things you need to know and/or consider.

Children are a lot of work and you will never have any free time again.  Like. In. Forever.  Children require your full attention and when you don’t give it to them you can expect the apocalypse to happen.  Our son’s favorite thing to do right before he throws a tantrum is to pull his dummy out of his mouth hurling it at me or anywhere that will have the most dramatic effect, followed by a quivering lip promptly followed by inhaling a deep breath right before crying and/or screaming.  This normally happens if I take too long to tend to his needs or don’t pick him up even though my hands are full.  But giving them your full attention is not just about attending to their wants and needs, it is also crucial in keeping these little beasties alive.

Whenever your house gets really quiet you should know baby/toddler is up to something.  I have found that if I turn my back on our son, even for one second, or leave the room to go fetch something that it is enough time for him to not only be a danger to himself but also to everyone else.  He has almost electrocuted himself, have a dining room chair fall on him, the cat’s have been molested by him and he is known to love playing with his own vomit or pulling things off coffee tables, chairs and couches.  Also, playpens (or like I call them “baby jails”) only work up to a point; the point being when your child learns that the playpen is not nailed to the floor and that it can be picked up and manually moved.  Never underestimate the resourcefulness of a baby/toddler.  They are master escape artists and strategic thinkers.  They are smarter than you think and they know our weaknesses.

Children will also ruin your sex life.  When you have a child, gone are those days of spontaneity and now you will have to plan shit.  Normally the best time to have sex would be when baby is sleeping or napping.  So you have to work around their routine.  However, babies have a sixth sense for things like this and don’t be surprised when baby cries in the nursery while you are midsession in the bedroom.  Then you have to drop everything, compose yourself only to find out the big issue interrupting your coitus is his dummy being five inches away from your son and he is too lazy to reach for it himself.  Then the mood is spoiled and sexy time is over.  Also, when you come home from work and after having fed, bathed and put baby to bed you don’t feel sexy.  Mostly you are just too tired.  But sex is not the only thing your precious bundle of joy will ruin, there is more.

Your house will never be clean ever again.  Trying to clean up after your child is a futile exercise.  And if you suffer from OCD, like I do, it is the cruelest and also the best exposure therapy there is.  Our house used to be super clean but now it no longer is.  Just this past weekend we had our son’s baptism at home.  The house was semi clean; you know the kind of clean so that people don’t judge you but the kind of dirty that make you feel ashamed of yourself.  But after the baptism our house was the kind of dirty that freaked my OCD the fuck out.  However, I did nothing about it.  I knew our housekeeper was coming on Monday and I stopped caring if she judged me or what she thought of us four months ago already.  Children can be freeing like that.

Your child will also ,at some point, embarrass you in public.  Just a few weeks ago I was filling a script at our pharmacy.  Just as I reached the counter to pay and opened my wallet our son decided to vomit all over it and the counter.  Having been used to vomit by then I thought nothing of it,  so I grabbed a couple of tissues and wiped off my wallet and very moist credit card.  With the card having had small pieces of chicken and carrot on it with saliva.  I handed the card to the cashier and cleaned the counter.  I did not look up or made eye contact at all, rather opting to pretend that this was perfectly normal.  Obviously, the cashier took my card and swiped it with great trepidation and disgust.  But hey, what else was I suppose to do?  Was I expected to do an “I am sorry dance” and say three Hail Mary’s?

Babies and toddlers are nudists at heart and they have no shame.  Our son hates clothes and is at his happiest when he is naked.  This is why he loves bath time and being lathered up with lotion after but, as soon as he realizes that all that was actually building up to getting dressed then the production of “Clothes are from the Devil” starts.  He will cry and try and make it impossible to dress him.  Putting clothes on our son is like trying to dress an angry octopus with one hand while being blind folded.  I am also sure it burns a couple of thousand kilojoules which I don’t mind, I do want to lose some more weight.  And this leads me to my next point – distracting your child with illusions and trickery.

I have found the best way to get my son dressed or to change his nappy without fighting with an octopus is by distracting him with a toy.  It occupies him and lets me do what needs to get done.  Also, sometimes he would want to put things in his mouth off the floor that is just nasty and that is where magic comes in.  The item will then mysteriously disappear and as if by magic be replaced with something more appropriate.  All our remote controls also, according to him, magically disappear when he wants to play with them.  But in reality they are merely hidden behind the scatter cushions on our couch.  Fortunately, the bargaining and negotiating skills that we will soon need are still some time away.

Being a parent is hard work and people don’t tell you the exact details of this until after you have a child.  Perhaps this is why we as a species are not extinct yet.  As a parent you need some exceptional skills to be successful, you have to be a magician, a liar, hostage negotiator, psychic and have nerves of steel.  You must also have eyes in the back of your head and supersonic hearing.  That being said, I have learned so much about myself since becoming a father.  I have also learned that the one thing that is true about parenthood is that it is the most rewarding experience I have ever had in my life.  I will not exchange this experience for anything.

Till next time.

I am covered in vomit and got pooped on. This is my life now.

Tomorrow I will have been a dad for a month.  Can you believe it?  Since becoming a father I have learned a couple of things that people don’t tell you prior into entering into fatherhood:  For starters I have had to make peace with the fact that I will never be completely clean again; Doing things I did before will now take me five times longer; I had learned that I can do so many more things with one hand that I could have ever imagined; and dealing with another human being’s bodily fluids is gross but you get use it.

The first couple of weeks since bringing home our son were a huge learning curve for all of us.  Babies don’t come with instructions and they communicate with you in one of three ways – smiling and cute sounds (which is adorable and nice), crying (not so nice) and screaming (the world is ending and we will all die).  Luckily for us Michael is a relatively easy baby and he only becomes stabby when he is hungry.  Also, apparently if he doesn’t get his bottle after the first three subtle hints that he is ravenous (which I am now acutely attuned to) the apocalypse is upon us and his vocal acrobatics during the perceived end of his world is astonishingly and ear piercingly loud.

During this month I have also realized that your baby’s poop is very important.  In fact so important that it is the first thing hubby and I discuss in the morning and several times during the day.  Charming isn’t it?  You determine your baby’s general health by their amount of poop, times he pooped in a day, its color, its smell and its texture.  Frankly, this grossed me the hell out the first two week but then something miraculous happened – I started looking at his poop scientifically and then it all changed.  I no longer gag with each poopy diaper and I now can manage to mentally block out the smell.  You know that smell that can linger in your nostrils longer than it should.  Yes, that smell!

The only time I really got freaked out by poop was when I learned that projectile poop is not an urban baby legend.  It’s real people! And it is fucking disgusting!  I made this unfortunate discovery last week.  I was busy changing Michael’s nappy in which he pooped and as I was cleaning him evidently he was not quite done pooping yet.  He let out a fart that was actually a poop and it sprayed all over me.  I nearly died!  I stood there in total disbelieve and denial while holding Michael’s legs in the air with one hand, a wet wipe in the other and I was totally dumbfounded as what I was supposed to do next.

Do I finish changing Michael’s nappy while covered in shit? Or do I clean myself first and then finish changing his nappy?  It was a real profound debate I had in my head that lasted probably three minutes.  I decided that even though I wanted to throw up, felt like I was dying due to my OCD and gagging from the smell, that it would be good parenting to first finish changing Michael’s nappy before attending to myself.  I remember thinking to myself, as I was soldiering through, that nobody has ever shit on me before and I pray to God that it will never happen again.  But, we all know in all probability it will.  If poop is not bad enough vomit is worse.

I am not a fan of vomit.  This is also the reason why I will never be able to suffer from bulimia.  I don’t like to vomit.  I don’t like it when other people vomit. And most of all – I don’t like being vomited on.  It is right up there with being shit on.  Unfortunately babies vomit and in eight out of ten times Michael do it, it is on me.  People I am so over vomit right now I can’t even begin to tell you.  Apparently it is normal for babies and they out grow it.  When I asked our pediatrician exactly when this happens he told me it depends on the baby and they are all different in that regard.  Which was totally the wrong answer I was looking for and he probably saw it on my face.  Luckily Michael’s vomiting has gotten better, but it still happens every so often.  Some days are better than others.

The last important thing I learned was this morning.  Michael is on starter solids now.  In simple terms for people who don’t have kids, starter solids is basically food that has been totally transformed in a food processor from something that looks appetizing to a rather unappetizing paste like substance.  One day when you are old and toothless you will become acquainted with it.  Michael has taken to solids quite well.  After all he loves eating for which I am grateful.  However, timing when feeding your baby is very important; as a parent you need to have a crystal ball handy to be able to predict each and every eventuality before it happens while feeding your baby.

You must be able to predict when your baby will be sticking his hands in his mouth while he has food in it and prevent him from doing that.  If you don’t there will be a mess.  You have to know when you look away for a split second that your baby will stick his hands in his plate and rub sweet potato purity all over his face and clothes.  If you don’t there will be an early bath and wardrobe change.  And like what happened to me this morning you have to be able to predict when your baby is going to sneeze while his mouth is full of food.  If you don’t you, your baby and everything around you will be covered in a carrot and mince puree.  Lovely, and then not only will there be two wardrobe changes but cleaning as well.

I cannot believe I have been a dad for a month already.  It is a lot of work, it’s messy work and physical work.  I have almost lost 5kg as a result.  But that being said it is extremely rewarding work and not a day goes by that I don’t look at Michael with total amazement and pure joy.  Not a day goes by that I am not in total awe of this little human and the blessing he is.  Being a dad is awesome.  Except when it is not, you know that 2% of the time when you are pooped and vomited on.

Till next time.

I have been a dad for a week and nobody died

Today a week ago our lives were permanently changed forever, for the better.  Last week this time we were in Cape Town to fetch our son.  After ten months of waiting we finally reached the final stage of our adoption journey and it was both thrilling and petrifying at the same time.  Thrilling because we finally got to meet our son and bring him home and petrifying because we had no clue what the hell we were doing.

One thing I realized last week was that when you are travelling with a baby is that people at airports are so much nicer to you.  As most of you know airport security and I have no love for each other; mainly because I am always treated like a suicide bomber or drug mule by them.  But last week was completely different.  I managed to board the flight with things airport security is convinced can bring down a plane: deodorant, nail clippers and four bottles exceeding the liquid limit.

Also, I set off each and every metal detector and nobody molested me with that frisking business.  When security wanted to question me about the said contraband which their x-ray machine picked up I just said “Shsss… my baby is sleeping” and I was let go and not taken into a brightly lit back room and stripped searched as I have become accustomed to.

On our flight back with Michael I was a bit worried.  I have always been one of those people who got annoyed when people board one of my flights with a baby.  Now I have become one of those people.  I was concerned that with the change of air pressure with the ascent and descent that his ears would hurt and that he would cry.  Then that I would cry and that the cabin crew would have to take both of us to the back of the plane and drug us while hubby pretends not to know who we are.  Luckily this didn’t happen.  Michael drank his bottle on takeoff and slept like the angel he is through the duration of the flight.

We couldn’t believe our luck with our son.  He was so well behaved and once we got home we gave him his last bottle before bedtime and decided to bath him.  That is when all hell broke loose.  We apparently bathed him wrong and he threw a tantrum the likes I have not seen since Cher announced that she was retiring from touring.  He screamed and he was only 2% bathed before we abandoned the idea completely, dried him off, dressed him in a cute onesie and settled him to bed.  He gave us both a look that I could swear meant “What. The. Fuck. You have no idea what you are doing?” and he was right.

The next day the Kangaroo mom phoned me and told me that our bath was probably not hot enough and that we should act with more determination when we bath him.  Her advice worked and our boy now loves bath time.  The Kangaroo mom also gave us a schedule.  Being OCD and suffering from anxiety I LOVE schedules, lists and order in general.  It makes me feel safe and this is what separates us from the animals.  Our son seems to agree with me on this.  Or at least he did until Sunday.

I was told some time ago that babies can be assholes sometimes.  They just are and there is nothing that you can do about it.  I never believed this until Sunday morning.  Everything went well until around 8am that morning.  Michael decided to cry for no reason.  He didn’t have a wind, dirty nappy, was hungry, tired or was being snagged by his clothes.  He was crying which later turned into full out screaming.  He screamed for a full hour, eight minutes and twenty five seconds.  He was being an asshole and we all needed a hug after because he freaked us the fuck out and whatever it was that he cried/screamed about was out of his system.  Also, he gave me three new grey hairs because of it.  Luckily we have not had a similar dramatic performance of “I am screaming because I can” since from him.

Michael is a delightful baby and is actually really easy to take care of.  I cannot believe that one can fall in love with a little human so quickly.  He has only been with us a week and I cannot imagine our lives without him.  However, I can imagine my life without another one of his weapons of mass destruction in his diapers though.  Poopy diapers are vile and I believe they are the way God punishes us for being shitty children to our parents.  What makes it worse is each time I have to change a poopy diaper and gags Michael laughs at me.  He is very proud of his poop and loves seeing me nauseous.

We are lucky that Michael sleeps through the night.  Between 7pm and 05:30am the only times he makes us get up is because he lost his gawd awful dummy.  Then we just find it, give it to him and he falls back asleep again.  The whole routine literally takes ten seconds at most.  So we are not sleep deprived at all.  However, getting out of our PJ’s before 11am is almost impossible.  I also have now for a week smelled either of sour milk due to baby vomit or Avon baby lotion and sometimes of both.  I have also gone to the shop with my shirt covered in baby vomit without noticing it or actually caring.  People who judge baby vomit stained shirts are assholes.

It is still early days of parenthood for us but thus far Michael has been a blessing and a joy.  Some nights I just sit by his cot and watch him sleep and every time he wakes up from a nap and gives me that beautiful smile of his when he sees me melts my heart.  I still find it hard to wrap my head around the fact that I am now a dad.  I am just so very surprised at how naturally it has come to me.  I mean I have always said when I was younger that I never wanted kids. And look at me now. My life feels complete and whole and we are all three tremendously happy.  Well, until the next hour long tantrum that is.

Till next time.