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On motherhood and...what the first four weeks have taught me


What the first four weeks have taught me: a list
Even the most sensible adults cannot hold a conversation and a baby at the same time.
Holding a hungry baby waiting to be breastfed is like holding a truffling piglet. This will lead you to holler ‘every day I’m truffling’ at the baby, several times a day.
Everyone knows that babies will immediately do a huge poo as soon as they feel the soft touch of a new nappy on their tiny bottoms, but did you know they will also wee on you the moment they emerge from a bath?
Seeing your own muff for the first time in months is like being reacquainted with an old friend. An old friend who has been sorely neglected.
Speaking of friends; if you want to make better friends with people who work in Boots, Waitrose, or the Post Office, take a baby in with you. They will leap over the counter to make your acquaintance.
N.b. They aren’t actually making friends with you.
People you know and love will astound you with their generosity and kindness, as will lots of people you don’t know all that well at all.
Even though my tummy has the texture of the inside of a bread roll and my boobs are all over the place, I love my bod more now than I ever have. It’s done something super cool and now it’s sustaining a whole other life like it ain’t no thing.
Having said that, if you breastfeed and you don’t down 4,000 glasses of water a day, you’ll wake up feeling like you’ve drunk several bottles of cheap Pinot Grigio the night before, and your wee will be brown.
On that note, you will feel really excited that you can have cheap Pinot Grigio again. You may only be allowed a couple of glasses rather than bottles, but after 9 (8) months of sobriety, that will be enough!
Babies are tricksters. They will wake you up a billion times a night, poo indefinitely, wee on your only clean leggings, and kick you harder than you’d expect a month-old human could, but the top of their head will smell so nice you’ll forgive them anything.
And then you’ll write sappy blog posts in your dressing gown like that time Charlie Brooker wrote a column after the birth of his son and no one could handle how lame it was that he was being so positive about everything all of a sudden. It (probably) can’t last…

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