Monday, February 03, 2014

Annoying things people say to you when you have a baby: Enjoy every moment, it goes so fast

Time with a baby......sloooow.
On the surface, this is true.

Babies do grow at an incredible pace. If you stare at their feet you can almost see it happening - a bit like those time lapse cameras of leaves unfurling in the rainforest. Which is why you shouldn't buy too many pairs of socks. Their toes burst out of them like the hulk at warp speed.

And it is truly amazing that in 5 months, Baby Britney (BB) has tripled her birth weight.

But here's the rub: when you are spending every minute of every hour of every week of every month with the tiny tyrants, and surviving on 3 hours of broken sleep a night, time does not go fast.

Likewise at 6 am when you've been up all night trying to settle a fractious whinging baby, I assure you, the time does not whizz by.

It goes sloooooooooooooooowly.

Sometimes I would look at the clock thinking that the screaming must surely have been going on for hours, when it had actually just been ten minutes. Likewise, it was hard to believe that anything so small could scream for four hours. FOUR. HOURS. Ear plugs became my new best friends.

I found myself counting the hours AND minutes until DH came home from work, as at that point, I could pass BB over to him and breathe/shower/dress. Also, she then became partly his responsibility if anything went wrong.

Of course, there are joyous moments in all this, and you grasp and cling to them like a sailor lost at sea. But let's be clear, unless you are some sort of masochist, you are not going to enjoy every moment...so please don't feel guilty when you don't.

NB: No sooner had I written this post than a friend shared this on her Facebook. Great minds clearly think alike....