The baby blues

Me. By 10am

I'm going to tell you something that you won't find in Mothercare's Autumn/ Winter 2011 catalogue. Being a parent can be a right bastard. Look, you can put away your green ink pen and unlock that caps button over there on the left OK? Parenting can be like having an upright Dyson shoved up your arse because it sucks the fucking life out of you.
Now, my three year old is abso-bloody-lutely fabulous. I love her and she is a constant source of wonderment and love but tell me, am I the only Kraken who would occasionally like to leave my kid in a layby before driving away while she ain't looking? No. Although you'd never know it because nobody ever has the balls to say so. Instead they come over all glowy, like an advert for deluxe nipple shields, and bury the urge to get the stab themselves in the face because their kid won't stop shoving toast in the DVD player.
Want to know what's so fucking exhausting about the whole childrearing thing? Well, if you're dull enough to ask...


1. They don't ever stop moving
Never bleedin' ever. It's like living with the Duracell bunny except that you can't stamp the flop-eared little fucker to death after the seventh hour of twitching.


2. You're never alone on the toilet
I swear, having a child turns shitting into a spectator sport. I've weed and shat to the sound of crying, laughing and screaming and have prised toddler hands from my ankles as well as a toddler head out of my gusset. Po-based privacy, my arse.


3. They never shut up
Why do we spend hours encouraging them to talk? Because once they start they never fucking stop. It's like being tortured by the Libyans. Last winter I sat in the doorstep on the snow just to get some peace. Seriously.


4. They never respond
It's like raising Helen Keller. You say everything three times, show them everything fifteen times and then they do what they want anyway. 80 per cent of what I say I may as well keep to myself. I'd get better feedback from a conversation with next door's compost heap.


Thank fuck for 7pm bedtime.