Scarenting

“How much of my hair has my baby eaten?” is a thought I have about four times every day, because once I saw a documentary about a girl who had to have a sausage made of hair removed from her intestine because she was always chewing the end of her ponytail. My hair sheds like a mofo and always ends up wrapped around Max’s hands and feet and in his mouth. I've even had friends tell me they've found my hair in their socks or wrapped around their penises, it sheds that much and spreads that far. This hair issue made me realise that while I’m a good mum, I’m not a great mum. Don't get me wrong, I change Max when he’s dirty, feed him when he’s hungry and cuddle him constantly, but I have done some things which I definitely lose parenting points for. For example, I didn’t realise I wasn’t meant to eat soft serve while I was pregnant and ate it more than I ever have for the nine months he was in my belly. Since then I've been making a bunch of poor parent choices, sometimes they are born of ignorance, sometimes I've just consciously made a decision that favours me over Max. I like to call this style of scary parenting “scarenting”. Scarenting decisions can range from mild (letting your three month old baby watch True Blood) to major (giving your baby to a strange man to hold while you go to the toilet in a shopping mall). Some scarenting choices I've made in the last few months are as follows.

Mild: Sometimes I don’t soothe Max when he cries because he just looks so hilarious when he is really getting his scream on. Like a furious little beetroot. 

Iffy: When he decides to cry in an enclosed public place, like a waiting room, my go to response is to look apologisingly at the people around me and offer “Would anyone like a baby? He's barely used!” Har har har. The other day I said it in a lift and a lady who I swear to god looked like the witch in Hansel and Gretel responded very seriously “I would take him”. I bet you would scary lady. I stopped talking and just looked at the lift door, desperately willing it to open before my child was abducted.

Not great: I was playing tennis (because I'm a MUM now) and another player's little girls were patting Max. Which was fine by me until their dad offered me a great bit of “advice”. 

“Did you know no one had peanut allergies until vaccines were invented? I don't think it's right to put something so artificial as a vaccine into my young children’s bodies.” 

Aaaaaaaaarrrrggghh. I didn't know how to politely snatch Max away from his, surely disease ridden, children. So I let them keep patting him. And just so you know antivax man, if you don't want artificial substances entering your kids bodies, here are some natural things which might enter their systems: measles, mumps, rubella, whooping cough, diphtheria, smallpox. And FYI I'd rather my child have an allergy than be DEAD thank you very much. 

Pretty bad: I moved out of our marital bed and into the spare room with Max for a few weeks when Nick went back to work, because I am a very considerate wife and it also meant I could watch netflix all night. Meanwhile our cat Jenny moved into our room to keep Nick company. A week later when Nick went to change the doona cover he discovered that Jenny had actually done a poo in my side of the bed and he had been sleeping next to it all week. I was out, so he sent me a picture, FURIOUS. Then to make matters worse he went to send a picture of Max to his parents but accidentally sent the poo picture, meaning that he then had to explain to two of the cleanest people I’ve ever met why the cat had pooed in the bed. This was not, strictly, a parenting faux pas but definitely not the best housewifery ever. 

Major: I don’t think this is too bad, but from the looks I’ve been getting from everyone when I ask this question, it is a major no-no for me to even be thinking in the privacy of my head. You know how you find your partner attractive and that’s why you have a baby with them? And you know how sometimes babies look exactly like one parent? Max is like a tiny clone of nick (which is rude because I spent all that time growing him, both when he was in my belly and when he was out of it, literally all the food he’s ever eaten has come from me, he could at least look a bit like me. Boo.) So how is it that you can have a child who looks EXACTLY like the person you are attracted to, but you’re not attracted to the child?! I’m talking about when he’s older, obviously not now when he’s a baby - I'm not some sort of creep. My mum suggested that maybe it was the age difference. And pretty much everyone else just looked at me, disgusted. But I reckon you guys can suck it because, think about it, it's a valid point. 

So I'm not Mum Of The Year, and I may have spent a lot of time explaining to people why Max’s arms are covered in bruises (they're hickeys ok? He sucks his arm until he gives himself hickeys, what can I do?) but as Nick told me when we brought him home from hospital “our only job is to keep him alive.” And, as I find every one of the ten times I check he's still breathing during the night, I'm doing alright at that!