Week 48 — A Trip Down Mammary Lane

Child and Error
Aug 26, 2017 · 4 min read
http://news.gsu.edu/2016/04/11/imagery-an-effective-way-to-enhance-memory-reduce-false-memories-psychology-study-finds/

I went on a date with my wife a few days ago. I know what you’re thinking: a world in which a man can take his good lady friend out on the town sounds like a crazy world to live in! And you would be wrong to think such nasty things, shame on you.

Our date went swimmingly. For the first half an hour, anyway. We left the baby with his grandparents and scarpered rather rapidly, complete with parent-shaped clouds of dust behind us. Oh the freedom we felt! The liberation from the constant neediness and clinginess of our son! This feeling lasted for precisely two minutes’ worth of walking before my wife said:

’Does this feel weird to you?’

And I replied thusly:

’The fact that we’re holding hands and not onto a pram? Yes, absolutely.’

But what an opportunity! A chance to get away from a consistently needy little human blob that wakes up every five minutes needing to attach himself to something! What a great way for some one-on-one time with my aforementioned good lady friend. We could talk about politics instead of children’s TV! We could discuss the state of Brexit or developments in our professional lives rather than the latest consistency of our son’s droppings! We could have cocktails on the veranda (I’ve heard it’s the latest thing) and make idle chitchat about the current squeeze of the prince’s. The world, as I’ve heard it so idiomatically put, was our oyster.

And so, naturally, we spent the entire meal talking about our son.

This was then followed by us going to the shop for 45 minutes then heading home early because we were tired.

Fucking pathetic.

Perhaps it’s a product of getting old, despite the tenderness of my still pre-thirty years of age, or maybe it’s force of habit that we consistently, without fail, dive right back into conversations regarding our darling little physical embodiment of the result of purposeful unprotected relations. Who knows, but one thing’s for certain:

Our baby is our lives, regardless of his proximity to us in time and space.

This was made especially obvious when we were decorating the house recently, as noted in last week’s entry. There’s not a gosh darn thing you can productively get done around the place when there’s a baby that needs tending to. Just to get a slap of wallpaper up a wall one of us would have to take both the tiny person AND the dog (who leant his ear in a patch of paint that we still haven’t successfully located anywhere in the arsing room) outside for a walk.

If my wife even thinks about starting on another room I’m going to have myself chemically castrated.

But even though babies can be difficult they still come with their inherently hilarious and downright astonishing moments. My son now rockets up the stairs with nary a thought for his own safety, and his rapid advancement towards the process of walking is tantamount to ticking days off a calendar, counting down to W-Day when his world becomes a whole lot bigger. Then, or so I’ve been informed, it’ll be just a short while until he’s drawing on the walls and shaving the dog. But until that time I can content myself with how well my son’s trying to imitate his parents; for instance, he blows raspberries on cue and makes the same sounds of ’pfft’ that I do in my super manly blatant disregard for the rules. Added to the clapping on command and the phrase ’No! Take that out of your mouth!’, I think we’ve got a semi-trained human being on our hands. It’s either that or he’s just biding his time…

The thing he doesn’t copy us on yet is night times. They’re still super difficult, as I’m sure many other peoples’ respective offspring’s are. He just…can’t seem to get the knack of sleeping when it’s dark, you know? It wouldn’t be so bad if we were barn owls, but we’re not. When my son woke three nights ago he took one look at me and screamed until he was an utterly inconsolable mess — if I didn’t know that it was because he’s going through another of these awkward developmental phases I’d be genuinely offended. Like he thought I was hideously ugly or something.

And the thing is, it took a calm-injection of boob from his mother to eventually stop his sobs, because he was properly crying over the state of Daddy’s face — sorry, over his developmental phase. I think it was a night terror; either way, I’m glad my wife could sit and reconnect with him because honestly I’m not 100% I would have been able to do it by myself.

And now we’re reading all the information out there for any advice that’ll hit home and help us get the little devil’s sleep back on track. It’s difficult not to lose your mind over the sheer amount of conflictive, contradictory articles that exist, saying you should let your child sleep all day then more at night, that you shouldn’t let them sleep at all during the day then suspend them from the ceiling to centre their chi, that you should let them just organise themselves bureaucratically, that you should simply bolt them to the bed. The list goes on, and I’ve only talked about the mild procedures. There’s some real horrible shit out there, so stay safe, prospective parents.

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