Even I have to admit that before I actually had real kids my before kids parenting was bloody amazing. 

Before I had kids I can only begin to explain how lovely, Petunia, Arabella & Alfie were. 

I have to share it with you because you’ll be so jealous of my amazing parenting style you’ll be begging me to write a Before I Had Kids Guide To Parenting Manual. 

We can start at the beginning if you like. 

The birth was ok, I pushed, I had my brow mopped by my loyal, helpful, ever caring husband - bless him, he’s read every parenting book out there- we just want to get this so right. After all, we are raising the next generation, a future Einstein, Picasso, Leader, Business Guru.

Anyway, I digress. Baby was born, packaged up in pink and home I floated. 

Everything was set up and ready to go. Baby slept every night in the overpriced Moses basket, me and the husband slept and when baby woke in the night, baby always woke the once, we’d take it in turns to feed and be back in our slumber 30 mins after waking.

The cleaning was done before 10am every morning, baby fed, morning coffee with friends, down for naps, lunch with mummy friends then tea on the stove ready for a lovely evening meal while baby coos in the bouncer - a glass of wine at 7pm when baby was down and bed at 10am. 

Gerald never asked what I’d done that day because he just knew I’d been desperately rushed off my feet. 

When school happened, the kids were up and dressed and eating breakfast at the table at 7am, they did a little reading and off we skipped to school, laughing en route and practising our times tables, obviously the children needed a light snack of avocado or suchlike after school, then it was homework, spellings and reading before a healthy tea and a little bit of educational tv before bathtime. 

Bedtime consisted of a story, before they lay down, I pulled up their covers, kissed the little darlings on the forehead and wished them pleasant dreams. I’d turn off the lamp and tiptoe out of their beautifully decorated rooms and smile to myself.. ‘oh look at the little cherubs Gerald, asleep as always before I even get to the door’. 

............. Then I had kids........

......WTF.......

Well where do I start, the before kids parent definitely never had to karate chop the buggers across the middle to get them in the pushchair and/or car seat.. 

the before kids parent never bribed the shitters with sweets and chocolate just to be bloody quiet while she spoke on the phone for 10 seconds .. 

In fact the ‘before kids’ parent never called her kids shits but the ‘after actual kids’ parent has forgot what their actual names are. Mainly because shits suits them better most of the time and because her mind has all but dissolved with the mass of things she has to remember ... things like ‘where the hell did I leave child 2, holy crap have I missed golden assembly, is it one of their birthdays?, have we even done the spellings of the week, is this child ever going to learn anything from his police games on the iPad?’

‘After kids’ parent hasn’t got a clue what time her kids should be in bed because they all go whenever she remembers the time and if they want a story, well there’s a pile of books thrown on the floor at the side of the bed that have been there about 2 months, they can pick one of those up if they can unstick the pages and use their imagination on the pages that are ripped. 

‘After kids’ parent hasn’t slept in 10 years and hasn’t brushed her hair in about the same length of time. 

She’s not even sure who the feck Gerald is, because the bloke that spermed the kids turned out to be a tosser who didn’t seem to comprehend that kids actually need bathing and feeding, never saw the middle of the night the 37 million times that she did and she’s doing it all alone. Happily but with significant nutcase tendencies- hey, we can’t all be normal ...

‘After kids’ parent doesn’t see the world for coffee because getting out of the house is a challenge on a par with survival with Bear Grylls - so she grabs a quick Nescafé and gets on Facebook to communicate with the world while bugger number 3 trashes the house that hasn’t seen a duster in months, but luckily baby wipes have multiple uses. 

‘After kids’ parent has a major panic attack if she’s ran out of fish fingers, she owns one of those cookbooks for kids, where all meals are turned into happy faces, or hedgehogs but it’s never been used- who the feck has time for that. 

So there we have it... ‘before kids’ parent and ‘After kids’ parent... they don’t recognise each other. They actually think the other one is a dick.. 

You will still see ‘before kids’ parent, those are the ones that tut in queues as yours bound around, the ones that hate anyone with kids sat anywhere near them on public transport, the ones who look at you with disdain when you ram a sausage roll into child’s mouth as it sits in the pushchair and said child starts spitting pieces out because it’s apparently hilarious. 

‘After kids’ parent also exists, you’ll spot her straight away... 

minimal make up, ragged hair, lipstick smeared up to her cheeks because of the earlier pushchair tantrum, she’ll look knackered, like she hasn’t slept in years, because she hasn’t, and she will probably be swigging from a bottle of vodka at 11am because coffee is no longer strong enough to keep her sane.! 

I've noticed as the kids have come along and multiplied my commitment to the rule book has diminished.

I'm thinking back to the first baby. The first baby it was all about the books..
To start with I bought every single pregnancy magazine on the shelf every month.
I read every page.
I reviewed every conceivable product.
I obeyed the health visitor.
I read every milestone at every month and devoted all my spare time to ensuring we hit it.

Number 1 had all new clothes. And toys. And equipment. God forbid anyone try to poison my little cherub with second hand tat.

I had endless anti bacterial spray proven to kill 99% of all known germs and totally safe for baby. And I used it. With a new cloth every time.

Baby number 1 went to every baby group in the world. Baby yoga, baby massage, baby gymnastics, baby music club, baby literacy, baby accountancy, baby business studies and baby Oxford University.

Baby number 1 was weighed every single month and baby number 1 had a baby book which was all filled in, with weights and dates and immunisations and the correct order the teeth came in.

I also had a little sleep when baby slept - ahhhh it was lovely.

Baby number 1 had a little routine of feeding and sleeping and playtime, it had nursery rhymes sang to it and black and white swirly pattern books adorned the shelves brought out to stimulate baby number 1's eyesight.
Baby number 1 even had a library card.

Baby number 1 was talked about all the time like no other conversation could ever exist anymore.. 'oh baby number 1 rolled over today' 'baby number 1 said 'Gah'', 'baby number 1 did such a funny burp', 'baby number 1 moved their eyes' .. you get my drift.
Life revolved around baby number 1 which is why ever going back to work seemed like the equivalent of asking the devil for tea. Poor baby having to go to a nursery surrounded by experienced and dedicated trained staff who sing play and feed your baby all day whilst baby makes lots of friends and blossoms in social interactions. Poor baby having to go here all day.
Mum sobs hysterically all the way to work and keeps checking rear view mirror to catch glimpse of empty car seat whilst continuing in tirade of tears wishing she had ba ba black sheep on repeat instead of the local radio station. Life is so cruel.
Mum learns to leave her firstborn but bores her workmates regularly with photos and milestones and eventually mum starts to think she's got this. She can so damn well be career woman and mum extraordinaire.

Then along comes Baby Number 2.

Baby number 2: Funny how we refer to a poo as a number 2 because with baby number 2, things go a little bit to shit. Irony there somewhere.

The books are still on the shelf, and there are still some clothes and equipment. It seems the right thing to do to use these again. After all, only my own little darling had used them before. But the steriliser, well that probably smells a bit off by now so best buy a new one.
Some of the vests and baby-gro's will be a bit bobbly, so I best buy new ones.
The pushchair has probably seen better days, so best buy a new one.

It starts going downhill with the scan picture, you don't bother bringing it to work to show everyone because let's face it, they all look the same on a scan give or take.

People ask if it's your first child and as soon as you say 'no it's my second. They glaze over and walk off'

Then you have the baby probably without a birth plan in place (baby number 1 had very specific birthing rules, that it probably didn't follow- but still, the rules were written out)
Baby number 2 could be born on the M1 for all the planning you do.

Baby comes home, to a toddler who thinks it's an alien and pokes it at regular intervals and suddenly regresses into being a baby again themselves, stealing dummies and laying in the babies Moses basket whether the actual baby is in it or not.
Just as well really because baby number 2 isn't going anywhere near that basket to sleep. It's your bed or no bed.

Then the health visitor came.

And I noticed I had sort of started to glaze over at the parts about sterilising equipment and not co-sleeping and I think I might have punched her inside my head when she mentioned the part about sleeping when baby slept after a bad night...
Erm, when exactly did she mean? When the toddler sleeps at exactly the same co-ordinated time as the baby?! Is that when I catch up on sleep? Because as far as I am aware, the toddler never sleeps. Not in the day and not at night either.

Weigh baby every month you say?

Shall I .. is it acceptable to come in my pyjamas to weigh in clinic with the toddler being dragged along by her legs and wearing a nappy that she might have had on for 12 hours now because she proper kicks off every time I go to change her and I can't be arsed to spend half the day playing 'roll the toddler back onto her back, pin her down and force clean nappy on' game.

Quite frankly, the days of leaving the house before 11am are long behind me and I think I've forgotten how I ever used to get ready at all, let alone get ready for a particular time.

Make up? Crusted over.
Hairbrush? Crusted over and enough hair in it to create dreadlocks for a whole community of bald people.
Toothbrush? Crusted over with yesterday's toothpaste now dried up and welded onto the bristles because I forgot to brush my teeth before bed.

Baby number 2 has a baby book as well. Just to be fair to it. To show I loved them equally and all that.
So far baby number 2 has her birthday written in and who her parents are. I'm not sure she even has teeth and if she even had a birth weight for that matter.
It's all a blur.

Baby number 2 wears second hand clothes. Probably not even the right size anymore. The 6 month old is quite likely in 0-3 month clothes because there's no time to check the sizes and neatly pack up the old clothes anymore.
But hey, what girl doesn't like to fit into the size below in clothing - I'm just setting her up for life here.

The sprays around the house have all been replaced with wipes.. usually baby wipes, there's nothing a baby wipe can't fix. Dusty surfaces, stains in the kitchen, toilet seats, face washing. They do every job in the house now. If they tasted nice I'd even stick one in a stew like a bay leaf.
And when I say stew I mean the pre packaged crap I buy from Farmfoods (money a bit tighter these days) and then pass it off as my own culinary creation.

Baby number 2 was meant to glide into the already existing madness and just make up the numbers. Baby number 2 was just going to 'fit in'.

But what no one tells you about baby number 2 is that it'll most likely be the polar opposite of baby number 1.
The only thing baby number 2 will 'fit into' are the bobbly baby gro's from baby number 1!

Baby number 2 will see your routine, raise it by 10 then destroy the fecker like you've never known.

Baby number 2 will realise you've started wearing make up again and managed to go back to work prior to its birth and get out the house before 11 and then shoot a runny disgusting shit all the way up its own back so you have no other means of removing it effectively and you have to sort of bath the baby poo away before leaving existing stained clothes in cold water in an attempt to lift the stain.
I lied when I said baby wipes shift everything.. they don't work on all poo's unless you use the whole packet!

Somehow baby number 1 and baby number 2 survive your care in the early days and eventually you start to nail this parenting of 2 thing.

Obviously you can erase the hours between 5pm and 7pm from the nailing because that's when it goes to shit in every household across the country, you'll never suss that one out trust me. No parent ever has or ever will.

Then along comes baby number 3.

Number 3...

Where the actual feck did I leave him?? Shit.
Might still be inside primark somewhere, best nip back...

I don't half come out with some crap. 

Yes, I'm talking about me. Not the kids. Although they also speak crap most of the time. But that comes with being a child. 

What excuse do I have as a grown up. Omg I'm a grown up.

I don't even think I'm a grown up sometimes. And even when I think I must be, I don't agree with it. Far too much responsibility with that title. 

Anyway, about the crap. I actually heard myself talk the other day. And I was astounded by how much rubbish I utter, especially in a half ditched attempt to restore some grown up law and order in my world of under 10's mayhem. 

It goes something like this.... 

"Screech, waaaaaah, screeeeech, arghhhh, muuuuuuuuuuuuuuuum, eeeeeeeeeeek, that's miiiiiiiiiiiiiine, grrrrraaaaaaaaarrrrrr" and so on.... And me, ever the patient earth mother screams right back "for goodness sake, omg kids, what the hell is this, will you just shut up for one minute"...... 

They don't. 

"Right. That IS IT, if you do NOT shut up I am going to stop this car and leave you by the roadside and I will not let you back in the car, I will drive off"

Only I won't. I won't do any of those things.

For a couple of reasons. (1) it's illegal to leave your child randomly at the side of the road (2) it's just an attempt on my part to get them to shut up when saying shut up doesn't work. I don't mean it. We all know this. Which is why they carry on as they were, I go grey and develop laryngitis from all the screaming and instead start calculating how many years are left under they turn 18 and they magically stop being knobs and start being responsible teenagers having adult conversations, applying reason to their arguments and being all mature. (that IS what happens isn't it!!!) 

I could probably write a catalogue of empty threats. I told them I'll leave them in supermarket aisles by the fish counter because the eerie eyed fish scare them (doesn't work with any other aisle, especially the sweet aisle which they'd happily let me leave them on) 

I've told them I'll take them to the plug monsters factory for naughty children (the plug monster being the obvious choice of monster title for the slimey monster that lives down the plug hole and 'gets' children who won't get out of the bath when mummy tells them)

I've mentioned countless scary animals that will come out of bushes randomly if said child continues to refuse to walk down the pavement back home (bears; tons of those feckers where I live, foxes, the occasional wolf; I don't over use

this one and reserve for early evening threats and finally we've had the odd yeti) 

Now and again they listen up, albeit briefly, occasionally the odd full of crap threat has had an effect and they've pulled back on the squabbling or the tantruming, the animal nonsense works the best to be fair, but most of the time I think they've figured out that in 8 years and 4 years respectively that these 'threats' have been going- never once has a yeti appeared (the odd excessively hairy bloke but not officially a yeti), I've never left them and instead had major panic attacks if I've turned round and I can't see them and the plug monster has never been seen. (Altho I've found collecting my hair around the plug hole can have its evidential advantages) 

Alas, but still, I carry on. I carry on coming out with the rubbish I do when the arguing or resistance gets too much. I have nothing else in the parenting bag. In fact the parenting bag is now probably not even a bag, it's a purse. 

I should quite probably give it up and lose the nonsense.

It stresses us all out and it's never going to be carried out. But as every harassed parent knows, when your buttons are pressed, they're pressed. We don't always think before we speak, we auto react in the same shouty voices as the kids and pretty much go down to their level. That's not grown up is it. 

4 weeks later after reflection :

 Several instances of squabbling etchave occured. Mummy hasn't threatened to leave children in odd places. Nor has mummy said she will leave children at roadsides or supermarket aisles. 

However, mummy has found that the kids don't want ssssssssssssedric the one eyed evil snake who loves loud cross children to be let into the car ..... 

Ahhhhhh happy driving people.