Life after three months

I lost count of how many people told me this would get easier at the three month mark.  I longed for the time when I could be awake during daytime hours, when the weight of my boobs didn’t give me back ache and I had time in the morning for more than a cursory encounter with the shower.  However, I feared putting too much on this hope in case it turned out to be unreliable; a bit like the advice about shaking my baby’s bottom to stop him crying.

It’s true – at least for me – there is something magical about three months and with the three month spring in my slightly lighter step I thought I’d share with you some of the pondering I’ve been doing:

1.      1) When you see a women in a supermarket with a baby she is living on the edge.   There’s something about Lidl that Elias detests.  Unless I can induce him into a full on sleep comma before we go in (careful nap timing required), he’ll cry and I’ll spend the trip asking myself questions like ‘do we need milk enough to warrant the trip to the other side of the supermarket?’, an epic voyage that will inevitably elicit more stares from concerned strangers and comments such as ‘have you tried feeding him?’

2.       2) Baby toe nails aren’t gross; when does this transformation happen? I have sat on a friend’s rug chopping Elias’ toe nails.  Rue the day when I take my socks off and casually start clipping away during afternoon coffee.

3.     3)   Changing nappies is fun, especially when I’m in social situations with people who have had enough sleep to put mascara on and I’m so tired that I have nothing to contribute beyond details concerning the exact hours of sleep I have had in the last 24 hours (usually under 6 in these circumstances).

4.      4)  People treat babies as private.   I often catch people making sideways glances into my pram, like they’re examining cleavage or something else they shouldn’t be looking at.  I make a big point of really obviously looking into prams now; most babies are utterly beautiful and if they’re not you can always complement their hands or the way they’re holding their blanket.