Well actually it started three months ago, when the wee one was born. And there is never a moment when you are truly safe. There’s always something waiting round the corner that could be going wrong. A case in point being the one illustrated below.
On Friday I was happily bleating down the phone to a friend about how being a single mother is “fine, just fine” (except for the fact that I am about to slip into a financial abyss from which I will quite possibly never return). But finances aside, i.e. if I had all the money in the world, or even just a bit more money, like I’d won the Euromillions or something, then it’s all just fine and dandy. Then, inevitably, something happens almost immediately that shatters that illusion.
On Friday that something was me suddenly acquiring some sort of food poisoning or norovirus type ailment. I won’t go into detail about what it entailed but suffice to say I was in no fit state to be looking after a wee one. Luckily, by the time it struck (at 9pm) Piglet was asleep (something of a miracle. He normally goes to sleep around midnight). Consequently, the last few days have been spent doing the following:
1.) Feeling rough
2.) Not eating
3.) Tentatively sipping water
4.) Watching Loose Women whilst lying on the sofa in a sleeping bag
5.) Lying in bed with Piglet, apologising that I have no energy to do anything else.
There were several points where I actually had to take Piglet off the breast to go and vomit/other end, leading to screaming fits which definitely lasted longer than most child psychologists would recommend.
Speaking of which, I am still confused about the best way to get Piglet to go to sleep as half the Internets I have read say that babies should be in a routine by now and that rocking or feeding a baby to sleep is going to mean he will turn into David Walliams in Little Britain demanding “bitty” from his ageing mother at inappropriate times, and the other half say that imposing a routine is going to mean the child turns into a Romanian orphan circa 1990, silently banging his head against the cot he still sleeps in at the age of twelve, unable to speak, so basically whatever I do, Piglet is doomed.
He’s actually lying next to me now, shouting at me that why oh why when the parents were being given out did he have the misfortune to end up with me and not Brad and Angelina. At least I think that’s what he saying. It actually sounds more like “O-OOOH EH OOH, GOOO,” but I’m pretty sure that’s baby language for the above.
Motherhood. The guilt just never ends.