Goodbye, Pert Breasts: The Diary of a Newborn Dad

You know when an Earth Mother comes up to you whilst you’re minding your own business? You can hear the swoosh of her grass skirt as she sidles up to you, the gentle pat-pat-pat of her woven sandals. You’re not in the mood to talk, instead using a finger to try and pry a LEGO block from your toddler’s mouth as he pokes raisins up his nose.

“Isn’t parenthood wonderful?” she gushes, with a little spin and a flick of her long frizzy blonde hair. You look at her, a bit like this.

Because you're cool.

And then you see it, shimmering beneath that frozen, hollow grin that you only normally see on politicians or Scientologists. The bags under her eyes give the game away, the look in her pupils that says Shoot me now. You can talk rubbish all you like, Earth Mother, you ain’t foolin’ me. Now go and suckle your teenage son whilst picking corn, or whatever it is you lot do.

Because parenthood, for the most part, is rubbish. And here’s why.

1. There’s poo everywhere. From the moment your child is born, it poos, and it doesn’t stop pooing until the day it dies. Involuntary poos which seep out of the side of nappies and somehow defy gravity to run all the way up your kid’s back. Voluntary poos which are secreted in the most inconvenient places, followed by a bellowed request for you to wipe his or her’s backside. Then, as old age hits, we’re back to the involuntary poos, and so the circle of life is complete, although if you’re lucky you’ll be dead by then. Poo. Poo. More poo. Poo everywhere.
2. Your freedom is gone. You scream for it like him out of Braveheart, but it’s gone. You won’t get it back for another 18 years at least, not fully. Congratulations: a ‘night out’ now consists of a hurried meal at a very local restaurant which is interrupted halfway through by your babysitter calling to say Timmy’s crying and he won’t shut up.
3. Tantrums. Newsflash: it is never socially acceptable to scream and yell and kick in public. Kids don’t seem to understand this, though, and will quite happily tell you they hate you in front of a trillion people, all of whom are judging you. My four year-old son threw a strop in Sainsbury’s the other day. At one point he actually lay down in front of the shopping trolley; his very own Tiananmen Square moment. Although this time the protester got run over.
4. Money? What’s money? I know not of this ‘money’ of which you speak. My wallet is thick only thanks to the fact it contains a wodge of receipts for nappies, wet wipes, formula milk, clothes, a cot, babygrows, dummies, more nappies, Calpol, baby shampoo, a Moses basket, and a bar of chocolate which I bought as a treat to stave off madness for another day.
5. You turn into the living dead. Sleep is a luxury that only childless people can afford. Instead you have to survive on four hours of broken sleep a night, which means that you spend the day looking like a crack addict. And don’t you dare tell me that your blessed little cherub sleeps through the night, or I swear on my life I will pull out your teeth with a pair of rusty pliers.