Things you learn in your first year of parenthood

My little beauty turned one on Friday, I was an emotional mess last week leading up to the day for a number of reasons. It suddenly hit me that the year had gone by in a blur, I was having flashbacks constantly to last year leading up to her birth and on the day itself the enormity of being a parent hit me.

Hence, taking stock of the last 12 months and the things I learned that were unexpected…

1. Poo – You get just ever so slightly obsessed with it and everything about it, literally almost from the moment the baby pops out. What colour is it, how much is she doing, how often, the consistency and don’t even get me started about it once they start on solids…

2. Nappies – did you know how many variations of Pampers there are? Honestly when she moved from size 2 nappies I felt like I needed some sort of a degree to figure out the size variations and product types, simply dry, baby dry, active fit, new baby – good grief!

3. Clothes – I can’t even remember the last time I bought myself something new… Ruby on the other hand has quite an extensive wardrobe, enough said.

4. Bibs – they had to be mentioned somewhere, for me obviously bibs have been a bit of an obsession, I won’t go into the reflux and eczema challenges but finding a good bib has been something of a priority – hence BabyBoo

5. Grandparents – Ruby is the first granddaughter and only the second grandchild in our family and I’ve seen a whole new side to my parents. It’s so sweet to watch them with her and to watch how much she adores them both but especially my dad, she favours him over me most of the time these days.

6. Percentiles & Public Health Nurses – I am part of a baby group and out of roughly 75 women based all over Ireland about 5% have something positive to say about their PHN. I was semi-lucky with the second nurse I got, she was and is lovely. They are flipping demented though about weight and height and head size and percentile charts and where you baby falls within the whole chart and referring them all over the place for even the slightest of variation from the norm (what is the norm anyway?).

7. Friends – I have a new found respect for all my friends who have children, especially the ones who had them when we were in our early twenties or before that, it’s hard work.

8. Lastly being a mum is the best thing ever, there are harder days and there are days you feel like you wish you could step away for a few hours but even those days are infinitely better than before I was a mum. That little face smiling up at me when I come home from work or wake her up in the morning – I never thought it was possible to love another person so much. Now enough of the soppy stuff.

xx