What Can Be so Difficult? time and babies

We're having a baby! We have no idea what will happen, and don't understand what will take up so much time!

Early portrait of the mini Jo(e), looking very relaxed

We’re about to be first-time parents. Therefore, we have no idea what we’re doing.

We’re going through the motions of buying the things that one buys when a baby is on the way. Pram, cot, a first blanket and a (really) cute little hat for when we leave the hospital.

We’re also nesting furiously. We’ve bought new bits of furniture, moved the furniture around, moved some of it back again. Parts of the flat we don’t even notice any more have been cleaned to a polish, and we finally got through the full backlog of laundry.

On the principal that those who’ve already done this know what they’re doing, we’ve also been imitating our child-rearing friends. There’s the three-month old who lives with a dog, and whenever the baby dribbles or throws up, the dog is on hand to lick it up. It’s a good way to keep the place clean! Rather than get a dog, which seems a good deal of effort in itself, we bought a robot mop. It’ll just follow us around and clean the floor when the little one decides it didn’t like that particular mouthful of milk. (It will also keep the robot hoover company – it would be a real shame for them to get jealous about not having so much of our attention any more!)

We’ve read all of the books that you’re supposed to read. The one with a page for each day of pregnancy telling you what’s happening to the growing ball of cells, the one that goes into more detail than you could imagine about the positive and negative energies surrounding a Birth Experience (!), and the one by the blogger who described the Richter scale of poo.

Everyone says it’s exhausting, that there isn’t enough time to do everything needed once it arrives. The thing is, we still don’t understand what exactly happens that occupies two people so thoroughly. How can it take so much time to change a nappy a few times, wipe it down, feed it and watch it doing cute things with fluffy toys? We do believe everyone else, we know that it really will take more than twenty-four hours a day, we just don’t understand how yet.

I’m sure that it will become quickly apparent with the arrival of our little bundle of poo joy!