BAD PARENTING - WOULD YOU ADMIT TO IT?

Yesterday was Q’s first birthday and she celebrated by taking a dive off the bed and giving herself a lovely bruised cheekbone.

We’re not bad parents I promise.

Gregory is.

I wasn’t even here.

Although I should admit that this morning I had to stop her from swallowing a necklace piece I had left lying around that was a potential choking hazard.

Have you called DOCS on us yet?

The thing is, this parenting gig is fraught with potential disaster. There are near-death experiences awaiting your every move.

Only yesterday my friend pinched her son’s skin into the seatbelt harness when she was putting him in the car.

Not surprisingly he squealed in pain.

The day before that another friend was carrying her baby and walked her clean into a door. Even worse, all her friends were watching.

Then there was the time Q came out in a dreadful heat rash because I had done exactly what they tell you to do and put her in one more layer than I was wearing and just about cooked her.

Note to self – my babe runs hot like her father.           

Or when I was too scared to give her Baby Panadol for the first time, so she cut her first tooth pain-reliever free.

That would have really sucked.

My brother has squashed her hand against a wall when he was walking her in the pram. ‘I told you to keep your hands inside the vehicle at all times Q,’ he said rather unsympathetically.

Anyone that changes her has to perform a UFC move by trapping her arms with their head, her legs with one arm and dodging a pooey nappy with the other. ‘It’s like trying to put a cat in a heshen sack,’ says another brother.

Then there are the amateur mistakes like baths too hot or too cold. Ditto food. Getting stuck in the rain without any protection and being forced to walk home while breastfeeding, the water beating down on the back of your child’s head. Anyone remember the trouble Jackie O got into for walking while bottle-feeding? Lucky nobody knows me.

Forgetting to give Baby Panadol before your child’s first vaccines.

Leaving your child with 2 doting uncles and a bottle of expressed milk, which she refused and decided to scream for 2 hours instead.

Or packing all parts for the bottle except the one that joins the nipple to the vessel thereby rendering the entire thing useless and forcing your husband to try to drip milk off his finger into your starving child’s mouth.

Yep, we’ve pretty much covered all areas of bad parenting, and due to upcoming changes in our family income, it looks like I may have to venture out into the workforce, so it seems only sensible to do what I am naturally gifted to do…

Babysit.

20 bucks an hour, cash seems fair don’t you think?

30 if they’re not asleep and I actually have to do something.

No doubt I’ll fill up pretty fast, so be sure to book in immediately.