Developmental Milestones

Just so you know where we're at, The Baby is currently 7 months old, and has learnt how to do the following things:

• Hold her head up from a very early age. Mostly because I was never all that careful about keeping it supported all the time, reasoning that no baby's head ever just fell off.
• Stand up while holding on to someone's hands, usually while wiggling her bum around in a manner not unlike a boy in a late-nineties indie band does while craning his head up towards the mic and waving a tambourine.
• Eat. Although she is my child, she was never likely to have much trouble on that score.
• Say very profound, interesting and wise things. I'm sure they must be, even though they mostly sound like "Gahh, looolaaa, aaaaah" to me.
• Sleep through the night. Sometimes.
• Turn the pages of a magazine.
• Eat the pages of a magazine.
• Remove the glasses from my face. And her dad's face. And her grandad's face. And her grandma's face. And her aunty's face. (Why can no-one in my family see??!)
• Wave toys around and make noise
• Hit things with other things and make even more noise.
• Turn herself around so that when I leave her lying in her cot and go back 15 minutes later because it's gone suspiciously quiet, her head is where her feet were and she looks very pleased with herself.
• Clamber on Daddy's face to wake him up. (I may have taught her that one)

She has not, however, learnt the following:

• To roll herself over, preferring just to whinge pitifully until someone turns her over.
• To crawl, apart from backwards, accidentally, which then enrages her because she can't figure out why the paper she was trying to eat is now further away.
• That when you have half a slice of toast in your mouth, it is best to swallow it before attempting to cram the other half in.
• That when she's tired, and someone has laid her down somewhere comfy, and covered her with a blanket, that the best solution is simply to GO TO SLEEP!
• That paper is not one of the major food groups.
• That water is for drinking, not spitting as far as you can.
• That headbutting hurts both butt-er and butt-ee.
• That 5.45am is not morning, however cute and smiley she is.

Why I am Bad Mammy

So, as I said in my first post, I'm not a terrible mother. I'm actually a pretty good mother (I think. I hope, anyway). I love and care for my child, I clothe her, change her, attempt to feed her a balanced diet, give her cuddles, put cream on her eczema and play with her, even when she is being a little bugger. I am, however, not the most conscientious of mothers (especially when compared to the thousands of mums that are always posting on various internet forums, they find things to worry about which would never cross my mind!) and so have christened myself Bad Mammy for several reasons, which include, but are not limited to, the following:

• I ignore almost all of the advice from the Department of Health, books and the internet, usually dismissing it with a "What harm can it do?!"
• I never take her to do any of the plethora of enriching and stimulating activities that are on offer for babies nowadays. Baby groups unnerve me a little bit - I'm not sure why - so I don't go to them, preferring to put The Baby in front of Playhouse Disney or the washing machine.
• I take my eyes off her far too often and assume she will remain where I left her, even though I know she could start rolling and/or crawling at any moment.
• When she was three months old, I let a mad old lady at my Nanna's wake give her a taste of white wine.
• I am terrible at sterilising things.
• The things that I do sterilise, I then make no effort to keep sterile
• I don't see the point of sterilising things anyway, when I let her put her toys straight back in her mouth after they've fallen on the kitchen floor. (I justify all this to myself by saying that germs are good and I'm helping her immune system develop. If there are any germologists or whatever out there, please don't disabuse me of this notion)
• I often look at the clock and realise I can't remember the last time I changed her nappy.
• I commit the cardinal sin of microwaving formula sometimes.
• I stopped breastfeeding so I could get drunk at Christmas.
• I had a glass of wine at least every few days while pregnant and breastfeeding.
• I call her a little bugger with alarming frequency. I won't be surprised if she grows up thinking that's her name.

..... and probably a million other things that would make an NCT group have a collective heart attack.......

Hello there!

Welcome!

I'm Bad Mammy and this is my blog. It is mainly a blog about my day-to-day life, which essentially means my baby (as you probably know, new mothers are extraordinarily boring and single-minded, and, seven months on, I am showing no signs of becoming any more interesting).

I started this mainly because someone told me to. So I hope you're bloody reading this, someone.

Like I said, I'm Bad Mammy, but I want to stress that I am not a bad mammy. I'm not saying that I am a terrible, neglectful, social-services-you-may-want-to-drop-in type of mother. It's more of an admonishment, a name I call myself about 12 times a day: as in, "Bad Mammy has let you do something you're not supposed to do, again!" or "Bad Mammy has not done something that she should have, again!". I will expand in the next post....

Apologies to my facebook friends - yes I'm going to rip off my status updates for this blog. I can't possibly be interesting in two different ways at once.

I'll try and keep my posts brief and mildy entertaining. Please give me abuse if they are neither. If I remember that there are other things in the world besides The Baby, I may write about those too.

Hope you enjoy it. Or at least read a little bit of it and don't think I'm a complete loser.

Love,

Bad Mammy x