The rudeness of arriving early 10/05/2011
The rudeness of arriving early You're a new mum. You need to feed your little darling every three hours, and it takes an hour to feed her. Then you have to take care of the laundry, the cleaning and if you're pumping breast milk that's another thirty minutes right there. Suddenly twenty four hours in a day isn't enough. Not that thirty hours would be any better, since you'd only have to feed your munchkin more. As soon as the sun goes down and baby's asleep, you drag your wretched carcass to bed, hoping to snatch two hour bursts throughout the night in between feeds. And while all this is going on, you neglect to pay the bills, answer the phone, write thank you cards or brush your teeth. Food gets tossed at your mouth at light-speed, normally while you're on the loo wasting precious seconds changing Always maxi-pads because remember you're also hemorrhaging all day. After about a week of this mayhem, by which time your dining table is no longer visible under the pile of unopened mail, you decide to retake control of your life, and figure that if you plan with military precision, you can salvage an hour and a half period during baby’s daytime nap to attend to the admin of your life. So, after depositing your little cream puff in her crib, you thrust yourself at your laptop and embrace the process of reintegration into civilized society. By embrace I mean multitask like it’s your last day on earth. You squeeze so much into that precious ninety minutes, that what used to take hours, now takes mere seconds, as you answer emails and write thank you cards with one hand whilst listing duplicate gifts on ebay with the other, all the while balancing a breast pump and your boobs on your knees. Yes that hour and a half is your time to get things done and it is worth more than gold and feels better than sex. So when inconsiderate visitors arrive fifteen minutes early and steal from that valuable time, it is probably the cruelest form of stress that can be inflicted on a new mum. My ninety minute me-time comes around only once every twenty-four hours, and anything not accomplished today will have to be added to the hundred tasks that I will have just ninety minutes to complete tomorrow. You see how unsettling that can be? So if I seem distracted, stressed and impatient when you visit, don't assume it's because of the baby. The baby seems to know that I need that time and kindly falls asleep. I am stressed because of you and your thoughtless thieving of my precious time. Pre-baby, I spent fourteen hours a day on the computer. Now I have to squeeze it all into one and a half hours. You steal even one minute of that and consider yourself lucky if I erase your name from my phone book, and do not dunk you in mayonnaise and chase you down the street with a pack of underfed pit bulls. So come on people. Be on time. Be a little late even. It's fashionable and will get you a welcoming smile, a cooing baby and perhaps even a drink and a snack. CommentsLeave a Reply | .
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