Timetable

Right. We need a routine.
How can such a tiny little human run two fully grown adults so quickly into the ground?

Here’s how.

6.45am – Betty wants a feed. Might as well get up. She munches hungrily at the breast – fair do’s. I doze momentarily in the chair.

7.45am – Betty allegedly wants a feed. She chews calmly yet indifferently at my other nipple. Absolutely not fair do’s.

9.30am – Massive poo. Usually explosive/hanging out of her nappy/up her back/coating her clothes/soaking her car seat/pram/cot. Toys apathetically if offered a feed.

11.00am – A period of alertness. Cries heartbreakingly and ‘I will report you to social services-ly’ if put down at any point. Likes to be entertained with toys/keys/music. Will feed if offered.

11.30-1.00pm – Will sleep in cot if manoevered quickly, quietly and without any actual movement of her body whatsoever. So, in essence…NO CHANCE. Feeding will quieten her.

1.00pm – Heavy wee based nappy to be sorted. Any niggles can be appeased with food.

2.00pm - Betty hungry again. A prolonged lunchtime feed, usually lasting until a few months after her seventh birthday.

3.30pm – Next impressively proportioned poo. Colour and consistency modelled on chip shop curry (smell not.) Feed needed to replace lost solids.

5.00pm – Wide eyed again, time to be entertained. The more jigging/dancing/singing/bouncing/rocking/swinging about you can do the better. Preferably in a very public, quiet, morose place; like a doctors waiting area or a library. My added embarrassment adds to her enjoyment no end. She is her mother’s daughter.
Will also feed quite happily in front of an audience if required. What a trooper.

7.00pm – Overtired crying to commence, lasting throughout Emmerdale and until the very last two minutes of Coronation Street. Excellent love, really great that. Want some peace? Hit the boob.

8.00pm – Bath time. Betty cries getting undressed. She cries naked. She cries on entry to the water, throughout all water sprinkling and fun with toys, and while being removed from the water. Initially believing ourselves to have gone deaf, we discovered there was, in fact, a slight reprieve for the ear when wrapping a naked Betty in a towel. Turns out this was because she was happily abusing said fresh towel and her previously squeaky clean legs by urinating liberally over both.

9.00pm – Another feed. Cries impatiently for breast to appear before coolly assuming the feeding position, and grazing intermittently for the following 45 mins.

10.30pm – Another victory in the Betty vs Pampers campaign, as excessive amounts of borderline solid waste seep mockingly from the seams of the defeated diaper. Milk then needed to rehydrate.

12.30pm – In a final crescendo of neediness, our famished daughter cries out desperately in the dark, unforgiving, yet beautifully peaceful night for sustenance, a bum change, and to generally make sure we haven’t forgotten she’s there. We haven’t. 

2.45pm – Last feed of the 24 hour period. My haggard hooters breathe a fleeting sigh of relief before crawling thankfully yet wearily, into my dizzied bra.

My little lady is getting away with a lot under the umbrella of alleged ‘bonding’. So much, in fact, that the umbrella has torn, bent and blown inside out, leaving only rags of useless cloth flailing in the wind.

We definitely need to have words.