Pregnancy Diary Week 17: Farm Day, Coping With Two

Week 17

I am currently parked up in a National Trust car park while my son naps in the car and I attempt to catch up on 26 unread whatsapp messages, reply to 5 out of date texts and write three blog entries. I am not sure this is what the National Trust had in mind when they sold me my membership but if this counts as making the most of the great British countryside then I’m all for it. I am also eating a Mr Whippy ice cream and drinking full fat farm milk straight out of a 2 litre container (pasteurised of course, what do you take me for?). This is definitely not OK but does showcase my excellent multi-tasking skills. Full fat milk has been one of my few pregnancy cravings but the fact that it’s a craving in no way excuses how it is being consumed, or in what quantity. Unfortunately slummy behaviour of this kind is a bit of a theme for today. We have just had the loveliest morning at the farm with friends. It has been a beautiful, sunny, spring day; we saw adorable baby animals, and, perhaps most notably, we managed to sit and have lunch at the same time and actually have a conversation lasting more than two sentences. With five 20-month old nippers in tow, this is an all-round win, which we plan to celebrate for some time to come. But before I get too smug about it all, I do have to confess that the sitting still bit was partly due to the fact that I let my son eat jam straight from the jar. With a knife. In partial defence, it was a miniature pot of jam and a butter knife, in case you are picturing a machete wielding toddler and copious amounts of thick, red liquid, like a scene from a Tarantino movie. It was somewhat more innocent; gleeful, sticky little face, eyes closed, completely adorable, and rather unusually (and most adorably) totally and blissfully silent. OK, so the reason for the silence was not ideal but I was not going to upset that apple cart. This time last year my son had been on solid food for a matter of months and the thought of him eating jam, let alone eating jam with a knife, from the pot, probably mixed with some snot, and most definitely some dirt, would have appalled me. We were a pureed butternut squash and organic parsnip only zone back then. Ah, how I laugh now. I couldn’t have given two shits about the jam situation today. The only thing that concerned me slightly was that I had significantly less jam to apply to my over-sized scone. Tragic. OK, OK, so I’ve had a clotted cream and jam scone, a Mr Whippy ice cream and a litre of full fat milk today. The baby needs bloody calcium, alright?! Deal with it. I am clearly using my pregnancy to justify this behaviour. I think it excuses the milk certainly. Maybe the milk and the scone? But definitely not the milk, the scone and the ice cream, and certainly not the drinking from the carton lark. However, I am still unsure about whether pregnancy counts as an excuse for my terribly lax parenting. I suspect not. If these are my current standards for my precious, perfect, first born, what the hell will things be like with two?! I am picturing grubby, feral children running riot; sticky hand prints and crayon scribbles on the wall, as I attempt to placate them with Class A toddler drugs (i.e., Haribo, Ribena — non sugar free, heaven forbid — and Peppa Pig) and generally lose my mind. Let’s hope this isn’t the state of things to come.