Bring on the playpen - I want to get into it!

If you are of a sensitive or squeamish nature, it's probably best for you to avert your eyes for this one due to the graphic content!  It has been on my mind a lot lately, as I have been moving through the exciting territory of toilet training yet another littlie.  I started thinking about how much we change as we move into the exciting and challenging world of being parents.  And thanks for reminding me, Nigel - it's not only the mothers who have to change, it's the fathers too.  


As I was picking poo up off the carpet for the umpteenth time, I pondered this fact.  When I was a lot younger, even watching someone vomiting on television was enough to provoke several reflex heaves in me.  Mention of toileting, bowel movements or passing wind of any sort was not tolerated (I still can't think of the word fart without blushing - even writing it is too much for me).  So there must be something hard-wired into us when we become parents that changes all of that.  It is like a light switch goes on and something tells us "You're not as important as you thought you were - there is now someone else in your life that means more."  And that circle widens to include not only our children, but our spouse/partner too.


If someone had told the younger me that I would one day hold my bare hands out to accept all manner of "offerings" from my children (which have run the gamut from squashed slugs or beetles, to nose pickings, to dog or horse poo, to human poo and projectile vomiting), I would have laughed in their face (okay, I would have heaved first, then possibly laughed in their face).  Yet, clutching the hot, heaving little body of my eldest as he threw up again all over me, the couch and my beautiful Persian carpet, there was not one thing in the world that could prise me away from that moment in time.  It was priceless for the very fact that I could be there for him at that time, that when to the world he was at his most unlovable, I loved him fiercely and protectively and wanted to be there for him.  My own wishes and desires became nothing compared to his needs.


Being a parent changes you fundamentally.  Chances are it is only the parents or those of very strong constitutions that have made it this far into this blog without feeling a bit queasy.  But it is a good change.  Being a parent is not about being perfect, but it is something that perfects us.  It is more about us growing up to be good parents than it is about us rearing a good child.  When we can work that one out, we are starting on the right track.