Did you hear the one about the pregnant woman who went into labour and began to yell, “Couldn’t! Wouldn’t! Shouldn’t! Didn’t! Can’t!”?
She was having contractions.
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Did you hear the one about the pregnant woman who went into labour and began to yell, “Couldn’t! Wouldn’t! Shouldn’t! Didn’t! Can’t!”?
She was having contractions.
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Being a parent changes everything. But being a parent also changes with each baby. Here are some of the ways having a second and third child is different from having your first.
Your Clothes
1st baby: You begin wearing maternity clothes as soon as your pregnancy is confirmed.
2nd baby: You wear your regular clothes for as long as possible.
3rd baby: Your maternity clothes ARE your regular clothes.
Preparing for the Birth
1st baby: You practice your breathing religiously.
2nd baby: You don’t bother practising because you remember that last time, breathing didn’t do a thing.
3rd baby: You ask for an epidural in your 8th month.
The Layette
1st baby: You pre-wash your newborn’s clothes, colour-coordinate them, and fold them neatly in the baby’s little bureau.
2nd baby: You check to make sure that the clothes are clean and discard only the ones with the darkest stains.
3rd baby: Boys can wear pink, can’t they?
Worries
1st baby: At the first sign of distress – a whimper, a frown – you pick up the baby.
2nd baby: You pick the baby up when her wails threaten to wake your firstborn.
3rd baby: You teach your 3-year-old how to rewind the mechanical swing.
Dummy/Pacifier
1st baby: If the dummy falls on the floor, you put it away until you can go home and wash and boil it.
2nd baby: When the dummy falls on the floor, you squirt it off with some juice from the baby’s bottle.
3rd baby: You wipe it off on your shirt and pop it back in.
Nappies/Diapers
1st baby: You change your baby’s nappies every hour, whether they need it or not.
2nd baby: You change their nappy every 2 to 3 hours, if needed.
3rd baby: You try to change their nappy before others start to complain about the smell or you see it sagging to their knees.
Activities
1st baby: You take your infant to Baby Gymnastics, BabySwing, and Baby Story Hour.
2nd baby: You take your infant to Baby Gymnastics.
3rd baby: You take your infant to the supermarket and the dry cleaner.
Going Out
1st baby: The first time you leave your baby with a sitter, you call home 5 times.
2nd baby: Just before you walk out the door, you remember to leave a number where you can be reached.
3rd baby: You leave instructions for the sitter to call only if she sees blood.
At Home
1st baby: You spend a good bit of every day just gazing at the baby.
2nd baby: You spend a bit of everyday watching to be sure your older child isn’t squeezing, poking, or hitting the baby.
3rd baby: You spend a little bit of every day hiding from the children.
Think of a time you let something slide, only for it to eat away at you later. Tell us how you’d fix it today.

It wasn’t so much a sliding as a tipping.
It was 1991. Tory Boy was about ten months old.
My younger brother was staying with us in our Johannesburg flat. The Hub, Little Brother, Tory Boy and I decided to walk to the nearby SPAR to pick up a few bits.
The Hub pushed his beautiful baby boy in his beautiful bright-blue-for-a-boy pram. We got about twenty yards from the building’s entrance when a wheel of the pram caught on the gravel and Tory Boy tipped right out, face first into the ground.
I swear it was nervous laughter on my part.
My brother laughed because I laughed (I’m very infectious). The Hub wrestled with the pram, swooped up Baby and yelled at me the terrible mother who laughed when her baby fell face-first into gravel, all at the same time.
My response (I swear it was nervous laughter on my part) has always eaten away at me. Mostly because every time Tory Boy brings it up the Hub glares at me and refuses to believe that it was nervous laughter on my part. Tory Boy doesn’t actually remember the incident but the story impressed him first time he heard it and he likes to remind me of it. Often. At least once every time he comes home, as if I don’t have enough guilt just bearing the title, ‘Mother’. I wouldn’t mind, but he doesn’t even have any scarring from the facial gravel indents.
To fix it, I’d have to have a do-over. Next time, they can go shopping without me.
I’m late with this one because the summer holiday weeks all merged into one.
Rather like my children.
Take this photo:
I’m almost certain it is Spud because it’s taken from the left – my hospital bed was on the left wall when I had him and on the right when I had Tory Boy.
Is it terrible that I can recall the position of my beds after childbirth but not what my new children looked like?
The problem is that both boys looked like their father at birth which means they also looked like each other. It’s been sixteen/twenty-two years and my memory isn’t what it once was, and that wasn’t much.
I say Spud looked like his father and brother, but he also looked like someone else. I had him by Caesarian and the anaesthetist (why does childbirth have so many aes? Coincidentally, A+E stands for Accident and Emergency in the UK – the equivalent of the American ER – and accidents often result in emergencies that include childbirth nine months on. Well it does in my family), a lovely man, held me up as the gynaecologist (see!) yanked him out.
What emerged was a fat, blue and crinkly Spud. My first thought – I swear this is true – was, ‘Oh, he looks like the alien baby from V.’
Tell me I’m wrong:
Thanks to Cliff for this one.
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A little boy asked his Dad, “Dad, I know babies come from mummies’ tummies, but how do they get there in the first place?”
Dad hummed and hawed and couldn’t think of what to say.
Finally, his son said, “You don’t have to make something up, Dad. It’s okay if you don’t know the answer.”
Four men met at a hospital where their wives were giving birth. A nurse approached Adam and said, “Congratulations, it’s twins.”
Adam said, “That’s a coincidence, I work for the Minnesota Twins.”
Soon after, a nurse told Brian, “Congratulations, you’ve got triplets.”
Brian said, “Another coincidence: I’m a director for 3 Musketeers.”
Another nurse arrived to tell Chad, ”Congratulations! It’s quads!” Chad laughed and said, “And I work at a Four Seasons hotel.”
Suddenly, Dave fainted. When he came to, Adam, Brian and Chad asked what happened.
Dave gulped, “I work for 7-Eleven…”
Thanks to Sidey for this one. It might lose a little something in the translation if English is not your first language, so apologies for that.
I went to visit my friend today. His wife was sat there with their newborn baby. She asked if I’d like to wind it.
I thought that was a bit harsh so I gave it a dead leg instead.
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UPDATE:
They say a joke’s not funny if you have to explain it, but here goes:
Gobetween offered a basket of Easter treats. I liked the idea so much, I have copied it.
Spud in his Easter Bonnet. It was so heavy, he needed a pole (in his right hand) to support it and a cord (in his left hand) to balance it. The Hub has a habit of going overboard. His enthusiasm tends to carry him to places he would never normally go, like into marriage with me.
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An Easter story:
At an Easter service in Bangladesh the congregation wept at the crucifixion scene in the Jesus film.
Suddenly a little boy at the back jumped up and shouted, ‘Don’t worry, He gets up again. I saw it before!’
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Spud the Vicar: one old tablecloth; some black card; white card; a material scrap and gold stickyback plastic. Must be a Church of England vicar.
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This happened last year:
I attended the early service in my Anglican church. We combined with two other churches in the parish last Easter. The church where we are now based is high church, as opposed to us low church, or enjoy-it-enough-to-almost-be-called-’happy-clappy’-if-we-weren’t-all-too-frightfully-British-to-actually-clap-in church.
The early service is extremely formal: the Gospel reading requires everyone to stand, and is made in the middle of the congregation. I suppose the thinking is that it’s at the centre of everything. People in long, white robes hold crosses on sticks and surround the vicar, who reads the scripture from the biggest Bible I’ve ever seen in real life. It is all rather solemn and old-fashioned.
The reading was from Matthew; the parable of the sower. The vicar read, And he told them many things in parables, saying, at which point he drew breath, just as the only baby in the room said, Dada!
I’ll tell you what is definitely not old-fashioned – a giggling vicar.
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Happy Easter!
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The world’s population is expected to reach 7 BILLION today. To put us in our place, the BBC have given us a calculator that, using our birth dates, will tell us what number of the current population we are.
There’s mine, at the top. I bet Number Six isn’t complaining now; at least people will remember him; try looking up 3226610530 in the phone book and see how quickly you become a minus number.
More people were born after me than were born before me. I find that depressing.
In the grand scheme of things, however, I am the 77,046,364,608th person to have lived since history began, which means I avoided Roman slavery, The Spanish Inquisition and George Formby. There’s always a silver lining.
The site also tells me that I will live 4.3 years longer than the Hub. Yeah! for the not expiring too soon, but what on earth will I do for head rubs?
I was on the site for about ten minutes. In that time the population grew by 2,159. All I can say is, Condoms, people! Condoms!
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I have nothing to blog about today; how is that possible? It is impossible. I will therefore use this Six Word Saturday to introduce non-WordPress bloggers to the WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge.
It is optional. It is easy:
Take a new photograph or, as I interpret it, use an old photograph, to interpret the theme. This week’s theme is Possibility. Here’s my entry:
It is possible this child grew up to be respectful of and towards his mother.
Possible, but unlikely.
To put it another way: he’s going to be a politician; the only thing he’ll learn to respect is the polls.
Ah, well. He’ll get my vote anyway. I’m his mother; it would be impossible for me not to support him, no matter how disgraceful his career choice.
This is my beautiful niece-in-law on her wedding day. Actually, she’s the Hub’s nephew’s wife, so that would make her my niece-in-law-in-law. She’s lovely, and she’s given me two great-nephews. In-law. And they’re not just great-nephews, but great great-nephews. I love them. I love babies. I miss babies. I wish I’d had more babies of my own. My own babies are just about grown up now. Sigh.
What was the prompt again?
Sidey’s weekend theme is unusual angles.
When I was pregnant with Spud, we went for our first scan. All I could see on the screen was a blob, but the Hub exclaimed, ‘It’s got my nose!’
I seem to be reserving Sundays for the groaniest jokes. I think I’m hoping people will sleep in and miss them.
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Some men were discussing coincidences.
The first man said, “My wife was reading a A Tale Of Two Cities and she gave birth to twins.”
“That’s funny,” the second man remarked, “my wife was reading The Three Musketeers and she gave birth to triplets.”
A third man said, ”My wife gave birth to quintuplets after reading Five Children And It.”
Suddenly, another man jumped up, shouting, “I have to get home now!”
When asked what the problem was, he exclaimed, “When I left the house, my wife was reading Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves!”
SHOW ME THE WORLD!!
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