You Know You’re A Mum When…

There are some things that are inescapable when you become a mum. Fatigue, emotional and physical, become the norm rather than the exception and your time is no longer yours. But have you ever noticed that there are a number of things that unite all mums (and dads to a lesser degree) that people without children just can’t comprehend?

Here’s a list of 10 things that tell you that you’ve crossed the threshold and are now a mum:

Sleep-ins are a distant memory – sleep-ins, or sleep in general in some cases. After our single days which encompassed late nights and disregard for regular sleep routines, parenting can be a shock! Even pregnant women wake several times a night towards the end of their pregnancy to empty their bladder or find a more comfortable position to sleep in. But once the baby is born, sleep generally gets thrown right out the window and this can last well into toddlerhood! Sleep-ins seem like a distant memory and soon become the holy grail of parenting. Does anyone remember what one feels like?
You rock trolleys while you peruse the shelves of the supermarket, even if the trolley is empty of children – I know I’m guilty of this and I’ve seen my husband do it too! You’re so used to keeping a little one calm and happy while you do the groceries that it becomes second nature to rock the trolley if you’re stopped for any period of time.
A child calls out ‘Mum’ and you turnaround even if all of your kids are present and accounted for. At the park, at the shops, wherever it might be even if it doesn’t sound like one of your kids, you turn anyway, it has become a natural reaction.
You go for a drive without kids and still turn around to look in the back seat to ‘check on them’. On the rare occasions I’m driving without kids I always check the backseat and then have to remind myself that they are not with me!
The only songs you’ve sung in recent history are from kids shows. Ah the inhumanity of children’s entertainment, the songs are catchy and they get stuck in your head for weeks. I would have trouble recognising a Top40 song these days but if you needed some one on a trivia table who knew the opening titles, or the characters, for the majority of kid shows on ABC2 then I’m your girl.
You’re well acquainted with lukewarm and/or reheated tea or coffee. My husband frequently makes fun of me for making a cuppa and then forgetting all about it but what can I say, I’m easily distracted by our three children and there’s always something more important happening in their lives than mummy drinking her cuppa.
You catch yourself talking like your mother. Yeah that’s right, we’ve all done it. We’ve spoken to our children about something, usually involving discipline and reasoning, and then later thought ‘that’s what my mum used to say!’ Maybe our own parents weren’t that bad after all!
Mummy timeouts are so appealing. Timeouts are generally a punishment in my house unless mummy needs one and then it is a reward. It’s like a little holiday where mummy can recharge and return to the chaos of domestic life moments later with a much calmer approach.
You go out with friends and give yourself a curfew. Let’s face it, you stay out late and have a few drinks with your friends, you know you’re going to pay for it the next day. You won’t get a sleepover and you’ll be mummy the grouch for the day unless you get home at a reasonable hour and get a good quantity of sleep before the alarm clock, aka the kids, wake you up at the crack of dawn.
Don’t like toys. Yes, I don’t like toys, not in a general sense but rather in a ‘we have so many why do we need any more?’ kind of way. Family, especially grandparents, are usually very generous and you don’t want to curb that enthusiasm but when you’re house is overrun by toys you begin to wonder if maybe, just maybe, toy free birthday parties are the way to go…