Guest post: A living hell

My second guest post of the week is from the adorable, award winning and very funny Northern Mummy with Southern Children.

Since I started this blog just over a year ago, Jane has become a very good friend. She is genuinely one of the wittiest, no-nonsense and funny people I know. This is something I’m sure my northern husband would attribute to the fact she’s not from the south. Whatever the reason, I’m thrilled to welcome her over to my place…

***

Hang on, let me adjust a second. There, that’s better.

Sorry it is just Molly’s blog is so much quieter than mine, it caught me off guard momentarily. I am not used to being in a space that is dominated by only one baby, whereas my blog is getting slightly over crowded with my three rather ‘exuberant’ children.

Anyway where are my manners, I am Jane, I normally blog over at Northernmum. I am mother to twin boy, twin girl and baby beautiful. I am also knackered constantly, forming a slight dependence upon gin and most days an appalling parent.

But I try hard so that’s ok.

So Molly is off on her holidays, which cast my mind back to our first family holiday with the twins.

They were 18 weeks old, we were naïve enough to think a four hour flight would be a wise idea. Our ‘hand’ luggage consisted of a double buggy, at least twenty bouncy soft musical toys which had not captured their attention in the UK but were somehow deemed necessary to board a Boeing 747. Fifteen packets of SMA gold, six bottles, two sterilising bags, ten books (for the children who can’t read), ten small bottles of gin (for the grown ups who wouldn’t have time to read). One bottle of Calpol (large), two packets of nurofen (extra strength). Two tupperware pots of frozen puree pear, (because starting weaning as you go on holiday is always a good plan). Three pairs of clothes, twenty nappies, two packets of wipes, six bibs and the twins favourite teddies.

You don’t even want to know what we checked in as baggage…

It pretty much went wrong from the get go. As we checked in we discovered the little known airline rule that two children under a year cannot sit in the same row of seats. Thus the flight involved he who helped create them and I sitting ten rows apart.

I like to think we encouraged in flight camaraderie as we involved the other passengers sitting between us in a game of pass the baby stuff. However I think I heard one passenger declare that this flight “was living hell”. He may have said “what a lovely bell” but to be honest Twin Boy screamed for four hours as the air hostess refused to comply with my wishes and black out the plane to complete darkness. So in return twin boy point blank refused to sleep and the noise erupting from him may have affected my hearing somewhat.

Most of the stuff we bought on board was predominantly useless however the change of clothes was a super plan. A super duper plan would have been to pop in a change for myself as well because when twin boy threw up SMA gold mixed with pear puree halfway through the flight I was left with very little choice but to sit in it and hope the smell wasn’t too over powering.

So to my dear Molly, should you feel guilt at leaving little Frog alone for a week whilst you and the NLM have some time together – just read this post and think of what could have been…