Shit on my hands

MH

Getting your forklift licence. Completing a mini triathlon. Accurately painting a male nude. These are all great achievements. But what about pushing a toddler to the shops in her pram with an infant strapped to your chest, navigating a supermarket, then successfully ordering and consuming a short macchiato (while supervising said toddler’s babycino-drinking endeavours) in a ridiculously tiny and hip café? Until the lunch/toilet/teeth-cleaning/afternoon nap disaster proves otherwise, you are buoyed by the comments and looks of admiration from fellow humans confirming that yes, you are a highly competent mother indeed. And then you see snaps a friend has posted on Facebook showing her travelling from her Papua New Guinea base to Melbourne on her own with 3 kids aged under 5. How did she negotiate passport queues and airport toilets? By strapping the 2-year-old on her back, the infant on her front and holding the 4-year-old’s hand. Holy crap! Fuck knows what she did with them all on the plane. I didn’t see any evidence of empty packets of Phernergan in the Facebook album. I was already admiring this woman in effusive spades when she organized an online charity auction (in which I was, incidentally, the rapturous highest bidder for an Olive’s Friend Pip dress) to raise money for her local PNG hospital so it could pay its power bill. But this international expedition should win her some kind of award – or at least a starring role in a baby carrier advertising campaign. I hope the journey gave a major confidence boost rather than a slipped intervertebral disc. And I hereby dedicate my future efforts to get my own spawn from Preston to Thornbury on the 86 tram to Ms Falguni!