Pre-Baby vs Post-Baby: A 10 Step Guide.

PRE-BABY	POST-BABY
You will buy everything. Babies R Us will have nothing on the volume of baby related items you have purchased. Other people will also buy you everything. You will then worry that you do not have enough baby related items and are not adequately prepared.	You will use 1% of what you have bought. If that. And that 1% will be composed of sleep suits, sick rags and nipple cream (which you hadn’t bought).
You will completely underestimate the severity and duration of sleep deprivation.	There are no words.
You will talk confidently about the type of baby you are going to have. And it is OBVIOUSLY going to be happy, content and compliant. And without a doubt, the baby ‘will fit into our lives, not the other way round.’	Your baby will be happy, content and compliant. For a few moments. Of certain days. In no particular pattern. These moments will be interspersed with your baby being unpredictable, unhappy and quite frankly, terrifying. At times, in public, for no reason at all, your baby will behave in such a way that means everyone around you thinks you are mistreating your baby. The baby will dictate every single aspect of your lives. Hitler will have nothing on your baby.
You will claim that no processed, refined or shop bought foodstuff will pass your baby’s lips.	After the 27th mealtime whereby your baby throws your carefully crafted handmade food creation onto the floor (whilst you eat frozen fish fingers and microwave rice), you will look at Ella’s Kitchen packets with a renewed enthusiasm.
You will be seduced by hundreds of different tiny baby outfits. You will hang them delicately in the little baby wardrobe in the nursery.	You will dress your baby in 5 sleep suits on rotation for the first 4 months of life. You won’t even bother putting the sleep suits back in the baby wardrobe between washes; you will just fish them out of the tumble dryer as required.
You will eat a super healthy post-baby diet to make sure your breast milk is as nutritious as possible.	You will eat a strange concoction of foodstuffs, entirely dependent upon what happens to be in your cupboard at whatever time of day you can make it to your kitchen with a spare hand. Cake will be a staple and, some days, your reason to live.
You will spend hours researching which baby bouncer/sling/cot mattress/ comforter to buy.	Whichever one you buy, your baby won’t like it. It will like the other one.
You will watch adverts/films/TV programs with picture perfect baby/family scenes… turn to your partner and have a loving squdge at the mere thought of such family perfection. (e.g.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CY3kcR3H7Mk)	Such adverts/films/TV will now make you laugh hysterically. You will share such clips with your baby friends so they can laugh hysterically too. You will all refer to them as 'f***ing ridiculous'.
Talk with enthusiasm about how having a new baby won’t stop you going out as a couple/with friends and doing all the things you used to do. You can just leave the baby with any one of the willing family members or friends.	The baby thinks it is some sort of Booby God, in control of the Boobs and requiring the Boobs to be nearby at all times, particularly if the baby has heard you planning an outing without the baby. The baby will sometimes take a bottle. But sometimes won’t. If it does, the bottle must be a particular type, delivered at a particular angle with milk at a very specific temperature, delivered by a very specific person. Generally NOT the person you have asked to look after the baby. Attend a grown up social event and spend the entire time worrying about the baby, worrying about the chosen baby-carer following your very specific instructions and at some point, spend a significant amount of time in a toilet pumping milk. Go to bed late. Spend a year trying to claw the late night back, as you temporarily forgot you don’t sleep anymore.
Think about how much you are going to love your baby.	Be entirely unprepared for the amount that you love your baby. Laugh every day. Marvel every day. Forget about Points 1-9.