{"id":600796,"date":"2026-08-22T03:10:10","date_gmt":"2026-08-22T03:10:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/600796\/"},"modified":"2026-08-22T03:10:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-22T03:10:10","slug":"esther-mccarthy-a-mammys-pleas-for-change-one-per-stage-of-childhood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/600796\/","title":{"rendered":"Esther McCarthy: A mammy\u2019s pleas for change\u00a0\u2014 one per stage of childhood"},"content":{"rendered":"

A harried midwife once handed me a set of silicone nipple shields, told me to get on with it, and moved on to the next bed. That was it, no time to show me how to actually latch the baby, just a plastic not-so-fantastic solution and an air of exasperation that I wasn\u2019t managing it myself. For a few weeks after, those shields were the single most important object in our house. And that, I think, is the thing nobody tells you about parenthood: There\u2019s a stage where an item becomes the most important thing in the world to you, and then, almost overnight, the most inconsequential.<\/p>\n

So here, in order of appearance, are the official asks of mammyhood \u2014 one per stage. You might have different ones, that\u2019s ok, there\u2019s room for all our moaning in pretend fix-it land.<\/p>\n

Baby blues<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve since learned those shields are actually meant for women with flat or inverted nipples \u2014 and mine could have taken someone\u2019s eye out around a corner, so I\u2019d say I was misdiagnosed. But, I\u2019d been sent home convinced I couldn\u2019t feed the baby without them, so for a few weeks they ruled our house.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve also since learned midwives are working under incredible time pressure, and sometimes they genuinely don\u2019t have five minutes to show a new mum how to latch a baby properly. From that crucial five minutes came hours of stress, guilt, torment, and eventually mastitis. All of it, I think, avoidable.<\/p>\n

\n The ask: Please resource our maternity hospitals better, and give the midwives everything they need to do their jobs properly. If this includes Taco Tuesdays, free gin bars on bank holidays, and a proper pension, so be it.<\/p>\n

Wobblers and toddlers<\/p>\n

I remember having a five-year-old, a two-year-old and a new baby, and getting out the door was a bit of a palaver. We\u2019re not talking big day out or anything. Even just driving to a shopping centre where you could stroll around for a change of scenery, or bung them into the free play area to lick the communal bricks to build up their immune system while you sat there dazed, pretending not to see a kid squatting in the corner who may or may not have a nappy on.<\/p>\n

This day could be turned on its arse if, when you arrived at the shopping centre, all the family car spots were taken, thus forcing you to squeeze your recently c-sectioned stomach between your car door and the neighbouring car to undo two car seat buckles, designed by sadists, and then try to unclick and haul the car seat with the new baby out to click into the pram without scraping anyone\u2019s vehicle.<\/p>\n

I used to be sweating like Bertie Ahern at a CMAT concert.<\/p>\n

\n The ask: Please do not park in spots with strange chalk-like drawings of prams, kids, and mothers (where\u2019s the father in the picture, by the way?) unless you have a pram in the car.<\/p>\n

The playground grind<\/p>\n

I was reminiscing with a friend recently about how lovely it was when our kids were smallies, but then her face darkened, and she went a bit quiet.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s wrong?\u201d I asked gently.<\/p>\n

\u201cRemember the playgrounds, though,\u201d she muttered in a manner not unlike a soldier suffering from PTSD.<\/p>\n

We both shuddered and changed the subject. For, while playgrounds are marvellous places of stimulation, social connection, exercise, and making new friends for kids, for parents it is the badlands.<\/p>\n

Sure, with the first two kids, I did the hide and seek with them, I did the \u2018you can\u2019t get me!\u2019 on the swing and pretended to love it when they kicked me up the arse on the upswing arc, I did the catch them at the end of the slide and swing them around 17,001 times, but by God, it gets tedious after the first couple of years.<\/p>\n

By the time the third little dude came along, I was making him tuck and roll out of the car before skidding off to find the nearest coffee dock. The galling thing? The other two remember nothing of my incredible patience and brilliant parenting.<\/p>\n

What a waste of time.<\/p>\n

\n The ask: Please install some sort of AI device that allows your children to behold you sitting on a seesaw for half an hour, making it go bump for them, every time they pick a fight with you as a teenager.<\/p>\n

As part of this, fine parents \u20ac10k if they use their phones in the playgrounds. They\u2019re either taking too many blurry photos of their kid on a mini trampoline, checking their emails, or looking at other parents doing more fun things on social media, making them feel bad about themselves.<\/p>\n

They don\u2019t need their phones. Take it from someone who has done all three.<\/p>\n

Teenage kicks all through the night<\/p>\n

\n The ask: A time machine to take us back to the pram days, please.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A harried midwife once handed me a set of silicone nipple shields, told me to get on with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":600797,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[61,60,80],"class_list":["post-600796","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/600796","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=600796"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/600796\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/600797"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=600796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=600796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=600796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}