I cannot believe that he is one year old already

that he says mum and mama and no and nan-nan-nan-nan and that I am yet to get a good night’s sleep.

He should have been born in May but there we were, 2 weeks after the due-date, still no baby. We tried everything (legal and non-surgical) to get him out.

Liquorice by the bucket-load (apparently meant to induce contractions. I actually think it only induces runny poo, but that’s just the one opinion)

Acupuncture (not so bad)

Accelerating before speed-humps rather than braking (because someone told us that bumpy car rides can break the waters and so we stupidly believed them like the gullible, doe-eyed parents-to-be that we were) I think we wrecked the suspension on the car.

Disgusting herbal ‘bring on those contractions’ preparations (aka raspberry leaf, aka tastes like licking the lawnmower clean after mowing an entire golf course in the rain) – ok, so I just added the in the rain bit but let me tell you, these tablets just made my partner want to hurl (chuck/spew/vomit/ride the porcelain bus)

Super-hot curries (= indigestion and FYI curries are only tasty the first time round)

Talking to the tummy (ok, time to GET OUT little one – you know you wanna).

If it wasn’t for the actual induction (prostaglandin gel… syntocin drip) then baby may well have stayed in-utero forever… gotten married, gone to college, and had his own children right from the dark, damp and (apparently) quite noisy safety of my partner’s womb.

Now, one year on, he is in a constant state of teething, crawling, crying, laughing and generally giving his 2 mums an excess of joy, stress and poopie nappies.

At present he enjoys eating the non-toxic crayons we bought rather than actually drawing with them. Soon he will poo in waxy technicolour.

I cannot tell you what this last year has been like, it’s all a blur. Thank goodness for cameras, note-taking and multi-vitamins. If I could do it over again there are many things I would change, but even more that I wouldn’t.