Since having our daughter I have come to realise the adage of ‘it takes a village to raise a child’ is as true today as it was in the 1800’s the 1900s and in my own parents child rearing years.
I remember afternoons spent in the front garden of my neighbours while my mum ran around like a blue arsed fly trying to do the shopping, clean the house and get dinner ready — basically trying to run a house with 3 kids under her feet. Neighbours kids and cousins who lived nearby had part-time residence in our house too when needed. Back then it was so much the norm that I assumed that’s how life always was.
Time passed, I grew up, moved 100 miles from my home town, got married, made my own little space in the world with himself and we had a baby making our little world complete.
Yet suddenly, in the weeks following her arrival I found myself asking myself where the fuck is my village?!
There I was, knee deep in shitty nappies, new-born yet again mid cluster feed session and the faint smell of dinner burning in the kitchen when it hit me the reason why our families tended to all live within spitting distance of each other as we grew up — that undeniable need for support. I was exhausted, sleep deprived, my boobs ached, my tummy rumbled with hunger, himself had been reluctantly forced back to work after a month at home and I…
