Women should not feel bad about having time apart from their children and having the audacity to enjoy it. When my child is at nursery, I end the day knowing I have worked hard, and she has done 20 activities she would never get to do at home. I don’t spend our time away from one another in lovelorn misery but rather I end the day with a bubbly Christmas Eve sense of excitement as I go to collect her. Sometimes I think I love her the most when I’m not with her. I have come to realise that I’m a better mother when I don’t have to mother all the time. A refreshing, hilarious, raw and brutally honest account of the process of deciding to become a parent and everything that follows, whatever the path this may take. You could even encourage them to make mistakes. Whether that be with homework, or craft projects or creating a new dish for supper – encourage them to take risks. Show them that making mistakes helps us learn – how will they know that sprinkling in a chosen spice creates an unpleasant taste if they don’t try, or that adding red to the paint won’t give them the hue they were after unless they experience it for themselves? Before I had my daughter, I was told by some local parents that if I wanted to secure a spot at one of the neighbourhood’s good nurseries and not one of the places that was essentially a primary-colour painted gulag, I should really have started putting my name on waiting lists shortly before I sat my GCSEs. Trying to make up for lost time, I began to look at places for my unborn child when I was seven months pregnant.

My Child and Other Mistakes by Ellie Taylor | Goodreads My Child and Other Mistakes by Ellie Taylor | Goodreads

It was never preachy, never ‘everyone should be a mum’ or ‘I’m so brave because I am one’. It was always an understanding voice, offering silly anecdotes or helpful advice. But still there was earnestness. I’ll end with my favourite quote, which while written in a chapter about PPD, I think is very useful for anyone struggling to hear:The ‘stuff’ sneaks up on you. It begins deceptively slowly – a harmless if garish playmat appears in front of the sofa. “That’s ok,” you think, “It’s just one item.” In fact, it’s a nice hint of ‘child’ in a room that otherwise screams ‘functional living space for two adults who like watching The West Wing’. Even at the worst of my initial nursery anxiety, I have always tried to bat away the temptation to be drawn into the ‘mum guilt’ narrative that I despise. It’s either un-gendered ‘parental guilt’ or it can sod off. It is not for mothers alone to navigate the burden of a work/child balance. If you, like me, ever feel a sneak of self-reproach edge in, I urge you to try and tough-love yourself out of it. Remind your brain, as utilitarian as it sounds, that each of us has a role to play in a family, even our children. For my husband and l, our job is to work and pay bills, and for Ratbag, her job is to go to nursery and bloody well do Baby Shark. In My Child and Other Mistakes, Taylor chronicles her ascent into adulthood. I don’t mean the passing of the years that makes us a grown up but the decisions that we make that validate that in modern society such as getting engaged, getting married, having kids. Having a child creates change. Some of it will be good change, like getting out of having to go to that boring lunch or hen do because you now have the ultimate excuse up your sleeve: ‘childcare issues’. And best of all, unlike the death of a fictitious grandparent, there is no limit to how many times you can use it. Resilient children are less afraid of making mistakes and more prepared to take risks – because they can cope with having got it wrong. Explain how we don’t always know the answers or the right way to behave, but we can make the best choices we can – and accept if we get it wrong. This means showing them that mistakes are great ways to learn and are part of what makes us human.

My Child and Other Mistakes: The hilarious and - WHSmith

I will and already have been recommending this to everyone I know and it should be a must read for every new mum. In the end it took around six weeks to settle/break her in. I spent a lot of that time Googling variations of the words ‘nursery’ ‘baby’ and ‘trauma’. I knew her going to childcare was necessary for us as a family, but it certainly didn’t sit well. Friends would say, ‘Mine didn’t like it at the beginning either Ellie, it’s really normal for them to be upset.’ Expanding on how tough having a newborn was, Ellie said, “I had quite a bleak time with it all. I think, probably now, I had a touch of the old postnatal depression. It’s so hard. You do a lot of baby classes and you learn how much a little six-week old should sleep, and how to swaddle a baby, but you don’t learn that, especially for a woman, it’s a massive mental, psychological, physical adjustment. You become a completely different person. I think trying to get used to that, with all the hormones flying around, and trying to work out how you now exist in this world, when this life has been lifted from you, is massive. My Child and Other Mistakes is a frank and funny account of comedian Ellie Taylor's journey from being a single woman to meeting her now-husband, pondering motherhood, trying to get pregnant, being pregnant, having her baby and then navigating the trials of newborn life and figuring out her new place in the world.I felt so honoured to hear such personal, vulnerable details. It was a real privilege to be brought into those feelings.

My Child and Other Mistakes: The hilarious and heart-warming

I’m a fan of Ellie Taylor. When I watch her acting or her stand up I genuinely belly laugh at the things that she has to say so I was eager to read her memoir My Child and Other Mistakes because I knew that I would be entertained. Ellie Taylor did not let me down. As a cis white woman married to a cis white man who were fortunate to conceive naturally, my account of parenthood is undoubtedly limited by my many privileges.” I think it’s had 20 Emmy nominations. It’s gone wild. It’s so funny. It’s got so much heart, as well. It’s so sweet. That’s all done, the second series starts tomorrow.” Stand-up comic, broadcaster and actress Ellie Taylor is relatable, clever and interested in how women can have it all. Her honest, hilarious and moving account of the whys and hows of having a baby makes perfect reading for expectant mothers and fathers everywhere, as well as those who’ve been there, done that, and wonder how on earth they did. As a couple, having a child has forced us to reevaluate everything we had previously thought set in cement. Our daughter has irrevocably changed our priorities, the little rat.But, as always, for all of us it was ‘just a phase’. Ratbag acclimatised, and so did I. Partly because time passed and partly because, essentially, we were out of options. I had to work, I wanted to work and for that to happen she needed to be somewhere I wasn’t. Raw, candid and hilarious, Ellie Taylor’s My Child and Other Mistakes is the funny truth about motherhood and all its grisly delights.

My Child and Other Mistakes: How to ruin your life in the My Child and Other Mistakes: How to ruin your life in the

I should probably caveat this review by saying that I just didn’t find this book that funny. Sorry. There’s no doubt that there’s a wide audience for Taylor’s style of comedy, I’m just probably not it. So why read the book? Well, because I am mother to a 5 month old and am currently at the stage of craving anything that makes me feel ‘seen’. In this very funny book she writes candidly about her own personal experience exploring the decision to have a baby when she doesn’t even like them, the importance of cheese during pregnancy, why she took hair straighteners to the labour ward, plus the apocalyptic newborn days, childcare, work and the inevitable impact on life and love and most importantly, her breasts. Bauer Consumer Media Ltd, Company number 01176085; Bauer Radio Limited, Company number: 1394141; Registered office: Media House, Peterborough Business Park, Lynch Wood, Peterborough PE2 6EA and H Bauer Publishing, Company number: LP003328; Registered office: The Lantern, 75 Hampstead Road, London NW1 2PL This is an absolutely amazing book, and I would absolutely recommend it to anyone who is pregnant or just given birth. It is so, so funny and I related to it so much. "Minjury" is the best joke I've heard about Pelvic Girdle Pain 🤣 Loved it!! (The book, not Pelvic Girdle Pain!)Chris asked the writer for examples of helpful lessons that she has learnt, which she has now passed on in her book, to which Ellie joked, “In a way, the book is completely unhelpful! You don’t get any useful tips from it! It’s not practical. You’re not going to learn how to safely serve a toddler a grape. There’s nothing like that, but I think what it will do is act like a companion perhaps to you, like a friend talking to you about it. It'll have lots of experiences, which you will go, ‘Oh my gosh, yes that happened, and yes, that’s awful!” Ellie Taylor's book is her reflections on deciding whether to become a mother and what happens when she and her husband finally decide to become parents. In her usual style, Ellie Taylor is funny, honest and insightful in her observations. She also wants to demystify some of the things around pregnancy, childbirth and parenthood and to open up a wider discussion. In the end we settled on a brand-new childcare centre that was big, bright and had cameras in every room, meaning I’d be able to watch Ratbag steal maracas from the mouths of other kids from the comfort of my own home. I'm a big fan of Ellie Taylor - I think she's hilarious, and as a fellow Essex girl I can relate to her a lot of her anecdotes. This book was so honest, and so funny! I think this book would appeal to mothers and non mothers alike. Broody or non-broody! Male or female! This book is for everyone. Like watching The Big Bang Theory, it honours the world of physics and physicists/ motherhood and mothering but doesn't mind if you don't want to be one.