Katherine Granich

If there’s one thing I’m not good at, it’s getting rid of my kids’ stuff, particularly the things they had when they were little babies.

Congratulations! Oh, sorry, did I shout a little bit too loudly? I’m wearing ear plugs to drown out the sound of the white-noise machine I’ve been playing to try to help my own baby go to sleep.

When it comes to feeding your newborn baby, other people will have a lot of OPINIONS and THOUGHTS about how you should be feeding them.

A good friend of mine is pregnant with her first baby, and she’s been texting me all manner of questions — some tricky, some humorous, some embarrassing, and some downright weird.

I am not really a “trousers” kind of person. I prefer to wear dresses and skirts, or tunics over leggings. But a friend recently raved about these gorgeous and comfortable pants she bought from a trendy online boutique, so I threw caution to the wind and ordered a pair for myself.

Before my children were born, I used to stay up so late and go to so many events outside of my house. I’m an introvert, so these events were things like museum exhibitions (so quiet), art galleries (so quiet, so pretty), and film festivals (not quiet, but full of fellow nerds who didn’t want to talk to me).

Before my first daughter was born, I decorated her nursery entirely in Snoopy-print stuff I got online at great expense from the USA. Oh, it was all so cute.

For most New Zealanders, the afternoon of Friday 15 March began as just another regular afternoon. I was in the office looking at proofs of our next issue of Tots to Teens. My children were at school and childcare. My friends were at their respective workplaces, homes, community activities.

I love cuddling my baby. But there are some days she doesn’t love cuddling me. She’s very busy, and active, and desperately wants to see what’s going on in the world around her. So she wriggles and squirms and tries to crawl off my lap, and any efforts to snuggle her into submission are futile. She knows her own mind, and her mind says, “Go explore!”

This morning I was at an appointment when I had a brush with fame. Okay, more like, I saw someone famous from a distance. I was pushing my baby in her pram, making sheep and cow noises as she laughed hysterically, when out of the corner of my eye I spotted a bump.

I saw a meme on social media the other day that said, “Welcome to your summer pregnancy, where breathing makes you sweat.” I misread that last word as “swear”, not “sweat”

Over the weekend I got the bright idea to go through the baby clothes that my youngest…