Where’s My Mummy’s Boy?

Where’s my Mummy’s Boy?

Something strange has happened. Something drastic, mind boggling, deeply upsetting (well for me anyway, not for my husband). My (actively encouraged) Mummy’s Boy has become a Daddy’s Boy.

Yes, there I’ve said it and it’s occurred despite my fastidious efforts of daily salutations repeating, “Mummy is wonderful and loveable and better than Daddy”. Shit, what happened?

Teething that’s what. I would bathe in my child’s un-blinkered affections all day without guilt-as I carried him, have the C section scar to prove it and deserve his unequivocal love. This may seem unfair but so is a post baby body. So you can imagine my dismay when out of the blue it’s, “Daddy this” and “Daddy that” and I’m massively, in the all encompassing American sense of the word ‘pissed about it’.

The Yanks do everything much more supersized than us so ‘pissed off’ doesn’t quite nail it. Look, I jest, his father is amazing (yada yada yada), it’s just happened so quickly.

There seems to be a causal link between sprouting molars and the cutting off of apron strings. Yes it’s painful (and the toothache too I imagine) and I suppose Daddy has been getting up more in the night to care for screaming toddler, (allowing Mama to recover from daytime screaming), it’s just when my child cries for Daddy over Mummy, it hurts. I know, I know, I can’t have it all… I’m hoping this is just a phase, yes another one.

Like the time he thought pulling Billy the Cat’s hair might be funny. It wasn’t. I want my Mummy’s Boy back.

Photograph ©Vicki Psarias-Broadbent.