8 Common Guilt Trips You Can Expect When You Become A Parent

You know you’re a proper Mammy when you can’t go one minute without experiencing a flash of guilt about something child-related.

The good news is, you’re not alone.

Other mums may look like they have it all together, but really everybody’s just getting by and crossing their fingers that they haven’t forgotten anything vital for now.

Here are our top eight most common guilt trips. Prepare to endure at least one daily:

Weaning woes

You always swore you’d be the type of parent who only feeds their children homemade organic vegetable pureés and hand turned gluten-free rice cakes. You ponder this as you watch your toddler devour an old, wrinkly chip he found under the kitchen table.

Forgetting the Camera

Be warned: this is much more common on the second child. Just as Junior takes his first, wobbly steps, you realise that the camera is sitting at home on the counter. The answer? Say nothing and recreate the moment later when you’re ready to capture it.

Baby Book Blues

When you finally get around to sticking all Baby Number Three’s photographs into the photo album… and realise there are only four blurry snaps. The remedy? Turn over the house for surplus pictures of the first, terrifically over-photographed child and see if you can possibly get away with a little switcheroo.

Going Back to Work

Work pays for the food to feed the baby, the cashmere booties that cover its tootsies and the explosion of assorted expensive baby paraphernalia that now fills your house. Babies don’t care about this and will routinely wail like you are emigrating whenever you leave the creche or childminder’s place.

Parent Wars

‘Little Mirabelle Rose was practically fluent in Mandarin before her third birthday,’ says Playground Mom. You nod and marvel as your beloved (and mysteriously now semi-nude) offspring rubs a large handful of dirt and wood chips into his hair.

Bake Sale Bother

You arrive at the school bake sale with two (slightly battered) cartons of supermarket queen cakes. Calvin’s mummy Rosie has baked five trays of whimsical macarons in every pastel shade.

Lost Lunch

You beat the traffic and arrive at your desk in time to grab a coffee from the canteen. So far, so Winning. At. Life. Then your mobile rings: the school secretary is calling to say your child has no lunch. There’s nothing for it but to call Rosie, who helpfully lives nearby and immediately pops over with quinoa crackers, hummus and an organic rose water juice box that your child does not stop talking about for two months.

Screen Time

In company you recoil in horror at tales of small children being entertained by television shows. In private, those little fingers are deftly scrolling from one episode of Paw Patrol to another.

Make sure you get the most beautiful photos from those fleeting childhood moments with Canon. Here are a few of the very best back-to-school shots sent in by our readers this week…