1. Acronyphobia - (noun): a pathological fear of acronyms

Today I rediscovered my hatred for acronyms. What can I say, it's been a slow morning.

The thing is, it's either just me and I'm some sort of drooling half-wit, or not every Sheila who finds themselves up t'duff and wanders blithely onto the internet to: a) check out what she's in for over the next nine months b) watch repeats of One Born Every Minute in wide-eyed terror c) find out if the irrepressible urge to vomit out of your nose and eat your body weight in Jaffa Cakes whilst baking one's bun is normal - knows what the jiggery pokery an LO, DH, EBF or FTM** is.

Some of you will appreciate immediately what I'm waffling about. For those that don't or have a strange fancy for feeling like an ignoramus, just take a peek at any baby or mum website and scroll through the forums. Yep, you feel like a right berk now eh? Join the club ladycakes.

It may be that because I was very lucky and became pregnant pretty easily with Boo, I didn't spend an awful lot of time trawling the web like some, understandably hoping to find others to support or advise them in their plight to conceive a desperately wanted wee one. Therefore, all of this forum phrasiness is new and bewildering to me (as is text speak. It seems odd that people exclaim LOL after revealing that their hamster has just died).

Had I perhaps integrated myself into mummy networking earlier I would be up to speed by now and know that EBF means Exclusively Breast Fed and not Eaten Before Friday (which would of course cause all manner of confusion and outrage when proudly announcing on Mumsnet that one's wickle cherub will be EBF. *Oh hello Child Services. Nope, no way, I am categorically NOT a cannibal*).

But, hey ho, I didn't. And now I feel like I'm an outsider, licking the windows of an exclusive club full of clever mumsies who have all the answers and just keep giving me the finger and giggling conspiratorially behind their perfectly manicured hands from inside the warm and cosy forum *sniffle, sobs gently*.

A fairly traumatic pregnancy, which involved me inflating like a bouncy castle at a school fête with Oedema and blood pressure that could have seen me spontaneously combust at any moment, invoked me to wander online one bloated afternoon to see if anyone else was equally as sumo-sized and sympathetic.

It was at this fairly low point that I first came face to face with bubba forum fat chewers and alas, became so befuddled by their acronyms and abbreviations that I felt like crying big fat tears down my big fat face. The pairing of these bastard initials with my ever thickening brain fog compelled me to log-off feeling hugely bewildered, mightily fed-up and not even the smidgiest widgiest bit wiser.

Apparently, all other knocked-up women were able to abbreviate to such an extent that they were clearly in possession and full control of all their shiny brain cells and probably moonlighting for NASA (another acronym, it's a freakin' conspiracy I tell you) during their pregnancies. Yet, even if they were suffering the same symptoms as me, I'd never have been able to decode their empathies anyway. Sigh, if only they made dunce hats big enough for my mahoosive swollen noggin, I thought.

I closed the laptop six months into my pregnancy, vowed never ever ever to go back onto another forum and went back to moaning quietly to myself, marooned on the sofa like Shamu waiting for Greenpeace to roll me back into the sea, whilst all the time trying not to reach a level of excitement above catatonia in case I might explode.

But I couldn't stay away could I? No I couldn't...

So today I find myself browsing a site that shall remain nameless (*cough* BabyCentre *cough*) looking for a reason as to why my Boo sways from side to side like a bored horse when he's mooching about the floor on his belly and why, no matter how many toys with buttons, bells and whistles I buy him, the little toad only wants to jam either the dog's tail or remote controls into his mouth. My TV is now permanently set to wide-screen which means I only get to see half of The Only Way Is Essex and frankly, that simply won't do.

Nothing has changed. It's the same bunch of women I encountered when I was prego except that they have now dropped their dribblers and, with their new role as a mumkin, have made up a whole new bunch of acroyms that make me want to slap them round the face with a pooey nappy.

In short, after about an hour of searching and thanks to the excessive use of these acronyms, I still have no idea whether my Boo is actually Seabiscuit's love child or if anyone else's pup is so disgusted by their mother's television viewing habits that they deliberately reprogramme the chuffing thing. Thanks ladies, yeah thanks alot.

It is an altogether exhausting, giddying, rewarding but exhausting job being a parent, do you really need to make our jobs any harder and make us feel like any more inadequate by writing in acronyms that, unless you have a degree in Smug Mummydom, make absolutely no pigging sense? No you do not. Naughty step for you all I think.

To all you forum regulars, if you're reading this, in the name of sisterhood (oooh hellooo, I'm Emmeline Pankhurst!) from me and all other mums who would be overjoyed to share in your pearls of parental wisdom and comforted by reading that there's someone else out there with a baby who has an inexplicable appetite for dog arse and electrical items, please heed this little request: even if it takes you an extra 30 seconds, just type the words **Little One, Dear Husband, Exclusively Breast Fed and First Time Mum and the like, in their full glory. That's it. Piece o' cake. Simples.

Mummyhood might feel like an utterly special and exclusive club but remember it's open to new members every day - so come on chicas, dish out the baby Blue Peter badges (they should SO make those by the way), splurge on some characters and don't leave us floundering, wondering WTF!? (Tee hee!) - being a mum is tough enough.

Oooh get me with me blog...

Ok, so as you may have gathered from the title of this wee online jotter, I am going to attempt to document my life as a new mum.


Yep, yawn, been done before, probably far better too by someone who isn't still in her jim-jams at 3pm and doesn't have half a Petits Filous in her hair, I know, I know. In my defence however, what they don't tell you in antenatal class when they're thrusting knitted ladyparts complete with a one-eyed Tiny Tears peering jadedly through the weave, into the hands of your smirking husband, is that the brain cells which decided to take a holiday during your pregnancy are in no hurry to pack up their knotted hankies and return home when you have squeezed your dribbling bundle of wuv out.

9 months into Boo Boo's life and I am still feeling a bit, how shall we put it, 'special' and have developed a number of unnerving habits such as leaving the phone in the airing cupboard and trying to put shoes on the dog before she goes outside. Therefore, I am in no fit state to comment on anything other than what has happened to me, say in the last half hour or so, because ever since smallhausen was a mere spegg I have been about as sentient as a potato.  Plus, for better or for worse I am consumed by all things maternal and thus incapable of writing about anything else.

So if you don't like it I suggest you take your shiny laptop that doesn't have rusk crammed between the keys, go and sit on your lovely white unblemished sofa that doesn't smell faintly, no matter how much Febreeze you douse it with, of milky barf and spend all the money you don't have to fork out on nappies and stuff that promises to make your baby herculean/genius/immortal and then doesn't, by surfing online stores that aren't decorated with sodding storks and morbidly obese cherubs.

You don't have to read my ramblings and to be fair, I probably wouldn't if I had your life, I'd be licking my Jimmy Choos, reading books that aren't about cats going to the shops or forgetting stuff and wafting around my fragrant house in the nud, showing off my stretch-mark-less temple of a bod. And so I wave you goodbye sweet smelling one, maybe you'll come back and visit when you wake up one day with pureed parsnip in your ear and realise you haven't had a shower for three days because there isn't fecking time.

For those poor souls who are left, basically what you can look forward to from here on in is my selfish efforts to let off steam via a medium that doesn't see me thwacking myself repeatedly in the head with Tickle-Me-Elmo. Joyfully (for me, not you silly) I can also share my pent up neurosis about things like whether an unsterilised dummy will instantly result in Boo Boo contracting Bubonic Plague and if it is possible that I can actually make my child into a simpleton by leaving Jeremy Kyle on accidentally and leaving the room for precisely two and half minutes.

Ah the thrills and spills eh? Shhh, you don't have to say it, I can feel your excitement from here...