Isn’t it Ironic: Sod’s Law for Mums

Isn’t it ironic? I wonder how many times people say this to Alanis Morisette. Once a day at least? Does she ban her family and friends from ever using the word around her? Do people sing it to her in the street?

I’m getting sidetracked…

Sometimes, I hum that song when I’m going through something my mother likes to call Sod’s Law, or the theory that things tend to happen exactly when you don’t want them to. Like when you open the drawer looking for a knife and ten thousand spoons come flying out instead, that sort of thing.

I have these sorts of moments all the time since becoming a parent (okay, maybe not the spoon thing). It’s like … leaving the house without a changing bag will make your baby have a poo explosion. Not every single time, you understand, that would be too predictable, and therefore avoidable. But enough times to think the universe is working against you.

Just for fun, I’ve compiled a list of my top ten ‘sod’s law’ moments that occur regularly in my life since becoming a parent:

1. The kids, after bothering you all morning, will finally settle nicely into an imaginative, kind and thoughtful game one minute before you are due to leave the house.

2. The one day that you leave the house fully made up, even wearing lipstick, you will not see a single other adult human. All day. But the day you leave the house with no make-up, soaked from the rain, sporting a spot that is so huge it has a pulse and wearing your leggings with the hole in the knee? That is the day you will see your ex. Or that girl from school that always looked perfect and still does now.

3. As you march out of the supermarket hissing furiously at your screaming toddler (while he writhes under your arm at the injustice of his mother not wanting to pay nearly a fiver for a magazine with Iggle Piggle on the cover), you will bump into a group of school Mums. You will wave ‘Hiya!’ in a manic, cheerful way whilst dying inside.

4. Those same Mums will appear, as if by magic, as you attempt to buy a) tampons, b) pregnancy tests, or c) a basket full of wine and chocolate (or a bizarre combination of all those things).

5. Your child will experience temporary amnesia as soon as they leave school and will not remember anything that happened that day, until bedtime, during which they will launch into a half an hour monologue about how X and Y fell out over a whiteboard pen and how the new boy uses cursive writing.

6. You will wear your nicest underwear the day your period unexpectedly arrives (thank you, mad hormones).

7. Your baby will throw up the moment you get them dressed in their new outfit, even if you strategically put off getting them ready until the last possible moment.

8. You will be on a Marie Kondo-inspired decluttering spree and you will throw away a tiny, possibly even broken, inconsequential toy. You will think ‘there’s no way my child will remember that toy exists.’ They will. It might not be until six months later, but they will want it eventually.

9. The night that you decide to go out is the night your normally angelic baby refuses to settle, and

10. The night you plan to keep for yourself – you know the one, the one where you want to read a book and do your nails and call your friend and bum around on Facebook, that one peaceful night you’ve been looking forward to all week – is the night that you will fall asleep on the sofa at 8pm. You probably won’t regret it, because you’re tired and you needed sleep. But still. Sod’s law, isn’t it?