You know you're not an Earth Mother when...

A few months ago my mother referred to one of my sisters as an Earth Mother. By implication, she meant I was not. It wasn’t great timing. The Tresillian nurse was over helping me to restore some kind of peace to my crazy baby screaming filled home. My baby rearing confidence was probably close to an all time low. In typical mother fashion, she crushed what little was left with her comment.

Since then, I’ve come to realise that while everyone wants to be the best parent they can be, natural parents who seem to instinctively understand their children and who do everything ‘organically’ are really pretty rare.

So I’ve decided to declare my non-Earth Mother status with the following set of principles.

You know you’re not an earth mother when…

1. The thought of using cloth nappies has you retching into the nappy pail.
2. You don’t do decaf.
3. You have packets of Rafferty’s Garden and a plastic take away coffee spoon at the bottom of your nappy bag instead of containers of homemade sweet potato mash and proper baby spoons.
4. You wonder why someone won’t shut that baby up in the middle of the night before realising it’s your child that’s crying.
5. The idea of peeing with a baby in a sling a la attachment parenting mortifies you.
6. You think it’s hilarious to dress your baby in a cowboy outfit and make him do the YMCA rather than swaying with him tribal style.
7. You take your baby to the super sale at Chatswood Chase rather than to book reading sessions at the library.
8. You put your baby to sleep to the melancholic throws of Holly Throsby rather than baby Mozart.
9. You swore like a trooper every time you breastfed in the early days when your boobs were tender (and by tender I mean freaking painful!).
10. When you were pregnant you spent Saturday mornings eating chocolate croissants rather than doing prenatal yoga.