I am a short arse. Have been all my life. All you people who claim to be 5 foot nothing are positively tall to me. 5 foot is an illusive measurement that I have never reached. Not even come close.
I don't have a problem with being vertically challenged, it has never really bothered me. Except for shoe shops. Why do they insist on putting the smallest size shoes on the highest shelves? It makes no sense people. Us shorties have smaller feet. Obvs. Otherwise we would look like clowns. Please, put the shoes where we can goddamn reach them. It would save us the awkward embarrassment of asking the surly teenage shop assistant if she could stop talking to the emo teenage shop assistant about who had their tongue down so and so's throat at the epic party last night, and please reach us some shoes. I can drive a car, I can hold my own in a boardroom, I can manage the household finances, I can negotiate with a stubborn dictator, I mean, toddler, I can push babies out of my vagina, but I can't reach a pair of shoes in a shoe shop.
Anyway, shoe shops aside, I was bumbling away quite happily with life being a short girl. Then I became a Mummy, and suddenly a whole new set of short girl problems arose. Short girl Mummy problems.
1 The Cot
It all starts off fine. You bring your little bundle of helpless joy home from the hospital in a state of awe and shock. You eventually emerge from the newborn fog and begin to feel like you have a handle on this. Then your baby gets clever. It starts reaching milestones and turning everything you thought you ever knew on its head.
Like the beautiful nursery you lovingly watched your husband decorate, and the gorgeous cot you stared at wistfully whilst stroking your pregnant belly. You thought you were being savvy and practical by buying the cot bed. But what the hell did you know.
One day that helpless baby is going to use those cot rails to pull them self up and perform all manner of tricks and you will need to lower the cot. Then you will discover that you can no longer perform an essential parenting skill: Being able to place your peacefully sleeping baby into the cot. You have stretched over the cot and are at full arms length, and the baby is nowhere near the mattress. If you stretch any further you are either going to bust a rib on the rails, or tumble head first into the cot with the baby. Instead you have to devise some kind of bum first, then head, drop the baby maneuver. All the time praying you have one of those 'sleep through a bomb' kind of kids. I don't.
2 Change Tables
Firstly there are some change facilities out there designed by actual giants. I can't use the change table if I can't reach it!
Secondly the higher the baby and the lower the mummy, the smaller the head to arse area ratio becomes. Therefore much closer proximity to rancid odours, and greatly increased risk of wee / shart in the face. Nuff said.
3 Being asked for ID
Okay, so generally this one is not a problem. I'm 36. I seem to discover a new grey hair on a daily basis, and some days the bags under my eyes look like I've hit the Next sale. It's very flattering to be asked for ID. But being asked for ID when the only bottle in your basket is a bottle of Calpol? Seriously? Calpol? What are they putting in that stuff?
4 Buggy Boards
Such a great idea when you have a baby and another small person. Not so great when the small person stands on the buggy board and you can't see over their head to see where you are going.
5 Trolleys
I love seeing little ones sitting in the trolley, mauling a bread stick and trying to grab everything they see of the shelf. But babies get bigger. Their legs get longer. My arms don't. There may or may not have been an incident in a supermarket car park involving one of my children getting stuck in the trolley because I couldn't lift him any higher. You may or may not have seen me carrying my child across the car park with a trolley still attached to his legs.
6 You can't reach stuff
Essential stuff. Like the Easter Egg stash your husband put on top of the cupboards. Damn him and his long arms.
This is not the kids foot-step. It's mine!
7 Parks are scary
Especially when you are 8 months pregnant and your child decides he cannot get down from the climbing frame and you cannot reach to rescue him. There is a perfectly good slide, but of course your child has decided that today he doesn't like slides. Cue pleading, bribery, negotiation, threats, and all other highly essential parenting skills.
8 Your Kid is always the last one out of school.
Why? Because when the doors open, the parents who were ten seconds ago milling about in the playground, casually shooting the breeze, suddenly rush forwards like it's Black Friday. And me? I'm left at the back completely invisible to the teacher. Not that I can see her over everyone's heads anyway.
9 The tallest person always sit in front of you
I'm used to this at the cinema. But at my kids assembly. It's not cool. Especially when he has the opening line. I end up sat behind the tallest person who also has her hair in a big bun on top of her head for added height. FML.
10 My kids will be taller than me.
Okay this happens to most mums. Especially mums of boys. The boys his their teenage years and gain gangly limbs and squeaky voices, and overtake their mums in the height stakes. But my boys are going to be taller than me by the time they are 8!
As my Nanny used to say to me "All good things come in small packages."
I've got 99 problems, but being tall ain't one.
This post was first published on Life Love and Dirty Dishes