Like watching The Big Bang Theory, it honours the world of physics and physicists/ motherhood and mothering but doesn't mind if you don't want to be one. In this very funny book she writes candidly about her own personal experience exploring the decision to have a baby when she doesn’t even like them, the importance of cheese during pregnancy, why she took hair straighteners to the labour ward, plus the apocalyptic newborn days, childcare, work and the inevitable impact on life and love and most importantly, her breasts. Ellie's honesty and humour has helped me a tremendous amount. I read this over a few long nights with my 4 month old and it felt like she was writing my innermost thoughts that I didn't dare to say aloud. Her words have brought me sunshine in some particularly dark nights through hilarious anecdotes that I can already relate to, as well as feeling like being given a huge hug of reassurance. Just as John Lennon imagined a life with no possessions, I imagine a weekend without having to pause Sunday Brunch while I clean up another human’s faeces. Your ambition It was never preachy, never ‘everyone should be a mum’ or ‘I’m so brave because I am one’. It was always an understanding voice, offering silly anecdotes or helpful advice. But still there was earnestness. I’ll end with my favourite quote, which while written in a chapter about PPD, I think is very useful for anyone struggling to hear:

My Child and Other Mistakes Ellie Taylor on her new book, My Child and Other Mistakes

When further talking about having a baby, Ellie said, “It’s the most commonplace, unexciting lifechoice to make. It’s not exactly punk, is it, to have a baby? And yet, for you, and the family that the baby comes into, it changes, it really does. All the cliches are true, annoyingly, but it really does change everything, and I’m so glad that I’ve got to write this all down, and I really hope it’ll make new parents feel like someone else has been through it before.” If you really want to be entertained this is the perfect book for you - just be mindful you will be laughing out loud, so may not want to read this book on the train! I already dream of the day when my daughter only wants to sulk in her room and the siege on my living room is ended. Never again will I need to worry about anyone seeing if my new spherical vase is, in fact, a ‘bouncy ball’. And when that happens, I assume I’ll go up into the loft, fish out the dancing llama, clutch it’s twerking body against my chest and sob as I reminisce about the dreadful magical years when my feet were never safe from an unseen plastic minion. Your weekends In the end it took around six weeks to settle/break her in. I spent a lot of that time Googling variations of the words ‘nursery’ ‘baby’ and ‘trauma’. I knew her going to childcare was necessary for us as a family, but it certainly didn’t sit well. Friends would say, ‘Mine didn’t like it at the beginning either Ellie, it’s really normal for them to be upset.’ Completely honest, real, funny and thought provoking - I found myself laughing and crying (sometimes at the same time) and at some points I seriously felt like I was reading my story.Chris asked the writer for examples of helpful lessons that she has learnt, which she has now passed on in her book, to which Ellie joked, “In a way, the book is completely unhelpful! You don’t get any useful tips from it! It’s not practical. You’re not going to learn how to safely serve a toddler a grape. There’s nothing like that, but I think what it will do is act like a companion perhaps to you, like a friend talking to you about it. It'll have lots of experiences, which you will go, ‘Oh my gosh, yes that happened, and yes, that’s awful!” In my new life, TDSY (The Dry Shampoo Years), my main aim this week is to try and get Ratbag to eat a raspberry. Success has shape-shifted from the vast, the international, the stratospheric (with me at the centre of it all), to the small, the fundamental, the domestic – all rotating around a small child who loves pink wafer biscuits more than some members of her family. My stomach is spongy and quivering, like a panna cotta that’s been out of the fridge for too long. My body has decided that it’s best if it keeps hold of some of the four stone I put on when pregnant, presumably for a rainy day. A refreshing, hilarious, raw and brutally honest account of the process of deciding to become a parent and everything that follows, whatever the path this may take. In my old life, BC (Before Child), my aim was to move to America and become the next big thing, like a younger, female Hugh Grant with better teeth. I would live a jet-set lifestyle and become best friends with Kristen Wiig and end up replacing James Cordon as host of The Late Late Show. The world was my oyster.

My Child and Other Mistakes: How to ruin your Ellie Taylor - My Child and Other Mistakes: How to ruin your

I’m a fan of Ellie Taylor. When I watch her acting or her stand up I genuinely belly laugh at the things that she has to say so I was eager to read her memoir My Child and Other Mistakes because I knew that I would be entertained. Ellie Taylor did not let me down. My Child and Other Mistakes is the honest lowdown on Motherhood and all its grisly delights, asking the questions no one wants to admit to asking themselves - do I want a child? Do I have a favourite? Do I wish I hadn't had one and spent the money on a kitchen island instead? Having a child creates change. Some of it will be good change, like getting out of having to go to that boring lunch or hen do because you now have the ultimate excuse up your sleeve: ‘childcare issues’. And best of all, unlike the death of a fictitious grandparent, there is no limit to how many times you can use it. This is an absolutely amazing book, and I would absolutely recommend it to anyone who is pregnant or just given birth. It is so, so funny and I related to it so much. "Minjury" is the best joke I've heard about Pelvic Girdle Pain 🤣 Loved it!! (The book, not Pelvic Girdle Pain!)Raw, candid and hilarious, Ellie Taylor’s My Child and Other Mistakes is the funny truth about motherhood and all its grisly delights. I guess an important preface is that I am an Ellie Taylor fan, and not just a fan but often accidentally the same person. Thinking and speaking in such similar cadence made this such a perfect read, everything made so much sense in my brain because it was explained just as I too would explain it. Even at the worst of my initial nursery anxiety, I have always tried to bat away the temptation to be drawn into the ‘mum guilt’ narrative that I despise. It’s either un-gendered ‘parental guilt’ or it can sod off. It is not for mothers alone to navigate the burden of a work/child balance. If you, like me, ever feel a sneak of self-reproach edge in, I urge you to try and tough-love yourself out of it. Remind your brain, as utilitarian as it sounds, that each of us has a role to play in a family, even our children. For my husband and l, our job is to work and pay bills, and for Ratbag, her job is to go to nursery and bloody well do Baby Shark.

build your child’s resilience - BBC Bitesize Five ways to build your child’s resilience - BBC Bitesize

I should probably caveat this review by saying that I just didn’t find this book that funny. Sorry. There’s no doubt that there’s a wide audience for Taylor’s style of comedy, I’m just probably not it. So why read the book? Well, because I am mother to a 5 month old and am currently at the stage of craving anything that makes me feel ‘seen’. You could even encourage them to make mistakes. Whether that be with homework, or craft projects or creating a new dish for supper – encourage them to take risks. Show them that making mistakes helps us learn – how will they know that sprinkling in a chosen spice creates an unpleasant taste if they don’t try, or that adding red to the paint won’t give them the hue they were after unless they experience it for themselves?What Taylor does in her coming of age memoir is show you the reality of this in a funny way. She doesn’t sugarcoat the harder times or the times that make her look just a little unhinged. It all adds to the wonderful colour of this story. Her thoughts on motherhood are especially honest and she lays bare how hard it is but also how rewarding she has found it. Yes, having my daughter has made me less overtly self-obsessed, but that’s largely due to me being so busy nurturing the piece of myself that is within her. Children are a physical manifestation of the ambition of their mothers and fathers. They are our hopes and dreams. What I’m saying is, if my daughter doesn’t win an Oscar by the time she’s 18, I will expect a public-funded enquiry. Your body But the book isn't 'worthy', it's a personal account where Ellie wants to encourage people to be ok with whatever choices are right for them, including whether not to have a child at all - and with some of the stories Ellie tells it might encourage them down that route! Or at least ensure that people always take the free hotel shower caps for future use - who would have thought to use them for that purpose... I will and already have been recommending this to everyone I know and it should be a must read for every new mum.