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Friday, March 4, 2011

Baby Brain - Guest Post : Fussy Eater's Mum


Baby Brain Bumper Cars

My husband, Mr Fussy, tells me that for a woman, I have a very good sense of direction and can handle our big 4WD on the country roads pretty well. Ah, thanks, love.

I also have a bit of a reputation for always being able to find a car park. You know, the ‘Holly wood Car Park’. The one that’s right in front of the shop you need to go into. When we are ferrying friends in our car, my husband puts me in the driver’s seat and then proudly announces to the passengers, “Don’t worry, she can always find a park.” And he loves it when I slid the car into a parallel park in one smooth motion and he can hear murmurs of admiration from the back seat. So I’m a fairly confident driver.

But when I was pregnant my driving skills disappeared, vanished, gone. Poof!

Just when I needed a close park the most, I could never find one. And as if that was not bad enough, I started bumping into things with the car.

At first it was just one or two gentle, barely noticeable bumps.

Then they became more like a big thud.



The signs of my pregnant driving skills are all around our small town. The dented pole outside the local grocery store, the black scrape of my tire on the curb outside the post office, a small roadside pole near our farm gate flattened; all to remind me of my bad case of Baby Brain.

The crack on the rear bumper where I took out a low concrete wall still makes Mr Fussy cringe. (But really, who makes walls so low down?) I’m still haunted by the memory of angry drivers honking at me as it took me 15 attempts to parallel park in the city one day.

It finally got the stage where I was afraid to get behind the wheel.  My Baby Brain had temporarily rendered me unable to drive a car. Blind spots had become baby spots. It was as if I was in La-La-Land.

And La-La-Land is exactly where I was one day when I cruised past our local police officer doing 80kph in a 60kph zone on the edge of town.

Darling No. 1 was sitting in her car seat, the Wiggles were playing on the radio, and I was 8 months pregnant with Darling No. 2.  I saw the police car sitting at the side of the road. I even waved a good country wave hello.  But it wasn’t until I noticed the flashing lights behind me that I realised what my baby brain had done. 

“The Wiggles made me do it,” I blurted out. 

He grinned and told me not to let it happen again. Believe me I won’t.




Fussy Eater’s Mum blogs over at Life with a Fussy Eater and she’s happy to say that her driving skills have returned and she’s safe to be behind the wheel again.

7 comments:

  1. I have a BFF and he has the parking god on his side. EVERY SINGLE TIME parking in front of the shops. We call him a porn star now because we call parking in front of the shops the Porn Star Parking. WAHAHAHA

    ReplyDelete
  2. My Mum is pathological about parking as close to the front/entrance of wherever she's going as possible. Except she doesn't have the parking gods on her side, so we spend a long time circling car parks, waiting. Then when we do park, as we walk in, she will inevitably find a better spot, and actually expects one of us to stand in the spot and "save" it, while someone else goes back to move the car!

    ReplyDelete
  3. I drove in to a parked car when I was pregnant. It was low speed in a car park so there were no injuries (other than my pride) but a lot of damage to both cars. The man I hit was in a rusty old work ute and took pity on my tears and said "Tell your insurance that you came out the shops and found it this way, my ute always look this bad".

    ReplyDelete
  4. If only I had pregnancy as an excuse - I can't park when up the duff or not. The first car I had a few years ago was so scratched and dinged up people thought I'd been in a car crash. I prefer to walk than drive even in rain sleet and snow!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Parental Parody, your Mum's what I call a Parking Shark. Ha! Around and around...

    Felicakes - the other term I've heard is Pimp Parking, but that's just not classy...

    ReplyDelete
  6. Parental Parody, your Mum's what I call a Parking Shark. Ha! Around and around...

    Felicakes - the other term I've heard is Pimp Parking, but that's just not classy...

    ReplyDelete
  7. My Mum is pathological about parking as close to the front/entrance of wherever she's going as possible. Except she doesn't have the parking gods on her side, so we spend a long time circling car parks, waiting. Then when we do park, as we walk in, she will inevitably find a better spot, and actually expects one of us to stand in the spot and "save" it, while someone else goes back to move the car!

    ReplyDelete

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