A light hearted A-Z glossary of terms for mums.

Amnesia: A mental medical condition that enables a woman who has gone through labour to be intimate with their partner again.

Bottle feeding: An synthetic substitute for breast feeding designed and developed by mummies that provides an opportunity for Daddies to get up at 2AM, too.

Defense: What you'd better have around de garden if you are planning to let de children play outside and you want to see dem again.

Drooling: An evolutionary advance in higher mammals that allows teething babies to wash their chins clean of chocolate spread and tomato sauce.

Dumbwaiter: A descriptive term describing an individulal employed in the services of any eatery who asks parents if the kids would like to see the dessert menu.

Family planning: The art of spacing the birth dates of your children the correct distance apart in order to keep your entire family on the brink of financial disaster without actually becoming destitute.

Feedback: The inevitable result when your baby doesn't appreciate the strained carrots you are force feeding him or her, that you purchased cheaply from the supermarket for the first time yesterday.

Full name: What you will inevitably call your child when you are very agry with him/her - A degenerative condition that normally continues well into their adult life.


Grandparents: Adult individuals who think that your children are wonderful, even though by subtle hints they make it obvious to you that they are sure that you are not raising them correctly.

Hearsay: A skill that toddlers learn to perform perfectly when mummy or daddy mutter a naughty word in front of them. Normally in a crowded public place, at high volume.

Impregnable: A woman whose memory of labor is still vivid.

Independent: How all parents want their children to be, as long as they do everything they say and follow their impartial advice to the letter throughout their entire lives.

Look out!: An instruction which is always too late for your child to do by the time you have screamed it at them.

Prenatal: A term referring to a time when your life was still somewhat your own.

Prepared childbirth: A contradiction in terms.

Puddle: A small body of water that draws other small bodies wearing dry shoes into it.

Show off: A child who is, by definition, more talented than yours.

Sterilize: What you do to your first baby's dummy by boiling it and to your last baby's dummy by blowing on it.

Storeroom: The distance required between the supermarket aisles so that children riding in shopping baskets cannot quite reach anything.

Temper tantrums: What you should try to keep to an absolute minimum, so as to not upset your children.

Top bunk: A location where parents should never put a child that they have clothed in Superman pj's for bedtime.

Two-minute warning: When your baby's face turns red and she begins to make those familiar grunting noises.

Weaker sex: The kind that most mummies have after the children have completely worn you out all day.

Whodunit: None of the kids that live in your house.

Whoops: A multi-cultural and multi national exclamation that translates roughly into the english as "Quick, get a sponge!"