Bathtime with small babies is a wonderful, calm, bonding experience. Nice gentle moisturising bubbles, a blue-eyed baby looking up lovingly at you while you sponge its little limbs smiling sweetly. A careful rub down with a new, fluffy, white towel that you have warmed on the radiator, followed by a little massage with oil and dressed in a clean, beautifully ironed babygro.
Sadly, this picture of perfection is but a distant memory in our house. Bathtime has become a splashing screaming mob of children, whose aim is to get as much of the bathroom and their mother as wet as possible. It always seems to me to be at the worst time of day when everyone, particularly the mother, is utterly exhausted. Teatime has been a disaster and each child has virtually been counselled through items of food on their plate. Fights break out intermittedly over which coloured cup or plate they each have. Meanwhile, the baby is screaming at every opportunity because he is frankly just fed up with being ignored. Then, there is the clearing up. Do you do it before bathtime dodging the now fully-fuelled children who are raring to go, or afterwards when all you can think about is collapsing on the sofa with a strong drink?
The next phase falls on deaf ears. At first I remain calm and ask politely if the children would come out of the tent they have now erected in the playroom, for a bath. No response. It is almost as if they have become completely immune to the tone of my voice and after 25 requests, I grab the nearest saucepan and bang it as hard as I can with a metal spoon at the entrance of the tent. My daughter pokes her small head out and says, “Calm down Mummy. You only had to ask.” Upstairs the, “Will you get undressed and in the bath?” question is repeated another 15 times while the children have begun a trampolining competition on our bed. I then re-pose the question. “Who is going to be the winner and get in the bath first?” With that, two children come flying into the bathroom and dive into the bath, creating a tidal wave which drenches the baby and pours over the side of the bath onto my lap. The bathroom is now similar to an over-crowded, public swimming pool with children yelling, screaming and splashing. Another six requests to get out of the bath fall on deaf ears, until I hurredly scoop up each child, rub them down with a rather worn towel and throw on any item of clothing I can get my hands on that vaguely resembles a pair of pyjamas. Once the rest of the bedtime routine has been completed, I pass the mirror on the landing and catch sight of a bedraggled, 30 something year-old woman who looks as if she has entered some middle-aged wet t-shirt competition.
