My Child and Other Mistakes: The hilarious and heart-warming motherhood memoir from the comedy star

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Stand-up comic, broadcaster and actress Ellie Taylor is relatable, clever and interested in how women can have it all. Her honest, hilarious and moving account of the whys and hows of having a baby makes perfect reading for expectant mothers and fathers everywhere, as well as those who’ve been there, done that, and wonder how on earth they did. 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.’ Children thrive on routine, predictability and boundaries - when they lose these factors in the long-term, and the reasons why can often by unavoidable, it can be a difficult time for parent and child. However, as parents, there are ways to help them not only cope, but prosper during these times. At least once a month my husband and I try to work out how we managed to while away all those kid-free weekends. What did we do with all those available hours? Aside from sleep, shag and eat shakshuka?

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

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 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. 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. I really enjoyed this book, and I think mothers and wannabe mothers will be super grateful for the honest account of giving birth/adapting to being a mother too.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. This is a story told from the heart and there are some truly emotive moments in which Ellie Taylor shares her tales of motherhood with all the grisly, painful, and heart-breaking details. That said, she also successfully manages to ensure that the writing feels easy to connect to and is consistently humorous, and therefore, not a difficult read. 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.

My Child and Other Mistakes by Ellie Taylor | Waterstones My Child and Other Mistakes by Ellie Taylor | Waterstones

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 And her voice was so clear throughout the book, never getting lost to ‘I am writing a book I must sound formal and knowledgeable’. It was authentic. As a cis white woman married to a cis white man who were fortunate to conceive naturally, my account of parenthood is undoubtedly limited by my many privileges.”Women should not feel bad about having time apart from their children and having the audacity to enjoy it. When my child is at nursery, I end the day knowing I have worked hard, and she has done 20 activities she would never get to do at home. I don’t spend our time away from one another in lovelorn misery but rather I end the day with a bubbly Christmas Eve sense of excitement as I go to collect her. Sometimes I think I love her the most when I’m not with her. I have come to realise that I’m a better mother when I don’t have to mother all the time. 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? 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. I will and already have been recommending this to everyone I know and it should be a must read for every new mum. 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!)

Ellie Taylor On Childcare - Grazia Daily

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’.Bauer Consumer Media Ltd, Company number 01176085; Bauer Radio Limited, Company number: 1394141; Registered office: Media House, Peterborough Business Park, Lynch Wood, Peterborough PE2 6EA and H Bauer Publishing, Company number: LP003328; Registered office: The Lantern, 75 Hampstead Road, London NW1 2PL In the end we settled on a brand-new childcare centre that was big, bright and had cameras in every room, meaning I’d be able to watch Ratbag steal maracas from the mouths of other kids from the comfort of my own home. A raw, refreshingly honest, and hilariously funny read, this book begins prior to Ellie’s pregnancy during a period of her life when she was questioning whether she wanted children. It then travels through via various highlights and lowlights including; the pregnancy itself, childbirth, navigating the early days of life with a new-born, and of course, motherhood. The settling-in period was, I would say, pretty heartbreaking for everyone involved. All the parenting my husband and I had done up until that point was about making our daughter feel loved and safe. Nursery felt like the undoing of that. The first day I left my daughter at nursery and she didn’t cry gave me a sense of elation that I imagine football fans experience when their team wins and they push over a tram to celebrate. I was beside myself. I couldn’t believe what I’d just witnessed – she had waved goodbye and then just walked in. Just walked in. That was it. Where was the quivering chin? Where were the wails of torment? Where were the pangs of guilt deep within my shattered soul? I rang my husband, ‘Darling! She didn’t cry! She must have forgiven us! She must like it!’ I shrieked, euphorically. ‘Great news!’ he said, ‘She’s finally learnt to internalise her unhappiness like the rest of us!’

My Child and Other Mistakes: The hilarious and - WHSmith

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!” Resilient children are able to make age-appropriate decisions about the things that affect them. All parents want to protect their kids – it’s part of the job description, but when we try too hard to protect them from life’s bumps we can do more harm than good to their developing resilience. I'm a big fan of Ellie Taylor - I think she's hilarious, and as a fellow Essex girl I can relate to her a lot of her anecdotes. This book was so honest, and so funny! I think this book would appeal to mothers and non mothers alike. Broody or non-broody! Male or female! This book is for everyone. When parents make choices for their child and are over-involved in their lives, children learn that they can’t trust themselves and grow up believing that others always know better. Part of being resilient is learning to become independent and to trust in our own abilities – whilst asking for help where appropriate.Raw, candid and hilarious, Ellie Taylor’s My Child and Other Mistakes is the funny truth about motherhood and all its grisly delights. Expanding on how tough having a newborn was, Ellie said, “I had quite a bleak time with it all. I think, probably now, I had a touch of the old postnatal depression. It’s so hard. You do a lot of baby classes and you learn how much a little six-week old should sleep, and how to swaddle a baby, but you don’t learn that, especially for a woman, it’s a massive mental, psychological, physical adjustment. You become a completely different person. I think trying to get used to that, with all the hormones flying around, and trying to work out how you now exist in this world, when this life has been lifted from you, is massive. 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. As a couple, having a child has forced us to reevaluate everything we had previously thought set in cement. Our daughter has irrevocably changed our priorities, the little rat.