What do you wish you had known before you had your DC? Tell us for your chance to win a copy of Why Did Nobody Tell Me?: Home Truths Every Parent Needs to Know.

[RebeccaMumsnet]

Hello. This week we published Why Did Nobody Tell Me?: Home Truths Every Parent Needs to Know, which is the paperback version of The Mumsnet Rules.

And we wanted to mark its publication and nudge you towards a bookstore with a small but perfectly formed competition-ette.

For those who don't already know, Why Did Nobody Tell Me? is full of common sense and good cheer to steady you during the trickier patches of child-wrangling - told from the perspective of those who've been there, worn the (puree-splattered) T-shirt, and more or less emerged in a fit enough state to boggle at the PFB madnesses of their early parenting days.

So, what we're asking you wise folks now, in a competition-y way, is to tell us what you wish you'd known before you had children.

Please post your "in hindsight" confessions/admissions/witticisms here. We'll pick out ten winners from all who post - and send each of them a spanking new copy of Why Did Nobody Tell Me?

Good luck!

The more children you have the lower your standards get, they are clean at the beginning of the day and happy and healthy if not a little feral.

Oh and that it all seemed a really good idea at the time...

It gets better.

Pick your battles (toddler - 4yo anyway!) and pick them consistently.

Even if a rainy Sunday or a single wakeful night lasts FOREVER, somehow, mysteriously, infanthood vanishes in an instant.

It is ok if the baby doesn't nap in her damn pram or cot. (I really wish I hadn't spent time singing, jiggling the stupid green pram, even leaning into it to make her think she was cuddling on me, only to spend 40 minutes convincing her to have a 21min nap -- what a waste of time. And it was NOT just the once by any means.)

Stickers. I wish I'd known about stickers, about 6 months before I invented (no one ever thought of it, ha ha) the STICKER CHART.

Babysitters - they are worth every penny. Going out now and then makes a massive difference. And finally: I wish I'd known about mumsnet...

To be wary of routine Heros yes Gina I'm looking at you
My baby won't do anything except feed 24 hrs a day what does your routine say about that??
And weirdly at people who tell you about their routine knowing the day will come that cherub baby will stop being quite so compliant......

That your body will not 'snap back' into its previous shape the day after you give birth. Even if your mum swears hers did. So don't be too quick to jettison those maternity jeans because if you take your skinnies with you to hospital to wear on the way home you may look very silly and make the midwives snigger when you cant even get them past your ankles. Oh yes.

That one of the most useful parenting tools there is is to cultivate the art of under-reaction.

Works for when they fall over, for all sorts of bad behaviour and for those moments when you can feel strangers making cats bum mouths at you for some perceived parenting 'error'.

No one told me
-That I may be pushed to my ultimate levels of sanity and mentality but to bounce back fighting fit (PND)

• That piles were not only a pregnancy thing and that I will probably suffer for the rest of ( no one tells you this!
• That your life will never be the same again, you will probably experience every emotion possible in one day-every day.
• lastly if you're lucky you'll have your partner to support you and act as a tag team along the way!

Oh and my life motto has become "there's always someone suffering worse off!"

Cluster feeding is normal and it can go on for ages. That means, you dont have to be sobbing at 2am because you think that either your boobs are broken or there's something wrong with your baby.

Baby poo gets everywhere. It can be projectiled from the source, flung, daubed and leak from supposedly leak-proof nappies. This means that while you stock up on nappies and wipes before LO arrives, you may want to stockpile large quantities of vanish. Also replace the lovely cream carpet that you thought was a good idea when you moved in. It wont stay cream for long

• If your newborn baby feeds nicely for 15 minutes then falls asleep it is not then necessary, no matter what your visiting midwife says, to wake the poor bugger up and force it to feed for another 45 minutes, resulting in overfed breastfed baby, exhaustion, sore nipples and lots of puking (DS1 not me). Some babies are just super efficient feeders from day 1. If I'd known that I would have got a lot more sleep and been a lot less stressed.

• Waterwipes are brilliant. Cotton wool with water is bloody annoying.

• All the stuff that seems so important and impossible at the time and all the phases that seem to go on forever pass so so quickly and in the blink of an eye your little one has started preschool and you're applying for reception places

• Oh yes, and some babies sleep, some don't. If you happen to have incredible non-sleeping babies (like me) all the well meaning advice can be very tedious. You don't have to do CC/CIO, you don't have to do anything that you don't feel comfortable with, they will sleep eventually and everyone who has a judgy opinion about the way you deal with your own children can sod off.

That being a stay at home mum is not the perfect idyll of playing with your child you thought it would be but really hard work with days when you feel you would happily chew your own arm off in return for a few days at work.

And that you will always always be two steps behind your baby, regardless.

That you should never be drawn into 'comparing' with other parents
Guilty as charged with first two DC then DC3 came along with SN and I realised that I didn't give a toss what other children could do only what mine could achieve

Babies can squirt from every hole, just duck and dive

Don't buy everything before baby comes along, you won't need it. Why would a newborn need jeans or a baby bath when theres a full size one upstairs or a sink in the kitchen? Etc, etc...

Be prepared to pack the whole world in a bag just for a trip in town or a visit to a friend.

You can still do everything you did pre kids, it just takes a bit longer and prior planning.

That you shouldn't try and move house three days after your wife gives birth via an emergency c-section, particularly when the house you are moving to does not have a working bathroom.

I know children can scream, I am not completely naive (MUCH!) but when your own DC screams it seems to hit an internal nerve which erupts within.
I have recently found out that by trying to stop him it seems it becomes more of a game... my recent trip round Asda was not fun nor amusing.
The scream(s) seems to rattle the internal nervous system sending your body into some kind of spasm which resembles something out of a Tom and Jerry cartoon whereby one of them is being spanked over the head with a frying pan...or is it just me? (hmm)

Poo is actually really interesting :)

That, actually, spaghetti hoops on toast is a perfectly acceptable Christmas dinner for a 2 year old.

When I was pregnant with my PFB I had very definite ideas about the kind of mother I was going to be. I am now pregnant with my third child and it seems I know less and less with each child and now have absolutely no definite ideas except that a glass of something during their bath time is essential

I thought PFB was a fantastic sleeper and eater thanks to my brilliance. My second child spectacularly disabused me of this smug notion. Who knows what DC3 is going to teach me ....

There were many many shocking things about becoming a mum - that I can love someone enough I'd lay my life down for them yet that same little creature could also make me want to stand in the garden and do a crazy crying scream for fifteen minutes.

I was not expecting so much manual labour. It's back breaking stuff.

that i shouldn't brethe a sigh of relief once they can all dress themselves, this stage is followed by pre teens and teens. Like the toddler stage all over again but with more mouth

oh and that my pre baby body was fab and i should have flaunted and enjoyed it, its not the same at all anymore!

1. That every "difficult" stage will soon be over so don't spend hours crying or stressing, just get on with enjoying your baby, because soon the baby stage will be over too.

1. How nice it is to go to the shops (or anywhere!) with a tiny handbag and nothing else.

That you've never experienced tiredness like it, but somehow you still manage to function; that babies don't come with a manual and motherhood doesn't always come naturally, but it can be learned; that breastfeeding, or not, is not the be all and end all - even bottle-fed babies such as myself grow up into 'normal' well-adjusted human beings ; that one thing will cause you to feel more worry, happiness, anger, frustration but most of all love for another being than you ever thought possible!

Parenthood will be full of opportunities to feel guilty. Don't dive in straightaway feeling guilty about the sort of birth you had or the sort of milk you are giving your baby. Save it for something important like waxing the baby's head.

Don't wear yourself out providing educational stimulation for your newborn - they don't need it. Feed them, wind them, keep them as clean as possible, and cuddle them. This is a good time to watch television (or play World of Warcraft/Guild Wars 2) with a baby on your chest.

Assume that every single sentence that comes from your mum/gran/mother-in-law about how they raised their children is untrue. Maybe the old dear is genuinely confused, but her children didn't really potty train at 6 weeks/sleep straight through at 6 days/smile and chatter at 6 hours. It's all bollocks. Keep repeating that.

that you will judge what ever name you chose for your baby
and
that you will judge on your age too

and that the school gate is like being back a school except if you have more that one child you will spend longer involved in your kids school that you did in your own. and if you hated school as kid going as parent is worse
I more delight when kids finished with their schools that they were .

that fathers that coo at other babies before you have your own don't necessary coo at their own kids