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

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Raw, candid and hilarious, Ellie Taylor’s My Child and Other Mistakes is the funny truth about motherhood and all its grisly delights. 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!) However, there are many other child-enforced changes that bring far less sparkly outcomes. It’s safe to say that having a child destroys your life and ruins everything that you previously enjoyed.

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

My stomach is spongy and quivering, like a panna cotta that’s been out of the fridge for too long. My body has decided that it’s best if it keeps hold of some of the four stone I put on when pregnant, presumably for a rainy day. Children are not the only route to having a meaningful life as a woman. I had a meaningful life before I had a child, and had I not become a mother, my life would still have value, worth and love. p11-12I think it’s had 20 Emmy nominations. It’s gone wild. It’s so funny. It’s got so much heart, as well. It’s so sweet. That’s all done, the second series starts tomorrow.”

My Child and Other Mistakes: How to ruin your life in the My Child and Other Mistakes: How to ruin your life in the

Taylor’s book is naturally predominately lead by her own experiences of pregnancy, childbirth (in this case via C-section) and being a mother, however, she does also pull anecdotes from other mothers and parents that have been part of her life and these add further depth (and occasionally some comedy) to the narrative. Resilient children are less afraid of making mistakes and more prepared to take risks – because they can cope with having got it wrong. Explain how we don’t always know the answers or the right way to behave, but we can make the best choices we can – and accept if we get it wrong. This means showing them that mistakes are great ways to learn and are part of what makes us human. 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.”

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'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. I felt so honoured to hear such personal, vulnerable details. It was a real privilege to be brought into those feelings.

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

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.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. In my new life, TDSY (The Dry Shampoo Years), my main aim this week is to try and get Ratbag to eat a raspberry. Success has shape-shifted from the vast, the international, the stratospheric (with me at the centre of it all), to the small, the fundamental, the domestic – all rotating around a small child who loves pink wafer biscuits more than some members of her family.

My Child and Other Mistakes: The hilarious and heart-warming My Child and Other Mistakes: The hilarious and heart-warming

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 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 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.The ‘stuff’ sneaks up on you. It begins deceptively slowly – a harmless if garish playmat appears in front of the sofa. “That’s ok,” you think, “It’s just one item.” In fact, it’s a nice hint of ‘child’ in a room that otherwise screams ‘functional living space for two adults who like watching The West Wing’. 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 Child and Other Mistakes, Taylor chronicles her ascent into adulthood. I don’t mean the passing of the years that makes us a grown up but the decisions that we make that validate that in modern society such as getting engaged, getting married, having kids. 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.