MichelleMcDonagh's Blog

One thing I have vowed never ever to say to a mum of young kids is “enjoy them while they’re young” or “the years pass so fast”. If I had a euro for every time some well-meaning older mother said this to me, I could fund a trip to Disneyland Paris – or at the very least, Tayto Park. Of course we want to enjoy the children we have been blessed with and to appreciate every second we...

The old adage that ‘the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree’ is so true. It was brought home to me the other day when I was falsely accused by another mother of pushing her child. It was a wet and windy Sunday morning and I had taken my three children to an indoor play centre to get them out of the house for a couple of hours. They were having a great time and I had even got to read part of...

Driving home after a weekend in Granddad’s house in Galway, I found myself in the middle of a totally unplanned explanation of my dad’s memory problems. Princess Firstborn had asked me what a cigarette was and I explained that they were dirty things that grown up people put in their mouths and smoked. “You know the way Granddad forgets his words and people’s names all the time?” I said...

As mums, we pick up many skills that we never, in our carefree childfree days, thought we might need. One such skill is being able to instantly deduce from the sound of your child’s cry – whether it’s volume, pitch or tone – the seriousness of a particular situation. Usually you listen with one ear while carrying on with the multitude of other tasks you are engaged in; sometimes you stop...

If anybody had told me this time last year that I would be running 5k three times a week, I would have laughed at them. I was the girl who forged notes from my mother every week to get out of doing sport at school. Over the years, I tried fitness classes and hated them all. I was far too uncoordinated (and unfit) for aerobics and spent most of the class praying for the torture to end. I joined a...

Last week, I learnt a very valuable lesson about the importance of reading text messages properly instead of just scanning through them, like many multi-tasking mums usually do. That’s how, on St Patrick’s Day, poor Bruiser found himself marching through the village, the only child in the parade dressed up as a birthday present. The lovely woman who runs the local art studio sent out a text to...

I slunk surreptitiously into the pharmacy. Not my usual local one where all the staff know me, of course. Seeing another woman at the counter, I hovered around the vitamin section while I waited for her to be served. She handed in a prescription and then took a seat as she waited for it to be filled. Blast! I contemplated leaving and returning later when an on-the-ball assistant caught my furtive...

Broadcaster and mum-of-eight Miriam O’Callaghan believes that staying at home and minding your kids is the hardest job in the world but the best thing you can do for them. Before I had my own kids, I would have been totally incredulous at the very suggestion that staying at home with children could possibly be harder than going out to work every day. With the innocent naivety of a childless...

Blue Monday, which landed this year on January 19th, is supposed to be the most depressing day of the year, but surely it’s all relative. For instance, if you won the Lotto that day, gave birth or got a promotion at work, you would be in pretty good form. Or if the foul plague that is the dreaded vomiting bug had finally been purged from your home and the kids were hastily dispatched back to...

Another mum once told me that you’re out of the woods when your youngest hits the age of three and it’s plain sailing until they enter the wilderness of the teenage years. Being heavily pregnant on my third child when she told me this, as well as having an unruly toddler and a three-year-old, I felt like thumping this mum of older kids with her designer handbag. I felt utterly despondent at...