Well, it's happening. The next generation of our family is spawning and now I'm a great aunt. Oh dear.

See, the problem is that I don't like babies. There. I've said it out loud. I feel *so* much better.

I used to feel odd about this. I mean, other women see babies and they turn into human marshmallows, babbling all sorts of incomprehensible stuff at the tiny bags of protoplasm. Me, I look at a baby and I see the three "p's"--piss, puke, and poop.

Well, there is *one* exception and that's the baby in these pictures, but she's my own personal baby and that's different. Except now she's 21 and a bit, and so she's not technically a baby anymore. But sometimes I still treat her as if she was one, which must be *very* annoying, eh. Go have mothers.

I've often wished she'd come with a manual. I pushed out 7 1/2 pounds of kid and a placenta, pushing out a manual wouldn't have been *that* much extra work, eh. But she didn't, and so her dad and I just bumbled along. I wish I could have been better at the mom thing, but there you go. Her father was a natural at the dad thing.

Nothing quite prepares you for how much you love your own child. I remember when they set this wrinkled, mucus and blood-covered thing on my belly (complete with a purple pulsating umbilical cord that looked like the ickiest snake I'd ever seen). I remember thinking through a haze of pain and exhaustion, "I just went through 18 hours of unmedicated labour for *this*?" But then, within hours, the love came.

It's the most difficult relationship I've ever had because it's the only relationship where the love is unconditional. No one makes me madder than my kid. No one makes me happier. And I don't worry about anyone like I worry about her.

Nobody warned me about this.

And as far as I can see, we're in this on the lifetime plan and nobody warned me about that, either.

There *should* have been a manual.