For the first year of his life, I was Completely Clueless Old Mum. In fairness, this is not age-related. We are all clueless with our first baby, though if you are a health visitor or a person with 50 younger siblings its possible you have a bit of a head start.

As he grew, I began to realise there were many things I had not got right, but there were three things I was pretty sure I had. To the point where Old Mum could do the thing she knows She Must Never Do, which is Lecture.

You must not Lecture. You slip things in. Subtly. You say: “Have you thought about….” and “I found this worked for me…” which does not come easily to Old Mum and is a bit of a strain frankly when your friend is tanking their child up on Wotsits and wondering aloud why they are punching the fence and screeching hysterically from their orange-stained mouth.

So indulge me. And for ranting and unrestrained advice on just those three areas (admittedly they are whopping big areas) see:

1: FOOD

Where would your baby choose to sleep?

2: SLEEPING This is a subject so vast and controversial I am actually breaking into a small sweat just writing the word “Sleeping” in conjunction with the word “Right.”

I would be grateful if you could please read  “Three in a Bed” by Deborah Jackson  first as it will convert you, if you need converting, or at least make it easier to explain my point of view.

3: Back on safe ground is potty training. (see POOING). I only got it right because:

A: Old Mum has quite a lot of common sense after all these years and tends not to panic.

B: I watched the more energetic Mum friends stumble their way through first before working out my strategy

C: I ran out of money for nappies and had no choice but to get it sorted as fast as possible. I also read another interesting book though it’s not a great read so I won’t scrape away at my tired old memory or waste time googling: “that book I read about fifties mothers who potty trained their kids at 3 months because they invariably shared a house with their parents, didn’t have washing machines (or disposable nappies come to that) and did a strange sounding thing where they pressed the potty (erk, metal potty I am guessing? Hang on, I need to google that, its fascinating) to the baby’s bottom to get it used to the sensation and were seriously frowned on if their baby was still in his Terrys at 6 months) to tell you the title or author.

I googled it for you. Think its enamel?

Anyway. POOING will have all you need to know about explosions, leaks, reusables and charging round the house spraying perfume because its filled with noxious green gas from a mammoth session and someone just knocked on the door….