THERE are people who make parenting look like a glamorous and easy breezy occupation. Supermodels and pop stars, for example. They turn up at the school gates in stilettos and leather trousers like they’ve just stepped out of a salon on the way back from a designer clothes shop.
And then there’s Rochelle Humes, a pop star mum who, if we put aside the turning of her umbilical cord into a work of art, is just like the bloody rest of us – winging it, coping with all these little people throwing stuff at us and doing our best.
Last week ever-glamorous former Saturday’s singer Rochelle announced a unique and rather disgusting parenting technique to help her bunged-up baby girl sleep better. She sucked snot from her nose.
In a video clip on her Instragram page, 28-year-old Rochelle said: "Just put Valentina to bed, she's not been very well, actually the past couple of days, she's teething, and got a cold and everything.
“So bunged up that last night, wait for it, I sucked the snot out of her nose. Yeah. The joke of it is that she actually looked at me like, 'Mum, what on earth are you doing to me? Get off me. This is disgusting.' And I'm sort of looking at her like, 'I've just tasted snot for the first time.''
Now as a parent, I have literally seen every scenario known to womankind. Four kids later I am a stranger to no bodily fluids and I am literally afraid of nothing. As a parenting veteran I’ve been puked and pee’d on, dealt with every horrendous bathroom scenario the darkest recesses of your imagination can conjure up and have survived little people’s colds that were on an Exorcist-esque level.
But I have never and will never suck snot from a baby’s nose. Not ever. That is a bridge too far. There are products for such matters available in the chemist. Rochelle, if you’re reading this, you do not need to suffer in silence. There are medical alternatives such as Baby Vicks or nasal aspirators if you ever face this level of nostril crisis again.
I’m not judging. I know that many parents swear by this technique when their babies are too young to blow their noses. I know that at 3am, almost hallucinating with exhaustion and with a crying snuffly baby on your shoulder you’ll try anything, absolutely anything to help them back to sleep. But I still wouldn’t attempt mouth-to-nose snot extraction, unless it was a life or death situation.
Parents were divided online as to if Rochelle’s heroic actions were hilarious or horrendous. Although many may partake in the practice, not many would admit to it. It’s one of those parenting secrets that need not be spoken of, one of the tips shared in hushed tones in dark, quiet corners of the mother-and-toddler groups, not on Instagram.
It’s almost, but not quite as bad as catching puke in your cupped hands to save the carpet, or spitting on a tissue to wipe your kid’s dirty face in the absence of wipes. We’ve all done these things and probably worse, but we don’t advertise the fact. It’s the first rule of Gross Parenting Club, Rochelle. You do not speak of Gross Parenting Club.
Poor Rochelle. For a time there she was known as the mum who had the word Love spelled out using her dehydrated umbilical cord so she could hang it in a frame in her living room. Now, she has been elevated a step further. No matter how well turned out this absolutely gorgeous, stylish, intelligent and successful woman, we will forever more imagine her sucking snot from another human being’s nose.
