It is the great divide between those with kids and those without. The witching hour(s).
Before you had kids, you probably spent the hours between 4 p.m. and 7 p.m. wrapping up a few things at work then heading home for dinner, or perhaps out to meet up with friends for a jolly laugh and a beverage or four. You may have looked forward to seeing your partner and having an intimate chat about your day, international politics and your life dreams. Your day was done and you were ready for some fun. The biggest wrinkle in your afternoon was battling the traffic to get home.
Now you’re engaged in a completely different battle. You are battling the desire to just walk out the front door and not come back. There are infants battling wind, colic and exhaustion. There are toddlers battling EVERYTHING.
The baby refuses to exist anywhere but on her mum’s hip and will claw handfuls of thigh flesh in an attempt to scale Mount Mum, whingeing and whining all the way to the top, where she wails nonstop from 4 p.m. until 7 p.m. The toddler insists on opening every cupboard and drawer in the kitchen so he can throw every item he finds on the floor to create a fun obstacle course for anyone carrying pots of scalding water.
Childfree people will sometimes catch a glimpse of this alternate universe when they make the mistake of calling their friends with kids during the witching hours.
It’s a glimpse into a horrifying, face-melting scene of roaring terror that makes them wish they’d never picked up the phone. The call is, at most, two minutes long, in which approximately three sentences are spoken, in between yelling and shrieking and crashing and swearing, followed by the phone being dropped on the floor and kicked under the couch while the poor innocent caller is left crying, ‘Hello? Hello?’ into the abyss before hanging up, fed-up, forlorn, forgotten.
Things get ramped up to Factor FML when Dad walks in the door.
The only intimate moments in this home will be the silent nod one parent gives when the other holds up a bottle of wine. Their shared life goal is ‘bags not doing bath time tonight’.
Of course, the witching hours do end. It’s a bare-knuckle, knockdown, drag-yourself-over-the-line-with-bloodied-fingernails race, but you all get there in the end.
After the longest few hours of your life, the little people—all clean and smelling fresh—wrap their sleepy little arms around your neck and instantly you panic about how fast it’s all going.