You expect that you’ll capture gorgeous snaps of your tiny sleepy baby curled up in a basket dressed as a teddy bear, and the first pictures of you as a family. Precious memories to cherish and display forever. The reality is a tiny naked human with zero bladder/bowel control which will lead to you being pood on within minutes. You haven’t slept in days, none of your clothes fit, your boobs are leaking like the Trevi fountain and given that you’re still wearing an adult nappy, you’ve never felt less ‘camera ready’.

The expectation of a blissful day at the beach and introducing them to one of your favourite things ends up being a weight-lifting exercise of balancing multiple bags, a pram, and a baby. All followed by the challenge of stopping your kid from eating gobfuls of sand and trying to calm tantrums. Because apparently, sand + toes = poison to anyone under 3. *And don’t even get us started on the waves.

Understandably, the baby who took a good 6 months to warm up to their nursery keyworker will not take kindly to being plonked on the knee of a giant bearded stranger. For older children, direct access to the big man himself allows them free reign to request whatever they want leading to awkward conversations when the baby sister they asked for doesn’t arrive on Christmas morning.

A group of small children armed with wicker baskets fight to the death to collect the most chocolate eggs, which you then have to prise from their small sticky hands before the sudden influx of sugar causes them to develop type 2 diabetes. Obviously, you immediately forget where you’ve put them all, inevitably leading to the annual (very costly) trip to see the vets when three months later the family chihuahua finds and scoffs two rogue cream eggs (foil included).

Spoiler alert: babies couldn’t give a flying fuck about animals. The entrance fee costs more than your monthly mortgage, the food is inedible and the only thing that will interest your child is the AED 120 stuffed gorilla from the gift shop you’re forced to walk through on the way out.

You’ve not even made it out of the car park before your toddler declares their legs are tired and demands to be carried the rest of the way. The baby does a giant poonami the second you put them in a pram suit, the toilets stink of wee and the queue to use them is seven miles long. The day ends with a total meltdown as you explain why you won’t take home the four-foot-long stick they’ve been carting around for the last three hours.

A three-hour flight in a confined space with 250 strangers who all hate you and your screaming child, followed by at least 3 days of attempting to get your kid to not sleep during the day. You used to spend long summer evenings in five-star restaurants sipping large glasses of Aperol; now you eat takeaway pizza in hotel bathrooms, watching Netflix with headphones on so you don’t wake the baby.

A logistical nightmare. You have two options here; risk your baby contracting a face-verruca by placing them on the floor while you try to squeeze your arse into damp jeans or flash your vagina to the entire family changing room as you attempt to dress with hand. It costs AED80 for a 30-minute lesson, and after four years you’re two grand worse off and they still can’t swim.

In fairness being stripped half naked at 10 am on a Tuesday and being smothered in coconut oil in the presence of 15 other crying babies doesn’t scream relaxing to us either. They’ll either completely lose their shit or worse, you’ll have spent AED35 only for them to sleep through the whole thing.

Pre-kids, full of pregnant hope, we saw the pics on Instagram. We imagined ourselves as the women in the pictures, blissfully sipping mimosas as Aladdin and Co. entertained our angelic children.

What replaced it was a Kids’ TV show-like challenge. Where we’d have to scoff food and drink as fast as we can, all while darting between kids’ entertainment hubs. Never actually sitting at a table, leaving exhausted, covered in ketchup.