'Before I became a mum, I thought kissing a child on the lips was disgusting'

Before I became a parent, there were about a dozen or so things I deemed utterly disgusting.

The birth, of course, was near the top; the dirty nappies not far behind; and, this thing I saw all over the internet. It wasn’t just social media, it was everywhere. Blogs (remember them?) featured it, celebrities were indulging, even some of my closest friends.

I’m talking about the act of a small child kissing their parent on the lips.

Before I had kids, the only person I had kissed on the lips was my husband, thank you very much. Well, him and a few idiots I met in my youth. But that’s it! That’s all.

No relative should ever kiss another relative on the lips, unless you’re from one of those super rich Bohemian families with loads of "visiting parties" and weak boundaries.

I thought the women who kissed their babies and toddlers on the lips were starving for affection. I thought they were creepy and dysfunctional, like listening to a "true crime" podcast where the authorities can’t prove anything conclusively, but you know in the pit of your stomach that something is off.

I thought it was absolutely 100 per cent inappropriate. Yeah, I was wrong.

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See, the whole motherhood thing starts from the most inappropriate place imaginable, and doesn’t really move away from it for a long time. I’m talking about birth, of course. And breastfeeding.

And then, well, basically everything that follows. Like the fact you can’t stop wetting yourself after you give birth. Or when doctors examine every inch of you, as if you were nothing more than a baby incubator.

LISTEN: On this week's Honey Mums podcast, Leila McKinnon reveals why she left the city for the country and Sandy Rea discusses bad habits. (Post continues.)

https://omny.fm/shows/9honey-super-mums/dkmumspodcast15/embed?style=cover

Then, add this to the category marked 'unsavoury' in your brain: you are wiping your kid’s bum every single day for three years, sometimes more. To say nothing of the six months of serious spit-up – vomiting - that often goes hand in hand with it.

So by the time that first kiss from your baby rolls around, the chances are high that it’s:
a) An open-mouthed one (because babies don’t know how to purse their lips) and
b) You don’t care

In fact, you’re so moved by this small joy, you tear up over it. And maybe your left boob joins in the party by accidentally producing milk because your boobs don’t have brains - they sense hormonal changes and then they go for it.

My two-year-old daughter did try to stick her tongue into my mouth the other day, and I reeled back as if it were a razor blade. "Nope, we don’t do that," is how I laughingly explained the episode to her. How could I not laugh? She’s two.

But as for the kiss on the lips situation, my son is five and he still kisses me on the lips and I find it adorable. 

See, that’s how it happens, folks. A woman’s compass for what’s gross gets broken and never goes back - at least not where our kids are concerned, and at least not until puberty.

So that’s why when I saw Victoria Beckham kissing her daughter Harper on the lips a couple of years back, followed by Tom Brady kissing his son on the lips earlier this year, I thought it was sweet.

It’s such a pure display of love from a tiny human, I can see now, how, in theory it might seem a bit too intimate, but in practice? It is straight-up lovely.