5 Things A New Mum Can Learn From The Dublin Zoo Gorilla
A NEWBORN baby can bring a lot of things in a woman’s life: fear, dread, nausea, a feeling of worthlessness and the sickening sense that everything you’re doing is stupid. And you’d be right, you can’t possibly expect your feeble female brain to cope with looking after your own child. Come on now!
Yup, as a new mother all you can do is sit back and look at how the animals do it; specifically Lena, a gorilla in Dublin Zoo who just became a proud new mum. Lena has this maternal craic down to a fine art, and quite frankly, we think there’s a few things you can learn from her…
1) Lena will breastfeed for five years
No lactation consultant, no formula… Lena will breastfeed her baby for years, as opposed to a woman who will give it a go for a while and then just say ‘fuck this, I’m spent’. If you’re the mother of a newborn, take a moment to feel terrible about yourself while we continue with the ways that a gorilla is better than you.
2) Lena will straight up kill you
We sincerely doubt that the average new mother would have the strength to pull a man’s arm out of the socket and stamp his face into the ground over some perceived threat to her and her child… not Lena. Lena is a gorilla. Those are the big ones, remember?. Lena ain’t no spider-monkey. Lena ain’t no macaque. Lena will honest to fuck murder anyone she feels like. So while Lena is snapping the necks of anyone who threatens her or her baby, you just have to sit there and take it like the feeble weakling you are.
3) Lena can stick to a diet
Bananas, vegetables, very little sugar… when Lena eats, she eats right. Lena isn’t like you. Lena didn’t buy a Nutribullet, use it for a month and then turn “treat night” into “treat weekend” before lapsing into “treats all the time”. This is a gorilla we’re talking about here. She has self-control, and self-respect. You’re not going to see Lena on the shelf, no sir. Could have any ape she wants, that one, cause she looks after herself.
4) Lena will get her kid into a good school
Lena knows the right people, so her baby will go to a very respectable monkey school, close to Dublin Zoo. There’s going to be no 7AM starts for Lena, stuffing a slice of toast into her half-asleep kids’ mouths while she bundles them into the back of the Citroen Picasso, just so that she can drive them 40 minutes across town in rush-hour traffic to the only school that had a place available. Lena’s kids aren’t going to be picked up by their grandparents, either, no ma’am. Lena will be there for her kids. Can you say the same? No, because you’re not a proud western lowland gorilla. You’re a woman. A woman!
5) Lena keeps the spark going in her marriage
Lena’s man is well looked after, if you know what we mean. He doesn’t come home to an untidy house, or a missus who just wants to fall asleep after having looked after a screaming baby for 12 hours. He gets home, has his dinner handed to him, in peace. The baby gorilla smiles at him while Lena does the washing up, then the baby goes down for a full 16 hours of sleep, allowing Mr. And Mrs. gorilla to get up to some monkey business of their own. What we want to know is, when did women stop being like Lena? When did they start caring more about keeping a roof over their heads and food on the table, and less about breastfeeding and scratching their holes while tourists took selfies through an inch of glass? Take a trip to the zoo, ladies. Learn something.