Beck Vass: Inside the hungover Kiwi mums club

Kids are like sharks, they smell the booze on you and make you suffer as much as possible. Photo / 123RF

I didn't envisage being smacked in the head with a kitchen utensil when I was quaffing bubbles, writes Beck Vass.

Lying on the soft shag-pile rug in our lounge, being smacked in the head with a plastic soup ladle by my 1-year-old, I waited for the world to swallow me up so I could die in peace.

But it didn't.

Our boy moved from the "thwack, thwack, thwack" of the soup ladle on to pulling at the fluffy bits of hair above my ears as I groaned and tried to stop him.

This is life with a hangover when you have children.

There is nothing you can do but get on with it.

I'd met my husband with plans for a wedding anniversary dinner. He was with his workmates having some post-work drinks when I met up with the group and everyone got a bit excited and we never quite made the dinner part of our night. Always a big mistake.

I didn't envisage being smacked in the head with a kitchen utensil when I was quaffing bubbles and enjoying some rare banter with adults for the first time in a long time, so I'd gotten a little carried away.

The old saying "sleep when they sleep" is no help. There is no such thing. Children with hungover parents don't sleep. They're like sharks. They can smell it on you and they know exactly what to do to make your suffering as severe as possible.

We've suffered a few of these in the last seven years as parents, and none of them have been fun.

It's always the nights you least expect that end up bigger than you intended, too.

And the one time you need as much sleep as you can get, your baby will wake every two hours in the night because that's the night he decides to get an ear infection.

You wake up suffering but you're not sure if it's the booze or the lack of sleep, but it doesn't really matter because it's all the same anyway.

Everything would have been fine if only you weren't woken at 11.30pm, and 2.30am and 4.30am.

You're slow. You can't find anything, and since the wake-up call at 6am, you're desperately counting down hoping everyone will go to bed at 6pm so you can too. But they won't and neither will you.

The other children are older (7 and 4). If it's the weekend, they might turn on the TV at 6am and watch cartoons for a little bit, but they're going to demand food soon and it's you who has to sort it.

Can't you guys use UberEats yet? Here, take my phone, take my car, take anything you want. Bring me back some too!

Why didn't we book a babysitter for today as well? That's when we really need support.

But seriously, it's the season for it now with holidays and gatherings.

There is no real advice I can give to surviving this situation.

I can tell you not to drink but you're going to be stupid like me and do it anyway, aren't you?

Drink water when you're drinking (yeah, right!), make sure you do eat dinner, try and make some easy snacks ahead of time so it's a quick fix for the kids the day after, and put on a family movie for everyone at midday and hope for the best.

That's the older two sorted, but it's not going to stop you getting whacked by a 1-year-old.

Good luck.