by Suzy K Quinn
I loved these friends. I missed them terribly. But practical headaches put me off seeing them. It was a case of, ‘I love you, but I love not having to travel anywhere with a screaming infant more.’
Friends offered to visit us, of course. But, as mentioned, our home was barely suitable for two adults and a baby, let alone guests. Not only did we lack guest furniture, but our house was also a mess of breast-pump equipment, baby clothes, swaddles and other less socially acceptable detritus like boob cream, nipple shields and abandoned bras. I was not going to put my friends through baby-detritus misery. Silly, really, because they wouldn’t have minded. But hormones do ridiculous things to your thought processes.
Then there were friends who I should have kicked to the kerb a long time ago, but motherhood forced my hand.
Before kids, I was tolerant of people’s flaws. I stumbled into friendships and knocked along with whoever seemed good fun. Most of the time I wasn’t really sure how I met my friends. Probably in a pub somewhere. And I chose to see the best and ignore the worst.
Some of my friends drank way too much. It was fair to say they teetered on the tightrope of addiction. Others lost their temper too regularly or leaned on people quite a bit. Some were, if I’m being honest, quite messed-up emotionally. Even more than I was.
Pre-kids, it was all fine. We loved each other.
But when babies come along, things change.
Friends who aren’t grown up enough to live a fully functioning adult life, who lack a clear route between their thoughts and emotions, who drink to the point of cross-eyed, shouty ranting – well, you don’t have as much tolerance for that stuff when you have a baby.
When you’re stressed and caring for a newborn, you don’t have much to give.
I found my more self-centred friends naturally drifted away once I had a baby. I had nothing to give them. I was of no use, so they didn’t bother with me, and I had no time or energy to bother with them. It was painful, realising how superficial these friendships had been, but really it was all for the best.
However, as some old friendships faded, so new ones grew.
There’s that confusing phrase, isn’t there? About God closing a door and opening a window? Or is it the other way around? (Either way, I’ve never really understood the window bit. Are we climbing through windows, is that it? Are we burglars now?)
Anyway.
When something ends, something else begins.
In this brave new world of parenthood, I made new friends who had kids. I hung out with my maternity gang and people I met at newborn-baby groups.
These people understood my confusion, pain and uncertainty because they were going through exactly what I was going through. Plus, they were geographically convenient and understood the need to meet in places that facilitated buggies and small children.
Babies are the great connectors, aren’t they? They give us something in common with every other new parent on the planet.
Bit by bit, as my old life faded away, a new life grew.
I didn’t want to lose my old friends, but I realised I needed extra friends to survive this new phase in our lives. People who knew my journey, pain and struggles. And actually wanted, rather than tolerated, a conversation about baby toilet habits.
The only people who fitted the bill at this time were other parents with newborns.
#16 LIE – IT’S JUST A PHASE
At least once a week, my lovely maternity gang would meet in one of the many ‘not-very-child-friendly’ Brighton cafes.
We’d head to Starbucks for a chat about modern parenting, while our babies screamed or tried to escape on to the busy street.
Starbucks hated us.
When I met up with my maternity gang, one of our favourite things to discuss was ‘baby phases’.
A ‘baby phase’ is one of those casual terms used to dress up something unpleasant. (Like when you go to have your legs waxed and they say it will feel ‘a bit tingly’. Or the nurse calls an injection a ‘sharp scratch’.)
People say, ‘it’s just a phase’ as if this somehow reduces the unpleasantness of your baby crying for two hours straight.
It doesn’t.
In the baby world, phases are the random, odd things under-ones do that rarely feature in the baby books because they supposedly pass almost as soon as they come on.
Supposedly.
But mostly phases don’t pass quickly. Which makes them not ‘just a phase’, but a long, miserable period of time.
Baby ‘phases’ for our gang included:
Grunting at night (when your baby is technically sleeping, but worries you with their weird noises)
Permanent runny nose
Crying from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. (aka the shitty hours)
The ‘why do they have a temperature for no reason?’ phase
And last but not least, the dreaded month of the mega poos
You can’t talk about this stuff with friends who don’t have kids. They don’t understand or care. Nor are they a source of precious advice.
One of our maternity gang had her baby a month before the rest of us and was consequently a trailblazer and phase guru. Her son went through all the phases first, so she could tell us exactly what to look forward to.
During one of our Starbucks visits, Lexi hadn’t pooed for a whole day.
This was greeted by big oohs and aahs from my maternity gang.
Trailblazing Tammy informed me that Lexi was entering the dreaded mega-poo phase.
She said, ‘That’s how the mega poos start. They don’t go for ages and then it all comes out at once.’
I’m not going to go into graphic detail here, just in case you’re eating. But I’ll just throw out a few sentences:
Clothes ruined.
How could there be so much?
Why does it always happen when we’re not at home?
I will ALWAYS remember to bring two sets of spare clothes . . .
As we were discussing the dreaded mega poos, Lexi went red-faced and filled her nappy.
I believe the phrase is ‘uh-oh’.
Trailblazing Tammy put a sympathetic hand on mine. ‘And it’s always when you’re out and about.’
‘I’d better change her,’ I said.
‘Are you sure you’re OK?’ Trailblazing Tammy asked. ‘You don’t want an extra pack of wipes, just in case?’
But I thought I’d be fine. After all, Lexi was three months old now. I was an old pro. Whatever the size of the poo, I could handle an ‘out and about’ change. Right?
I had all the necessaries packed neatly in my bag AND I hadn’t forgotten to restock today. In the parenting world, I was winning. It was all OK. Everything under control.
I calmly took Lexi to the overly warm Starbucks bathroom, which had one of those changing tables that fold out over the toilet.
All very civilised.
Once I started the change, I realised why Trailblazing Tammy had looked at me with such sympathy. This change was a horror story. We needed a full bath and total change of clothing. Possibly followed by the incineration of Lexi’s current outfit.
Starbucks did not offer incineration facilities nor stock extra clothing.
I used every wet wipe I had to clean Lexi down. Then I dressed her in a new outfit and bagged up her old clothes – possibly for later incineration.
Then more mega poo came out. A lot more.
I always saw myself as someone who coped. Who got on with things. Who was never overwhelmed or out of her depth.
Well, when you have a screaming, naked child covered in excrement in a hot public toilet, solutions can seem very far away.
In my flustered state, I made the only choice possible – throw away the second set of clothes and bring Lexi out naked.
It was winter. Not the time of year for scantily dressed babies.
When I emerged from the bathroom, red-faced and with a naked, crying baby in my arms, I felt the eyes of the coffee shop upon me.
I imagine
myself looking like a cartoon character after a bomb has gone off. You know, hair two feet high, eyes wide with shock.
‘Are you OK?’ my maternity friends asked, their eyes full of concern. ‘Would you like some spare clothes?’
They proffered clean, folded and ironed changes of clothes, tucked neatly in their organised baby bags.
They were (still are) lovely mums.
I gratefully accepted a little sailor outfit and learned one of many, many lessons: always bring two sets of spare clothes.
As they say in survival situations, two is one and one is none.
Through each baby phase, Demi and I staggered along with the misguided hope that when this phase was over, things would be better. But in reality, with each new phase our apartment felt smaller and smaller due to the huge piles of baby-phase stuff we wasted our money on.
Having lived in a city for years, Demi and I were consumers. Our lives centred around buying shit.
Freshly baked, all-butter croissant from the French patisserie? Don’t mind if I do. Signature cocktail with real juniper berries? Oh, go on then. Going gluten-free? Yes, I will enjoy the specialist organic supermarket for my paleo-cereal needs. My goodness, what a lot of choice!
(Demi: ‘I have no idea what paleo cereal is and never liked all that gluten-free stuff you kept trying to force upon our household.’)
In the city, all your consumerist desires can come true. The best restaurants, the most exciting and unusual foods and the newest entertainment. There was always something buzzy and exciting going on in Brighton city too: some guy juggling teddy bears just for the fun of it or bouncing to work on giant kangaroo boots (look them up, they’re hilarious).
You could have a beer on a street balcony, listen to tribal-drum music or eat fresh prawns with buttered brown bread on the stony beach.
Fantastic.
However, we weren’t bothering with city stuff now we had a young baby. I counted it as a good day if I made it down to the supermarket for wet wipes.
So consumerism took a new turn.
I started buying mail-order baby gadgets – things that would supposedly make these wretched phases easier.
We should have been growing up, of course. We should have realised that buying shit would not solve our problems and that a more profound mental shift was needed. Living in the moment. Accepting this new life. Letting go of the past, etc.
But we did not realise this.
Instead, with every new discomfort that occurred, I looked for a product to solve it.
As naive and desperate new parents, we were an advertiser’s dream. I was more than willing to believe products could and would sidestep the many agonies of parenthood.
Take teething, for example.
At four months, Lexi started dribbling, banging her head on things, chewing inappropriate items like beer bottles, and sometimes (but not too often) waking up at night.
There I was, thinking life was getting easier, when Mother Nature grabbed a handful of shit and threw it at us.
Again.
BOOM! Dribbly, chewy, cranky baby, jerking awake in the small hours.
This seemed unfair. And may I add, what a terrible design, Mother Nature.
What could fix this problem? Surely someone had invented a product?
In my immaturity and naivety, I believed there must be some gadget or gizmo that could make things better.
I threw myself into internet research. Happily, there were plenty of shiny products on sale, complete with pictures of contented, smiling babies. Hooray! It was just as I thought. All I had to do was pay some money and soon contentment would be mine.
Great news.
How much do you want? Spare change for a hundred?
However, on closer inspection (Amazon reviews), it seemed some of these magical products might not actually work.
The amber teething necklace, for example, that claimed to leach out a ‘gentle acid’ against the baby’s skin had no measurable, scientific proof of effectiveness. It was all guesswork.
Can baby say ‘hooey’?
Teething granules sounded a little more plausible. Rubbing something into a baby’s gums seemed like an actual medical thing.
I bought eight little sachets of granules for £5 plus postage.
The instructions said to use ‘up to’ eight sachets a day, depending on teething pain.
Essentially, I’d bought a single day’s worth of teething relief at great expense.
Still. Worth a try.
The teething granules seemed to distract Lexi from her discomfort, in the same way playing a very, very loud song might temporarily stop her crying.
Lexi seemed curious as I shoved the granules into her mouth. And a little bit annoyed.
‘What’s this shit, then?’ she seemed to be saying. ‘Where’s the milk?’
I waited for the miraculous calming effects to occur.
They didn’t.
Lexi still dribbled and cried and chewed beer bottles, and she still woke up at night in pain, just the same as before.
I scoured the teething-granule packet for more instructions and discovered the active ingredient was something called Chamomilla, which is another word for camomile. Essentially, I was giving Lexi a cup of camomile tea. Not the hard-hitting painkiller I imagined.
Unperturbed, I bought gel-filled cold teething rings. When they arrived, they were twice the size of Lexi’s mouth. I couldn’t ram the huge ice-cold rings against Lexi’s little gums, and she seemed distressed whenever I tried.
‘Maybe we can’t buy our way out of this,’ Demi suggested as the pile of ineffective baby gadgets grew and grew. ‘Maybe it’s just about accepting things are different now. And that babies come with pain and difficulty.’
It’s true. You can’t really fix babies. No matter how much you spend on organic teething granules.
But if we couldn’t buy our way out of this, how on earth would we cope?
#17 LIE – ONCE THEY START WEANING, THEY’LL SLEEP BETTER
Impatience and babies don’t go very well together. This might sound obvious to you, a sensible person, but I’ve always been in a rush.
In my working life, I was an insane multitasker. I could write an email, brainstorm a plot, eat a cream-cheese bagel and phone my bank all at the same time, even sparing a little extra energy to ask the call representative why she needed my account number since I’d already inputted this on the numerical keypad before the call connected. Surely she had a record of this?
I got shit done. Quickly.
Babies, on the other hand, are sloooow. And you can’t shout at babies to grow up faster – that’s just bad parenting. Anyway, it doesn’t work. No, I haven’t tried it. Well, maybe once.
When Lexi hit five months, I wanted progress. Something to show we were getting somewhere and that all these nappy changes and menial labour weren’t for nothing. Lexi was already sleeping through the night, but I had to tank her up on a lot of breast milk during the day, plus give her a ‘dream feed’ at 11 p.m. Now I wanted a proper night’s sleep, all night, every night.
The baby-group midwives told me that when babies start weaning on to solid food, they can sleep from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. all night, every night.
Weaning!
This sounded just the ticket.
They also advised not to wean until six months. But I gravitated towards internet sources that suggested it was OK to start a bit earlier as long as you went slowly.
It was a whole big political debate, it turned out. Is five months OK to wean? What about five and a half months? What if your baby is only four months old but weighed a stone at birth and is clearly starving hungry and making grabs for the KFC bargain bucket?
By and large, five months seemed OK to wean.
Idiotically, I decided to sidestep things like packets of baby rice, believing that healthy avocado was nature’s glorious nutritional powerhouse and would be the ideal first weaning food.
I bought a high chair. Our already s
mall dining area shrank by a third. Demi kindly returned the high chair and bought a little travel ‘feeding’ seat that sat on an existing dining chair and packed up for the car.
Lovely.
‘Ooh, Lexi, a lovely new chair. Look, NEW chair. Chair!’
With Lexi strapped in place, I offered her spoonfuls of avocado. She ate and seemed to thoroughly enjoy it. I gave her some more.
Fantastic!
It all seemed so simple: food goes in; baby grows big and strong; baby sleeps longer at night.
Maybe that ‘dream feed’ would now be a thing of the past.
More calories equals longer sleep, right?
Wrong.
That night, Lexi woke at 9 p.m., midnight, 1 a.m., 3 a.m. and 5 a.m.
I was extremely upset.
What the bejesus was going on?
Real proper food had been lovingly delivered. Why was she now waking up at all hours? Where was the logic here?
After obsessive internet scouring, I discovered the problem: avocado is hard for young babies to digest, hence the sensible suggestions of baby rice, pureed carrot, etc.
I bought a box of baby rice, fed Lexi the designated four spoonfuls and she slept better. But she still needed the dream feed and woke early. Nothing had really changed.
The next day, I mixed up the baby rice again, sat Lexi in her chair, fed her, washed everything down (including Lexi) and washed up. And the next day. And the next.
This was becoming a right pain in the arse and Lexi wasn’t sleeping any differently to before. Also, I had to bring weaning food with us if we went out at lunchtime.
(Demi: ‘Personally, I loved it when Lexi started weaning. Finally I could do something.’)
Why on earth had I rushed? Why? I’d just set myself up for a lot more work a month sooner than I needed to.
Bollocks.
Lexi aged one, eating solid food from McDonald’s. I’m a good mother. A good mother . . .