Lies We Tell Mothers: A True Story

by Suzy K Quinn

  ‘Yep, they’ll do,’ he said. ‘Let’s get going.’

  A few days later we had a gleaming white-wood kitchen complete with one of those fridges that dispenses water and ice cubes.

  The yellow floor lino was now solid wood and the wedding-cake plaster had been smoothed over.

  There was a breakfast bar.

  A dividing wall had gone, creating a Californian-style open-plan living space, and we’d smashed out the patio-brick fire surround and replaced the gas fire with a wood-burning stove.

  We’d done it.

  We’d achieved the perfect kids’ party venue – loads of space and a fridge freezer that chucked out ice cubes at any toddler who could reach the lever. AND in time for Lexi’s pink princess birthday party. Now all we needed to do was buy a lot of pink bunting, pink plates, pink cakes and so forth.

  Dad came to the rescue again with fifty metres of bright-pink bunting he had ‘lying around’, plus some glittery paper plates and a giant pink elephant statue for princesses to ride on. He also had some foil balloons with ‘Pimm’s’ written on them, which we declined.

  Lexi ran around the new space, clapping with delight. And it was safe for her to do so – she could eat off this new floor if she wished. It was perfectly hygienic.

  The next Saturday afternoon, a horde of playful, chattering toddlers arrived in pink princess outfits. A few of the boys disrespected the dress code by coming as Spiderman, Superman, etc. but Lexi was gracious enough to let them in anyway.

  We’d hung the house with yards of pink bunting, set the breakfast bar with a party spread of jam sandwiches, pink-wafer biscuits, pink lemonade, iced fancies and other sugary delights. Oh, and the obligatory tomatoes and carrot sticks. You have to put those out even though the kids never eat them.

  Some of the parents stayed and we had pre-Christmas drinks (no, November isn’t too soon) in the ‘dining area’ while the kids ran around screaming and generally having a good time. Excuse the ‘dining area’ quotation marks, but these things were still surreal to us.

  A dining area. My goodness, we were grown up!

  Nana wearing a strange pirate headdress and holding Lexi at her birthday party. Family house complete!

  We chatted about home renovations and B&Q discounts while our sensible family car sat on the driveway.

  It was so weird. I’d been talking about home renovations, for goodness’ sake! What had become of me?

  But actually, it was a lovely day.

  #25 LIE – SECOND PREGNANCIES ARE MORE STRAIGHTFORWARD

  With all these big changes going on, you’d have thought Demi and I would want less hard work, not more. But no. Once the kitchen was renovated, Demi and I decided to have another baby.

  The conversation went something like this:

  Me: ‘We should have another baby.’

  Demi: ‘Why would we want to do something stupid like that? When I think of all the work involved with a newborn baby, I feel physically sick.’

  Me: ‘Lexi should have a brother or sister; otherwise she’ll be selfish and spoiled. Time is ticking. If we leave it too long, they’ll be too far apart in age to play with each other. And I’m not getting any younger. Neither are you.’

  Demi: ‘I AM getting younger.’

  Me: ‘No, you’re not.’

  Demi: ‘I suppose we’d better get on with it, then.’

  Me: ‘Yes. Let’s get it out of the way.’

  I’ll be totally honest – we didn’t exactly want a second child (sorry, Laya). Not yet anyway. Maybe in ten years when Lexi was closer to leaving home.

  I felt in no way ready for two children. Lexi had now hit the terrible twos and was breaking things I didn’t even know could be broken, like plug sockets. When she wasn’t moving carefully tidied-away things out of their tidied place to somewhere I would trip over them, she required attention. A lot of attention.

  ‘Mummy, Mummy, Mummy!’

  Adding to this chaos was surely a terrible idea. But at least this time we’d sort of know what we were doing. Or at the very least, we’d know our inadequacies.

  We started ‘trying’ for another baby, i.e. having fairly clinical but regular sex whenever we could summon the energy. After the first month, I took a pregnancy test and it came back negative.

  This was good news because it was Demi’s brother’s wedding that weekend. Not being pregnant meant I could drink alcohol at the wedding – a last ‘hurrah’ to our former life, before we completely buried ourselves in children.

  Excellent.

  The wedding was fun, but drinking all day wasn’t as fun as I thought it would be. Lexi was with my parents and we missed her terribly. Being without her . . . well, it just didn’t feel right.

  The next day, I felt awful. This was to be expected. I’d started drinking at 11 a.m. and carried on through until 11 p.m. But there was something different about this hangover. And also, something worryingly familiar.

  Like morning sickness.

  I took another pregnancy test, just to be on the safe side, but it still came back negative.

  Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I might be with child. We got pregnant really quickly last time. The first month of trying, actually. Bang! Back of the net.

  The next week, I felt really tired and weird. One night, I gave Lexi cereal for dinner and fell asleep at 8 p.m.

  This was worryingly familiar.

  Surely I couldn’t be pregnant? I’d taken two tests, for goodness’ sake.

  ‘I don’t want to buy yet another £10 pregnancy test,’ I told Demi. ‘That’s money I could spend on breakfast cereal for Lexi’s dinner.’

  ‘Do one more,’ he said. ‘Just in case.’

  I duly bought the cheapest, crappest test in the supermarket – essentially a strip of cardboard in a box and the only test without a security tag on it.

  I weed on the cardboard.

  The cardboard said I was pregnant.

  I phoned Demi in a panic.

  ‘What have I done?’ I shrieked. ‘I drank shit loads of alcohol at your brother’s wedding and we’re PREGNANT. I’ve affected our baby’s health for life.’

  Demi calmly told me to stop being so ridiculous.

  ‘The pregnancy test was negative after you drank all those shots,’ he said. ‘So you couldn’t have done the baby any harm.’

  ‘Yes, but I took the test too soon,’ I said. ‘I must have been pregnant the whole time. My period was five weeks ago.’

  In my panic, I phoned NHS Direct and told them I’d poisoned my unborn child.

  A kindly doctor came on the line. ‘Congratulations!’ he said.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Not congratulations. I drank at least two whole bottles of wine last Saturday, and god knows how many shots.’

  After a short, concerned silence from the doctor, I added, ‘It was a wedding.’

  ‘Oh!’ said the doctor, clearly relieved. ‘And when did you get the positive test result?’

  ‘Today,’ I said. ‘But it was negative a few days ago. Those expensive digital “predictor” tests are bullshit.’

  ‘You’re fine,’ the doctor assured me. ‘The baby doesn’t attach itself to the uterus for a good few weeks. The alcohol couldn’t have affected anything yet. But don’t drink from now on, OK?’

  It was the best scientific explanation I had ever been given for anything.

  I was flooded with relief.

  Thank goodness. My slatternly ways hadn’t affected my unborn child.

  But then another reality hit home.

  Shit, we were pregnant. PREGNANT.

  Later THIS YEAR we would have two children.

  TWO!

  How on earth would we manage?

  We would have a crying newborn AND a toddler running around.

  Holy crap.

  Not only that, but I would be pregnant for nine months WITH A TODDLER. (I don’t mean I’d gestate a toddler, obviously. Excuse that sloppy grammar. No, I mean my pregnancy would exist alongside a tod
dler.)

  I would be tired and throwing up while a little kid said, ‘Mummy, Mummy, Mummy!’ and threw things in my path to trip me up.

  My first pregnancy was no picnic. I know some women love being with child, but I wasn’t one of them.

  ‘It’s OK,’ the midwife assured me. ‘Second pregnancies are much more straightforward.’

  Bullshit.

  Second time around, I got every pregnancy symptom in the book and a few more nobody had heard of. I had twenty-four-hour morning sickness for five months, indigestion, haemorrhoids, anaemia, sciatica, headaches and some weird red rash on my foot, which the doctor had to look up under the ‘rare skin conditions’ section (and still couldn’t find a name for).

  As the pregnancy progressed, my anxiety grew. Partly, I think, it was due to wine deficiency. Since Lexi had stopped breastfeeding, I’d fallen right back into the bad habit of using alcohol to ease my worries. Now I had no such luxury. Only my own anxious brain, and there were a LOT of thoughts in there.

  How will I look after Lexi while breastfeeding a newborn every few hours?

  Will Lexi be jealous?

  Will I be able to work and earn enough money?

  What about morning sickness – will Lexi be upset that I’m too tired to play with her? Possibly scarred for life?

  SHIT! Will Lexi wake up when the baby cries? She’ll be so tired!

  ‘We’ll be fine,’ said Demi. ‘People all over the world have two kids. Some have three or four.’

  This did nothing to reassure me.

  FOUR kids! Oh good god!

  ‘But I’m already not coping,’ I told Demi. ‘The low standards I’ve set myself such as “Don’t feed your kid cereal for dinner” have slipped. I’m sick and only eating oven chips, breakfast cereal and Heinz tomato soup. And if I can’t drink wine, HOW will I stop worrying about all this stuff?’

  Soon, my anxious thoughts reached fever pitch.

  Was I getting enough nutrients? Was I neglecting Lexi by lying around on the sofa, feeling sick and going ‘ARRRG’ with one cool palm on my forehead? Was it OK to give Lexi oven chips for dinner so often?

  From Lexi’s point of view, life was improving. The oven-chip, frozen-pizza and fish-finger ratio now far exceeded the freshly prepared vegetables, and she was getting to watch a LOT of kids’ TV. But no mother wants an oven-ready, TV-heavy life for their toddler.

  I thought I was over this anxiety stuff. We had a kid already. I knew the drill: lots of discomfort, pain, etc. There was no mysterious, unknown future to worry about. But as the pregnancy progressed, my anxiety came flooding back.

  Anxiety II: Revenge of the Anxiety.

  I was in for a whole ocean of it, wave after wave, knocking me over.

  My brain ran riot, imagining danger at every turn, then planning for ways to mediate that danger with obsessive thoughts like: ‘I need to clean the garage door RIGHT NOW because I won’t have time when the new baby comes.’

  Demi was always lovely and supportive, indulging my nonsense with kindness and offers of calming fruit tea. He looked after Lexi whenever he wasn’t working, made all our breakfasts, did all the washing (he’s always done that – he thinks I’m incompetent at it and I’m not about to correct him), got up in the night when Lexi cried, the whole lot.

  He was awesome. I must have driven him mad.

  One of the things I put my obsessive, manic brain to was getting lots of ‘big tasks’ done before the birth. This included house repairs, work projects and a really big one: Lexi definitely needed potty training before the new baby came along.

  Why hadn’t I considered this earlier?

  I immediately googled potty-training tips and purchased the suggested ‘equipment’, which included:

  A star chart

  Two potties (one for upstairs, one for downstairs)

  A travel potty (no point explaining that one, is there? Oh, OK then. It’s for travelling)

  Clip-on ‘little kid’ toilet seats

  A step for each toilet

  I began the process of forcing Lexi to sit on the potty for ten minutes at a time, then administering stars for every tiny drop of urine she did on the shiny plastic.

  (Demi: ‘I helped with this too, just in case anyone thinks I was an absent, deadbeat dad. I came up with the great idea of letting Lexi watch Peppa Pig on the potty. Then Su shouted at me for “cheating”, when in fact I was a free-thinking genius.’)

  To Lexi’s credit, she got the pooing straight away. But the weeing was a different story.

  Potty Training for Control Freaks guaranteed Lexi would be fully continent within two days.

  This did not happen.

  What did happen? A lot of wee all over the floor.

  ‘Do it in summer,’ my mum urged. ‘Then Lexi can run around naked and wee in the garden.’

  ‘But I’ll be really pregnant by then,’ I said. ‘What if we get behind schedule and Lexi isn’t potty-trained by the time the new baby comes? What if we have to potty-train her when we have a newborn?’

  I believe my breathing got rather frantic and Mum may have offered me a paper bag to take deep breaths into.

  Eventually, after a few months of meltdowns and possible emotional scarring, Lexi finally peed in the potty. So I could stop worrying. Right?

  Wrong.

  It turns out anxiety doesn’t work that way. You get one thing solved, then pop! Something else jumps up to fill the void. I had plenty more anxious thoughts in the bank to tide me over.

  The next big topic for anxious consideration was sibling rivalry.

  How would Lexi feel when I was breastfeeding the new baby and couldn’t read her that Meg and Mog book over and over again?

  What about the new baby crying at night – would Lexi miss sleep and get grumpy?

  Would it bother Lexi that all her old clothes, bottles and soft toys were now in the nursery room, being dribbled and defecated on by another human being?

  How would Lexi deal with Demi’s and my lack of patience/reasonableness/understanding when we had a newborn screaming in our ears?

  ‘You’re already tired and grumpy,’ Demi pointed out. ‘Since you’ve been pregnant, you snap at everyone and go to bed at 7 p.m. Lexi’s used to it. We all are.’

  ‘You’re tired and grumpy too,’ I raged. ‘Remember that doorstep incident? When you shouted at that British National Party candidate?’

  ‘I didn’t shout. I politely pointed out that he was an arsehole.’

  But there was truth in Demi’s accusations. Lexi was used to a grumpy, tired mother. Also, pregnancy had given her a good dose of ‘Mummy lies on the sofa and goes “ARRRG”’. But linking that bad behaviour to another little human being – well, of course she’d be jealous, wouldn’t she? I mean, she had two whole parents to herself. Soon she’d have half a parent at best.

  I put these concerns to my dad, who dismissed them with a simple, ‘Oh shut up, love. It’ll be fine.’

  But I was worried. So, so worried.

  I asked friends with two kids how things had been, and mostly they confirmed jealousy issues – some with horrendously violent stories about small children whacking each other with sandcastle buckets.

  I began obsessively researching ways to reduce sibling rivalry.

  One child expert urged that the first meeting between first child and new baby be carefully planned to minimise hostility. Apparently, I must under no circumstances HOLD the new baby when Lexi meets it for the first time. We must put the new baby in a cot or buggy, and present her to Lexi as a ‘gift’.

  I informed Demi of the ‘baby as a gift’ plan.

  ‘When we bring the baby home,’ I informed him, ‘you keep Lexi in her bedroom. Then I’ll sneak the baby into its room, and we’ll bring Lexi in and say “Surprise!” It’s very important Lexi doesn’t see me CARRYING the new baby.’

  ‘Won’t she freak out to see a new baby appear in the room out of nowhere?’ Demi asked. ‘What if she thinks the house is haunted? That the w
eird, grey-faced baby doll has conjured up a malevolent-baby spirit friend?’

  ‘No. Lexi won’t think that. She’ll love the surprise.’

  ‘Right,’ said Demi in a way that suggested tolerance of my control-freaky ways but also a quiet understanding that all of this may not come to pass.

  ‘Otherwise she’ll be jealous,’ I explained. ‘And threatened.’

  ‘Why would she be?’ Demi asked. ‘I was never jealous of my brothers. I just wanted to look after them.’

  ‘But you’re much nicer than I am,’ I said. ‘My sister and I used to throw each other through windows.’

  ‘Were you jealous of your sister?’ he asked.

  ‘Not at all,’ I said. ‘She was my best friend. I mean, we fought but it was good-natured. We had sporting rules like no hitting faces or spitting.’

  ‘Maybe you’re just worrying yourself over nothing,’ said Demi. ‘You do that quite a lot.’

  Cue hormonal pregnant explosion.

  ‘One of us has to plan ahead!’ I ranted. ‘If we had it your way, we’d still be living in that damp flat in Brighton. AND you own twenty different shirts that are all exactly the same. Why do you need so many shirts? WHY? And another thing – why have you put house stuff in the garden shed?’

  ‘What house stuff?’

  ‘CHAIRS! And a box of wine glasses. They’re HOUSE things. Why did you put them in the SHED?’

  The nice thing about being pregnant is that being angry and mental is seen as normal. People just let you get on with it while quietly pitying you and your terrible haemorrhoids and flatulence.

  #26 LIE – YOU SHOULDN’T FLY DURING THE THIRD TRIMESTER

  As the second birth approached, my anxiety showed no signs of abating.

  Demi suggested a holiday – one last trip away before the newborn nightmare hit us like five sack loads of extra washing.

  ‘But they say you shouldn’t fly during the last trimester,’ I said. ‘In case the baby comes early.’

  ‘Our baby won’t come early,’ said Demi. ‘You were really overdue, remember?’

  ‘I WASN’T OVERDUE! THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS OVERDUE! THE DUE DATE WAS FORCED UPON ME BY THE MEDICAL PROFESSION AND I WAS PERFECTLY ON TIME FOR MY BODY.’