I am not going to tell Henry that I have imagined James and myself attending his graduation, at which I would proudly hand him a specially engraved watch we’d bought to mark the occasion. I’m not going to tell him that I sometimes picture him having a lovely girlfriend with long curly hair and freckles who might like to come shopping with me. I would hate for him to internalise these daydreams of mine, for them to steer what he decides to do in any way. I want him to be happy – I want them both to be happy – in fact, more than anything else, I want them to feel that they can tell me stuff without fearing what I’ll think. Perhaps that is something I should tell them. That they can come to me always, whether it’s to tell me that they don’t want to go to university, or that they have done something stupid and need my help, or to tell me that they’re making money in a Magic Mike XXL tribute act or have fallen in love with a Hells Angel called Keith. At what age is it appropriate to tell them that a Keith would be just as welcome at Sunday lunch as a Kirsty? Or is there no need to spell it out? Will it just be a given, because they will be brought up understanding that love is love and that’s all there is to it? I hope so. I might throw the Keith/Kirsty convo into the mix just one time when they are teenagers, to be sure they know it would make no odds.
Thursday 14th
10:06
I’m on my way back home, and something has happened. It’s not related to the train picnic or the null-and-void ticket of another passenger this time, either. In fact, something hasn’t actually happened at all, but I can’t stop thinking about what if said something did happen.
I can’t write it down, though. It would be absolutely bonkers to write it down because then I’d have gone and properly admitted it. So I’m just going to read Heat and find out how to contour my face like Kim K instead.
10:17
It’s no good. Not the contouring, though that’s also no good – I have nowhere near the required amount of make-up and brushes to ‘bake’ my face. Apparently, this is a thing now, but I can’t even bake a cake successfully so I’m not doing anything bakey with my face. No, I mean, it’s no good, I can’t take my mind off the thing I was trying to take my mind off.
I’m broody.
There you have it. I can only assume that this is a trick my body is playing on me now that I’m nearly thirty. I can feel it nagging, ‘Your eggs are at their peak. Fertilise at least one more before the eggy tubes run dry.’ That’s what it is. There can be no other explanation.
11:09
The problem with train journeys is the uninterrupted bloody thinking time. I now can’t stop thinking about having another baby. I should never have allowed myself to have these thoughts. I certainly should never have written them down. Still, we are where we are, so perhaps I should just work through it? The current page of my notebook (which is supposed to be filled with work-related things) has now been taken over by the pros and cons of ‘Baby Number 3’. Even seeing the number ‘3’ after the word ‘baby’ feels so unfamiliar – this was never, ever supposed to be discussed, not ever: we were done! I just screenshotted the page heading and sent it to James, who replied simply, ‘Absolutely not.’
So far, my list looks like this:
Reasons for having another baby
• When I was growing up, several of my friends were one of three or one of four and their family homes were warm and laughter-filled and fun. Chaotic in the best sense. And now, in adulthood, they are tribes, big family units who meet for evening drinks and holidays in villas, and all the banter from childhood bounces between them all. Perhaps I have romanticised this or I simply went to school with people from lovely big families, but I am quite fond of the thought of having a bigger family when the kids are older.
• I also think, though I could be gravely mistaken (or just high on parenting affection after another work trip away), that I am in a much better place to have a baby than I was in 2012 when Henry arrived. I get it now. I know. I know about the endless colicky nights and the high odds that your baby will refuse to sleep anywhere but on your chest, despite you spending a small fortune on sleep aids in the shape of farm animals. I also know that it’s normal to want to punch people who say, ‘It won’t be forever’ in the face but that what they’re saying isn’t wrong: it really isn’t forever.
• I know that feeling down is OK, that nobody cherishes every second (OK, a small minority genuinely appear to, but we don’t hold that against them). I am well versed in all the shit that nobody tells you about, not just about the new baby but about pregnancy (like your bits going puffy pre-birth – seriously, my labia looked like inflatables) and birth (like the fact that not all placentas deliver spontaneously and that people will want to engage in chat with you about the size of the blood clots you have ‘passed’).
• Most importantly of all, I now know that I have never been alone in worrying that I am underperforming. I actually feel a bit sad that I spent so much of the boys’ first years plagued by self-doubt that I was doing everything wrong. Where was the army of Facebook followers and blog readers then? Perhaps I would allow myself to enjoy Baby Number 3 a little more?
Reasons against having another baby
• I am terrible at being pregnant. I basically wished a combined total of eighteen months of my life away because there was no joy in being sick after every evening meal and wetting myself and/or burping up further sick because the growing uterus was constricting every other organ. Just reading that sentence back makes me sound disgusting. I am disgusting when pregnant.
• Jude’s birth is still irreversibly etched in my memory in much the same way that Pennywise the clown’s face was after I watched It at a friend’s sleepover long before I should have been allowed to. The bit when Pennywise entices Georgie down the drain gave me nightmares for weeks, and the recollection of me lying on the floor in a pool of Jude’s waters, refusing to move or indeed push, evokes pretty much the same shudder.
• I coped terribly with having a new baby – twice. Emotionally, I went to pot, and I wonder if there is a real risk that Baby Number 3 would tip me over the edge.
• Our house is ill-equipped for another baby. Jude would have to share with Henry, whose room is small, to make space for a baby in Jude’s room, which is even smaller. We would have to shower three small children (you just can’t fit a bath in without stealing further space from Jude’s box room) and showering two children is hard enough. Despite my pledge at the start of the year, the boys still get washed no more than twice a week.
• We’d need a bigger car.
• It could be twins. Or triplets. Or quadruplets.
• I would have to spread myself too thinly. Neither of my children gets the very best of me as it is, and James doesn’t really get any of me. Three-weekly Sunday fundays would have to be scaled back to twice annually tired fumbles and I’d probably have to buy him a fleshlight. (If you’re about to google ‘fleshlight’, I’ll save you the bother – it’s an artificial vagina for penis insertion. I know.)
• I already take shortcuts with Jude compared to Henry. Our third child would have no hope. There would be no time for anything. There probably wouldn’t even be time for the basics such as weaning, and he or she would still be snacking on mini rice cakes and slurping fruit pouches at eleven.
• Having two healthy and (mostly) happy children is the biggest stroke of fortune I’ve ever been dealt. I almost feel like a third would be us pushing our luck. Why, oh why, would you rock that boat?
The elephant in the room (and something I have been asked many times) is whether or not we would ‘try for a girl’. And do you know something? Despite previously having been very open about my longing for a girl, in all of the above imaginings about Baby Number 3, the new baby has been a boy. Boys are what I know. Perhaps, deep down, I have resigned myself to the fact that any hypothetical further children would be boys because I am a boy-maker. Yet I don’t think gender is even a factor in this decision. I would never judge somebody who had another baby because
they were hoping for a particular sex (you can’t help how you feel, right?) but, knowing the blood, sweat and gallons of tears that go into looking after a baby, I could and would only have another one if what I wanted was another baby. Not a girl, not a boy. A baby. That is something I am certain of.
(Though it could be a girl. Imagine that.)
Monday 18th
Henry Bear is officially off to school in September. All the sobs. Of course, I have known all his life that September 2016 would be his school starting date, just as September 2019 will be Jude’s, but I still had a pang to the heart when I logged into the online system first thing this morning and saw his name sitting alongside the name of the school he will be going to – the one nearest to us, thankfully.
I’m now in the library’s quiet study area, catching up on some work, and the whole school-place debacle has made me feel a bit soppy. Opposite me is a student who appears to be doing maths equations (whatever it is, it’s a foreign language to me, like the blackboard in Good Will Hunting). I can’t stop glancing over at him, not because I have a totally inappropriate attraction to eighteen-year-old maths students (granted, I have been known to ogle boyband members and The Biebs, but these days even I draw the line at anything sub-twenty) but because I’m wondering about his mum. Where she is. How she feels about her baby being away from home (probably) studying for a maths degree. I’m wondering if he was sad to leave home or if he couldn’t wait. I’m wondering if she also had a hurty heart when she had confirmation of his school place.
I now have the urge to hug his mother, who I’ve never met, and tell her she’s done a great job. I am certain of this because he has a kind face and is working hard on his equations. I think I should probably go and get a cup of tea before he notices me looking or somehow realises that I am typing about him and his kind face. Don’t university students look young these days?
Tuesday 19th
15:32
Michelle, my book’s editor, has just phoned with some pretty extraordinary news. The Unmumsy Mum will be the number-one (non-fiction hardback) bestseller in this week’s Sunday Times. In my wildest dreams as a newbie author I never dared to imagine I’d hit the top spot. I’m feeling so proud of the book right now because I know it’s really doing something. I would crack open some champers (well, cava) but we’re all off to have dinner with friends tonight, at their house, so I’ll sneak a glass of wine or three in then. I hope the boys behave themselves and Jude’s nappy doesn’t leak all over their dining chair like last time.
Wednesday 20th
This morning I had a massive attack of guilt after Henry asked me what we were doing today and I replied, ‘Oh, you know, the usual, just pottering around,’ and he looked disappointed. Wednesday is one of two weekdays when it’s just me and the boys, and I don’t do anywhere near the amount of stuff I always promised myself I would ‘cram in’ on those days. So after breakfast I packed us all off in the car and drove to Haldon Forest. Haldon Forest has several walking trails and a sandpit, plus I’ve bought a year’s parking permit so we can escape the house without me having to raid Henry’s piggy bank for parking money again. Seriously, the ‘IOU’ note now totals £17.60.
Our excursion started well. The sun was shining and we made it to the forest with minimal fuss.
But then I attempted to ‘pitch’ us in the sandpit, laying our bags and coats down and unpacking their buckets and spades, my vision being that the boys would sit near to me, playing in the sand for a while. Only it soon became clear that, once more, my agenda did not mirror theirs.
I have been trying to chill out a bit on these day trips, to go with the flow. To not have too firm a plan because at least that way I can’t be disappointed. But Jesus Christ, can’t they just behave normally? Credit where credit’s due, Henry was toeing the line (at this point), digging a massive sand crater, which I had promised I would lie in if he made it big enough. Jude, on the other hand, had been set up with his very own digging apparatus but seemed intent on ruining Henry’s fun from the get-go. For every small pile of sand Henry excavated from his ‘crater’, Jude shovelled the same amount of sand back in – for him it was a game, only it was the opposite of the game Henry was playing. Cue lots of bickering, followed by a physical spade fight which resulted in me shouting warnings such as ‘We do not hit people in the face with spades’ in my Angry Mum voice. Eventually, I gave up on the sandpit idea and dragged them both into the forest. This had always been the plan – it wasn’t as if I’d had a flash of Hansel and Gretel inspiration about abandoning them with nothing but breadcrumbs, though I’ll admit there have been times when this has sounded tempting.
In the depths of the forest, Jude was in his element, roaming free, not strapped to a pushchair or restrained by reins, but Henry just couldn’t seem to find it in himself to enjoy the great woodland adventure and instead declared that he was bored. Boredom swiftly evolved to his legs hurting, his neck hurting, everything hurting, predictably followed by a demand to be carried; something I refrain from doing not because I’m uncaring but because I struggle to carry two and half stone of person on my back while simultaneously preventing one and a half stone of person from tottering on to the cycle path. Besides, Henry’s legs are never ‘a bit too tired’ to whizz around two hundred square yards of soft sodding play for hours on end, are they? Funny, that.
In the end, it took the promise of an ice cream to lure them back to the car park but then Jude dropped his ice cream and I didn’t have another £1.60 to replace it. I asked Henry if he would consider sharing what was left of his. He looked at me, looked back at Jude, and then put the whole bloody thing in his mouth in an act of hateful ice-cream taunting. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I don’t know why I bother.
If the overnight stays and solo train travel earlier in the month saw me peak at a ten out of ten on the broodiness scale, then today I am a four. I think it’s best all round if my eggs – whether they are at their peak or not – stay unfertilised.
Thursday 5th
You know you’re a parent when an unaccompanied trip to the supermarket counts as Me Time. In fact, I’m pretty sure the hour I just spent on my own at Lidl equates to at least one-eighth of a spa day – though I can’t be certain, as, despite having unsubtly hinted to James at least once a month for the last thirteen years that I’d ‘love a spa day’, I’ve never actually been on a proper one. It’s not that I particularly like food shopping (I don’t), but these days it feels like such a luxury to be able to properly focus on one task and successfully execute said task without worrying about an embarrassing scene unfolding (again).
When I got to the last aisle, the one with the booze and the cat food, I realised I had forgotten to pick up some onions. With kids in tow, this sort of realisation can be the tipping point, as you then have to steer an overloaded trolley back to aisle one while ignoring protests of thirst and hunger, at the same time as desperately trying to ‘Shhhh’ whatever inappropriate made-up song they are sharing with elderly shoppers. I usually find myself saying, ‘Come on, you know we don’t sing about poo-poo bums and boobies, sweetheart,’ just to let everyone know that I’m not enjoying their performance either. Today, though, I glided back to aisle one for a bag of onions, even stopping to check if there were any decent offers on snorkels or camping chairs in the Random Aisle.
I think today’s supermarket excursion felt more luxurious than normal because it provided a welcome break from the latest parenting challenge we find ourselves faced with: biting. I always assumed you would have to be going drastically wrong somewhere to breed a child who bites other children. When I was at primary school there was a boy in my class who used to bite and, to be honest, he was generally a bit thuggish and unsavoury, even at the age of five. His mum was thuggish and unsavoury, too (effing and jeffing at the school gates and chain-smoking through yellow fingers). Their whole demeanour more than explained his biting, as far as I was concerned. They were rough. Of course he was a biter.
And now we have bred a biter. Jude bites. He bites his brother when they are fighting over toys. Last week, he somehow managed to get enough biting grip to clamp his teeth down in the middle of Henry’s forehead and this left a purple bruise which we then had to explain to preschool. He’s also bitten another boy at the childminder’s. I apologised, obviously, but I’m never quite sure what I’m apologising for. I once read an article that suggested it is customary to apologise on behalf of your child until they are old enough to apologise for themselves, but I’m hardly apologising on his behalf, am I? It’s not as if he really wants to apologise but can’t find the words. He couldn’t give a shit that he’s left teeth marks on the leg of another infant, he’s just glad he got his toy back. So whenever I’m apologising ‘on his behalf’ I’m basically saying, ‘Sorry my child has been a bit of dick to your child.’
I have no idea what I’m supposed to do about biting. Where’s the manual? He’s not even two yet, and when I tried sitting him on the time-out step he just sat there echoing, ‘Naughty boy!’ while smirking at me. I probably shouldn’t have called him naughty at all. I remember writing an essay about ‘labelling theory’ at school – something about labels becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. It’ll no doubt be my fault, therefore, when in years to come he starts selling crystal meth in the playground. ‘I understand from his file that you called him a “naughty boy” as a toddler, Mrs Turner? It seems he is living up to his label.’
I’ll be fucked if I know what I should be doing. I’m going to have to delve into some parent-forum threads to find out how others have tackled biting. I hate parent forums with a passion but they do house a wealth of information. I only ever browse other people’s conversations on there, I never start one, because I’d no doubt say the wrong thing – it doesn’t appear to be socially acceptable in such circles to say that your child is being a bit of a bellend. Don’t ask me why, I don’t make the rules.
The Unmumsy Mum Diary Page 8