The Unmumsy Mum Diary

by The Unmumsy Mum

  I’m not off hobnobbing with book people or magazine editors, or doing any of that gubbins today. Instead, I am making a seven-hour round trip from Devon to Rickmansworth to meet a woman called Heidi Loughlin, who has absolutely no idea that I am on my way to meet her. I don’t really know where to start with this story. I’ll try to summarise it, and then I’m sure you’ll understand why I’m still banging on about perspective.

  I first became aware of Heidi after she sent me a link to her blog and later tweeted me to tell me that she was going to be on the ITV news. She had been diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of breast cancer after falling pregnant with her third child, and faced the impossible decision of whether to terminate her pregnancy in order to start treatment as soon as possible, or delay her treatment in order to protect the life of her unborn daughter. Adamant that she wanted to give her baby girl the same chance at life as she had given her two boys (who are very similar in age to my two), Heidi continued with the pregnancy and I followed her progress via her blog, keeping everything crossed for her. There was a limit to how long doctors could delay Heidi’s treatment and, in December 2015, baby Ally was delivered twelve weeks early by Caesarean section. She was just 2lb 5oz but was breathing on her own. Her safe arrival was quite simply the best possible news in an otherwise shit situation. A little miracle in their world of unfairness.

  But eight days later Ally died.

  And a devastated Heidi has since been going through gruelling cancer treatment while looking after two children and grieving for her third. It’s one of those stories that makes you say, ‘For God’s sake, give this woman a break!’

  So when I received a phone call from a TV production company, asking if I would be available to surprise Heidi as part of a programme that will be aired later in the year called I’ve Got Something to Tell You, I didn’t need any persuading. I can’t for the life of me fathom how afternoon tea with me would make it on to anybody’s bucket list but, apparently, it is on Heidi’s. She is, by all accounts, a ‘super-fan’ of my blog, which is why I am on the train on my way to surprise her at the show’s filming location, a tearoom in Rickmansworth. I feel all kinds of ridiculous going to meet somebody who is so inspiring, particularly as I blether on about how my kids are ‘doing my bloody head in’ and she has just lost a child. But I am very much looking forward to it, as I’ve now read a sizeable chunk of her blog, Storm in a Tit Cup, and I suspect we will get on famously. She writes about cancer with a seldom-seen frankness (‘CancerLand … like DisneyLand … only more deaths’) and manages to inject humour into something that by rights shouldn’t be funny at all. Even her thoughts on having her boob removed have made me laugh: ‘I’ve never cared about what this shit storm will do to my looks so having wonky or no baps does not bother me at all. Hell, I’d surgically attach a penis to my nose and call myself Nellie the Elephant if it would help save my life.’

  I can’t say I am at all looking forward to being filmed, but if there’s anybody I’m prepared to risk making a twat of myself on camera for, it’s Heidi.

  18:20

  I think it’s highly likely that I made a twat of myself on camera. Not least because it turns out the ‘quick interview’ I had to film was with bloody Amanda Holden! Amanda Holden off the telly, who looks even better in real life than she does on the telly (unfair) and who had a perfect face of make-up, lush hair and a beautifully tailored suit. God, I just looked so bloody disappointing in my H&M maxi dress and mum cardi (one of two I bought in beige solely because it hides my toddler’s biscuit-spit so well). I tried not to sound like a pillock, but I can hear myself now, saying the most cringeworthy of things during my ‘Amanda chat’ (‘Hi, Amanda! I’m Sarah, but I’m perhaps better known online as the Unmumsy Mum!’ Arghhhh). I only hope they edit most of me out before it makes it to telly.

  Heidi’s friend, Gemma, had taken her to the tearoom and initially made out that it was just the two of them before revealing the ‘surprise’ that I was there. She cried when I walked in, then I nearly cried and, do you know what? I get it now. I get why she might like my blog and why I like hers – because, in many ways, we are the same. Our circumstances are not the same, because she has been dealt all the shitty cards in life, but as we chatted over dinky sandwiches, a glass of bubbly and some questionably stale crisps, we howled with laughter, and I was sad when it was time to go. There are very few people in life who can change your outlook on things (long-term, I mean, not just momentarily, when you’re watching something on the news) but I have a strong suspicion that Heidi will irreversibly change mine.

  I have felt the whack of perspective enough times to know that this new-found friendship with Heidi will not stop me moaning about life with my kids. I will remain the first to jump to the defence of parents having a moan because I think a good moan is actually really helpful when you’re a parent and you’re struggling in some way. Heidi, more than anybody else I know, has perspective by the bucketload, yet still has the odd moan about her kids. On her blog she writes: ‘I have been handed a pair of glasses that make me view the world in a different way to this time last year when I was a normal thirty-two-year-old with two young children driving me round the bend. Things have changed since then. The bend-driving is still the same.’

  At some point or another we all need reassurance that we’re not the only one in the struggling-parent boat. It’s massively important to bear in mind the bigger picture (such as how lucky we are compared to some of the stuff going on around us), but it is also understandable, and in my opinion completely forgivable, if you lose sight of that picture because you are existing on very little sleep or are challenged by children who seem to have an allergic reaction to doing anything you ask of them. Moaning isn’t a symptom of ingratitude, not really, it’s just real life. I bloody love my kids but, bugger me, they do my head in, and if afternoon tea with Heidi has taught me anything it’s not that we shouldn’t moan. It’s that life is too short to spend time worrying that moaning somehow makes you a terrible parent.

  Life is far too short, full stop.

  Saturday 25th

  After waking up and wondering just what to do with my little blighters this morning (James is undercoating some cupboards as ‘project house’ rumbles on), I took them both to the library so they could choose some books. Or rather, so Henry could choose some books and Jude could peer through the Young Adult Fiction shelves shouting, ‘Boo! Haha funny!’ at the unimpressed pre-teens on the other side. Perhaps my perception has changed now that I am less stressed and more up to date with work, but they were actually very good, so as a treat we stopped for a drink in the library café. Sitting just across from us was a group of three mums, each with a baby, and after about ten minutes of calm chit-chat about dream feeds and weaning there was suddenly a lot of excited screeching and hugging and I realised that one had just told the other two that she is pregnant with child number two – I had been ear-wigging for some time. There followed a lot of animated chat about finding out the gender, about age gaps and who would have to move rooms – and I found myself staring at them all like a total weirdo, caught up in their excitement.

  Six months ago, I would have observed such a happy scene and secretly thought, Thank God I don’t have to go through all that again. This morning, however, as I watched them all poring over a twelve-week scan picture, I felt something else.

  I felt envious of the mum with the baby news.

  I’m wondering if this envy has its roots in the sense of maternal ease I seemed to cultivate on holiday this month. Perhaps France has made me more mumsy! That’s going to cock up my brand. ‘The artist formerly known as the Unmumsy Mum who now thinks she’s finally achieved her nirvana state of mumsy.’ Christ.

  I know James and I have discussed having a third child and concluded that it doesn’t make sense. In fact, there are a gazillion and one reasons why it doesn’t make sense, but I’m just not sure that I can rule it out. Not yet, anyway.

  Not when my ovaries are st
ill shouting at me in library cafés.

  Tuesday 5th

  By the time Henry was around ten weeks old I had become convinced that whatever parenting tests lay ahead of me, nothing would be as hard as the new-baby bit. The early days just felt so brutal and I kept wondering, Is this it? Where was the magical, peaceful calm that people had told me would descend as I shut out the rest of the world to bond with my baby? I tried not to allow my thoughts to wander back to work, but I couldn’t help it. The truth was, I had preferred the magical, peaceful calm of the office in the evening when most of my colleagues had gone home and I could work through my emails with a cup of tea and a Crunchie. What the hell was wrong with me? Perhaps I just wasn’t built for mummying.

  On paper, I was doing a good enough job – well, Henry was putting on weight, which seemed to be the only major concern whenever I spoke to a health professional. It was like it was the master tick box on all of their checklists: ‘What’s that? He cries all the time and won’t sleep anywhere except your chest and you think he’s broken? I wouldn’t worry, look how beautifully he’s maintaining his line on the seventy-fifth percentile!’ Indeed I was coping with my nutritional obligation as a parent, but I wasn’t exactly bossing it in other areas. I felt stressed and guilty that I wasn’t relishing our special time to bond. Then again, I was exhausted.

  I fell asleep on the toilet once, waking only when my head slumped forward and smacked into the radiator. I woke with my trousers still around my ankles and cried, because my head hurt and because micro-napping on the toilet was undoubtedly a new low. I felt like I was drunk on sleep deprivation. In the evenings I would pace the landing with Henry snuggled into one shoulder, patting his bum because I’d read something about the patting motion being reminiscent of my heartbeat in the womb. It was always a fruitless attempt to get him to sleep. We knew he would only settle in our bed – and that, ultimately, that’s where he would end up – but the health visitor’s face told me that was a crime, so I paced and I paced some more while singing Daniel Powter’s ‘Bad Day’ in a kind of manic state that left James hiding under the pillow, wondering if I was going to kill everyone.

  Things could only get better, right? Having a new baby was the ground zero of parenting pain and we would all rise from the ashes into toddlerhood and beyond. In fact, we didn’t even need to get to toddlerhood, we just needed to get to the stage where Henry could sit up unaided (or with some cushions behind him), chewing those plastic pretend keys because his teeth were coming in. By that stage he’d surely be sleeping for longer and would probably be snacking on some baby rice or those carrot puffs, which would finally keep him satisfied for longer than seventeen minutes. Brand-new babies are just a bit blob-like, aren’t they? I couldn’t wait for the bit when he would turn into a proper little person, as opposed to a delicate creature I was keeping alive with regular feeds, like my Tamagotchi from the nineties.

  It always struck me as odd, therefore, that whenever I declared how grim I was finding the whole newborn experience, other parents would perform the knowing ‘just you wait’ chuckle. I assumed that this was either because they had forgotten how hard the new-baby bit can be or because their baby hadn’t malfunctioned like mine had. And, having now lived through a second newborn adventure, I’m sticking to my guns that baby Henry was indeed a bit faulty (though I regret saying the baby stage was ‘grim’ – that was just the headspace I was in at the time).

  ‘Well, I hate to tell you, it doesn’t get any easier as they get older – the challenges are just different challenges,’ a friend of mine told me over lunch one day.

  ‘Oh right,’ I said, resisting the urge to add, ‘And when was the last time you fell asleep on the toilet?’

  Fast-forward to this morning and all at once I was reminded of what she had said, but from the other side of the table. I had found myself in conversation with another mum at the park. I’ve actually become a dab hand at instigating park chat, as I find it softens the boredom blow of standing with your arms folded, exclaiming, ‘Wow! Amazing, darling, well done!’ on a loop. That’s not to say it isn’t amazing when your child jumps on to or off something – it’s just that it loses its edge after the first fifty times. The mum in question was quite easily ensnared in my mum chatter because she was sitting on a bench feeding a tiny baby, so I plonked myself down next to her as the boys played. I didn’t know if it would be a welcome plonk or not, but I can remember feeling a bit lonely sat feeding my baby while other park-goers tried not to make eye-to-nipple contact, so I took a chance that she might appreciate some company. Half an hour and lots of empathetic discussion about sleep or lack thereof later, she came out with the same thing I had said four years ago:

  ‘To be honest, I’m just looking forward to him being a bit bigger – when he’s older like your two.’ I looked over at my two, flat on their bellies, attempting to squeeze under a hedge (why play on the actual park equipment when you can go for the much thornier under-hedge shimmy?), and bit down hard on my tongue so that ‘Just you wait’ didn’t fly out of my mouth.

  I wanted so badly to tell her that, actually, the energyzapping newborn morphs into an energy-zapping toddler who morphs into an energy-zapping preschooler – and so on. That the worry about him not getting enough milk becomes a worry about him banging his head on the edges of furniture and then a worry over why he isn’t saying as many words as Dylan from playgroup. Later still, you will worry about whether or not he’ll fit in at school, which is almost worse than the other worries, because it ultimately rests on how he interacts when you are not there to guide him and therefore is completely out of your hands. I can’t bear the thought of Henry struggling with anything without me there to help him, but at some stage (school, more than likely) that will happen and he will have to work things out for himself. There is so much future worrying in the pipeline.

  I wanted her to know that having an almost-two-year-old and a four-and-a-bit-year-old is not exactly plain sailing, either. My nights are still interrupted – not for feeds, but for bed-wetting and bad dreams. I might be able to bank a solid seven or eight hours’ sleep (which to her is the absolute dream) but the waking hours in between have peaked to a whole new level of exhaustion that has become the norm. Naps are few and far between and I can’t sit down for a second without refereeing a play-fight or being begged for a snack. Their ability to walk, run, climb – the physical independence I had longed for when they stared vacantly at me from the pram – leaves me permanently paranoid that somebody is going to end up in A&E.

  I never thought that I would look back on the newborn period and think, I didn’t make the most of the opportunities I had when they were stationary.’ It’s true, though – I didn’t. I obsessed over sleep, daily routines, pureeing vegetables, taking the baby out for some fresh air and making sure I provided some intellectual stimulation. All of these things helped me to feel like I had accumulated some good-mum points but, aside from the essential stuff to keep the baby happy (the feeding, changing, nap-routine-encouraging and cuddling), I look back now and conclude that much of it was completely bloody unnecessary. Babies don’t appreciate being wheeled around the Decorative Art collection at the museum or ‘feeding the ducks’ when they can’t yet throw the bread in and in fact just sleep in the pram the entire time while you throw the bread in and snap a picture for Instagram with the caption ‘First time feeding the ducks!’

  If I’d spent less time trying to increase my score on the mythical Good Mum Chart, I could have cracked the Jumperoo out a bit sooner and started watching Breaking Bad from the beginning. I can remember feeling irked that I had to carry the bouncer or play mat around the house with me as I attempted to vacuum up three months’ worth of floor fuzz, but I could, at least, keep an eye on my infant at that stage. These days, vacuuming while Henry plays in his bedroom results in me killing the power every second vacuum-swish to shout, ‘Are you all right in there? I’ll just be a minute! Don’t put the Lego anywhere near your mouth!’ There is no lea
ving my child in one place while I crack on with some chores. Twenty seconds of dishwasher-loading is enough time for Jude to pull out all the DVDs from the cupboard and try to eat a cactus.

  But I didn’t say any of these things to my new park friend because it wasn’t what she needed to hear. Besides, in many ways, it really does get easier. Unless you are particularly unlucky, the bi-hourly feeding tails off, and falling asleep on the toilet, and all the other stuff that left you wondering if you were still human becomes a memory.

  I still maintain it’s easier to deal with whatever shit is thrown your way when you’ve had some sleep but it turns out my friend was right when she said the challenges don’t stop, they just become different challenges. I think you have to learn this for yourself, though, and until you do any forewarning falls on deaf ears.

  Maybe it’s better that way.

  Wednesday 6th

  Two of my friends are expecting babies any day now. In fact, one is now more than a week overdue and it has reminded me how exasperated and impatient I felt when Jude hadn’t arrived by his due date. Rationally, I think heavily pregnant women are all too aware that foetuses are incapable of reading the calendar and that the ‘due date’ is, at best, a good guess. It’s not as if the day arrives, an alarm goes off and the baby immediately packs up its things (i.e. the placenta, an amniotic sleeping bag) and comes on out. It’s just that when you are given a specific date, and when you’ve had that date in your mind for three-quarters of a year, it can leave you feeling a bit disappointed when the day comes and goes and you are still waddling around like a hippopotamus with water retention. I imagine it’s equally annoying when you’ve planned two weeks of putting your feet up and your waters break on the train home from your last day of work, as per a message I received on Twitter this week.