Confessions of a First-Time Mum

by Poppy Dolan

  ‘I just don’t know… I remember it all, somewhere deep down. And I know it all makes sense. But that Stevie from the office – she feels like a distant memory. I don’t know if I can do what she does. I can’t talk the way she used to talk: making it up on the spot, faking confidence until she found it. In that way she’s just like First-Time Mum – able to say all the things I’m not.’ I break a tortilla into little crumby pieces on the table.

  Sarah shifts Cherry around on her lap. She may be losing sensation in her thighs at this rate.

  ‘You can lay her down on her play mat, if she’s getting a bit weighty. It’s that shiny bit of Cath Kidston fabric.’

  Sarah takes Cherry over and lays her down, fat legs kicking. As she stands back up, her eyebrows knit together. ‘Do you know, when you talk about the “old” Stevie and First-Time Mum, you talk about them like they’re separate people. You talk about them like they aren’t you. But they are. It is your voice, Steve. It was back when you rescued that Myers’ new homes cock-up. It’s there in all the blog posts that people have loved and shared and felt… connected to. Those were you, you great numpty. Did you think the words just fell out of the sky and onto your keyboard?’

  I bite down a wonky smile. ‘Um, yes. At times. God, Myers Development. I haven’t thought about them in years.’

  Sarah gets up to open the second bottle of fizz, fishing it out of the fridge. ‘We ran that huge campaign all about their brand-spanking-new housing development in Epping for weeks: actual affordable London living was the whole line. Quality houses to last your family a lifetime. And then just before the big launch day, with the press visiting in forty-eight hours, their shoddy plumbing floods the communal gardens smack-bang in the middle of twenty houses. And you…’

  She swivels to face me, rotating her hand in the air to get me to fill in the rest.

  ‘…I told the journos it was the beginning of a wilderness pond, to bring back local wildlife and get the kids reconnecting to nature. God, that was cheesy.’

  ‘Cheesy?! It was bloody genius! You got that environmental team in double-quick to advise, and you made Myers promise to actually follow through. You saved them loads of house sales and the local kids got somewhere to watch frog spawn and beetles and all that gross stuff. That came out of your head, lady. No amount of hormones, no rough patch, is ever going to change that in you. Listen, I only had time to read a few of your posts before I came today and it makes my boobs feel strange to read so much about cracked nipples when I haven’t done any of that stuff yet, but that’s you. That’s your voice. First-Time Mum is you. So let’s spitball this, two of Magda’s finest pupils: what’s your next step, Steve? Who’s telling the last page of this story?’

  There’re a few wet grunts from the floor, and then silence. That worrying reflux-baby silence. I grab the kitchen roll.

  But instead of seeing a few white puddles and a cross Cherry, I find her blinking at herself in the glass of the kitchen door, her hands pushing her arms and shoulders up, her portly tum meaning she is so far off the floor that her toes barely graze it.

  She rolled over!

  ‘You did it! Oh, my clever chicken, you did it!’ I scoop her up into my arms and she just keeps on calmly blinking, as if to say, Well, yes, it was a piece of cake, actually. Now, can I pull your earrings out of your ears, please?

  ‘What did she do?!’ Sarah rushes over.

  I try to blink back the soppy tears in my eyes and pull myself together a bit. ‘She rolled over. For the very first time. Roly-poly baby!’ I start to sing and jig about with Cherry, and Sarah quickly joins in. Within five minutes we have a very short conga line making a circuit of the kitchen, and on into the living room: ‘Roly-poly baby, roly-poly baby!’

  All the shame and guilt and worry is falling off me with every bouncy step I take and Cherry swings her hands together, only missing a clap by three inches or so. That will be the next milestone! And before I know it, she’ll be collecting her PhD!

  I can’t stop the happy weep that now takes over – my clever girl is growing up.

  * * *

  Three days after Sarah’s visit and things seem to have died down on the online front. Without any comment or activity from me, the trolls have nothing to feast on and the online papers have moved on, too. For now. I’m sure they’ve still got half a beady eye on my page, to make sure I don’t say anything – gasp – honest about motherhood ever again.

  I still can’t get over how miraculous it is that Cherry can now just roll herself over whenever she pleases. Fine, it might be the most basic of gross motor skills but suddenly I start imagining her taking her first steps, skipping along a playground, doing cartwheels… It’s just so mind-bending that something that started out as two microscopic cells can grow and develop to such a magical extent that one day you’re eating M&S nibbles and suddenly they flip themselves over without any help from you.

  Sarah left me with a big page of scrawled ideas that we pooled, over more M&S tortillas and dolmas and falafel, and she braved the front door for me. No one was there – no fag butts discarded to show they had been there recently, either.

  Seeing as it had been Father’s Day that Sunday, I sent Ted another email, with an attached photo of Cherry happily covered in carrot purée, from chins to forehead.

  To: ted.cameron@syncedsolutions.co.uk

  From: Stevie

  Subject: Happy Father’s Day!

  She rolled over! Can you believe it?! This gorgeous lump is missing her dad. So am I. Can we talk?

  S x

  And I got a response the next morning, but not exactly the one I’d hoped for.

  To: Stevie

  From: Ted

  Re: Happy Father’s Day

  Thanks for the pic. Clever girl! Love her and miss her so much.

  Not ready to talk just yet. Soon.

  T

  At least I knew he was OK. And if he was still using his work email, he wasn’t fired. I wish he’d said he was missing me, too, though. I wish there was a kiss at the end of the email. A ray of light. Some hope. Maybe I don’t deserve it, but it would help me push through this hard bit alone before he’s back in the flesh.

  Spending that time with Sarah had been like an incredible shot of one of those cleansing wheatgrass juices: not something that went down easily at first but after it had, I was pumped up, clear-headed and full of energy. I really had been seeing First-Time Mum as her own person, rather than my creation. I hadn’t even been giving myself credit for that. And so one media outlet had put their spin on what I do – was I going to let them write my story for me? A former PR raised by the elegant hand of Magda?! No. I still had something to say, even if some familiar old wobbles keep niggling away at me.

  The blog is no longer a place for me to hear my own voice echoing back to me, just to prove I still exist, like a dark cave where I could only bother the bats. Now it’s a Sydney Opera House, a Wembley Arena where I’m on stage amongst thousands of spectators. And that doesn’t feel all that relaxing. But I can’t just stand under the burning lights and say nothing.

  Sarah and I decided on my plan, just for the next week. ‘No need to think beyond that,’ she said calmly, underlining ‘Stevie’s One-Week Plan’ with a wiggly line. ‘Crack this week. Then you can think about the next.’ They were wise words we used to reassure any freaked-out client, and they were sensible ones. So I put out a statement, thanking my supporters and asking for a bit of space. And then I stopped logging on, and I’m not going to for the rest of the week. A good long while in First-Time Mum land. As proud as I am of First-Time Mum, as much as she’s woken me up to the fact I do still have a brain and there are other hopeless parents like me out there, just doing their best to keep afloat and keep a smile on their chops, she’s not more important than working out what’s best for Cherry, Ted and me. That’s what this week is all about. Some day-to-day happiness, in tiny ways, before I tackle, ‘Where is my life going? What’s left of my career?’ kind of stuff. Grai
ns of sand before standing stones. That’s the way forward.

  I took Cherry to the park on Monday. There were a few knowing stares from other playground mums, but no one approached me. I decided just to look at my girl. Gentle pushes in the swing, back and forth, back and forth. Now June is fully fledged it was warm enough to come out in summery clothes and let my baby feel the breeze on her toes as she swung in a slow rhythm. Her gurgles were heaven. If life was just this and nothing more, for the rest of time, it would be more than enough.

  We had a bath together. We played 700 games of peekaboo. I made her an industrial quantity of mashed-up swede for the freezer. I found out she doesn’t really like swede. I savoured all these tiny little moments of happiness and calm and reminded myself that I was damn lucky to have this kid. Cherry’s amazing run of sleep continued: sure, she was still giving me hell in fighting the need to sleep at bedtime but, once down, she would go through till 3am, wake up for another feed then sleep again until 6am. Not my dream sleep pattern as a none-too-springy-chicken but definitely an improvement. I even dared stay up till 10.30pm on Tuesday night. Rock and roll!

  And tonight I have the mental energy to dig out an old cuttings file. It started as a sort of ironic thing I did in my twenties, starting to place my first few pieces in newspapers, but really under the guise of being ironic, I just wanted tangible proof of what my days were spent doing. It’s important when you basically rotate between your phone, the post bag and the photocopier as a PR. Your stock in trade is how you talk to people, how you make yourself and your client really memorable. But sometimes that can feel a bit insubstantial and you want to see proof of where all your smooth talking goes. Reminiscing about some of the hairier, last-minute saves of our work life with Sarah had made me nostalgic for those ripped-out pages of glossy magazine paper Sellotaped into a craft book. Proof, actual proof, of my fast-talking, spin-cycle skills. Of what my brain used to do without that much conscious effort.

  There is a box in the home office that contains things I couldn’t bear to part with in the move from London – just too unbelievably important – but that aren’t all that important enough to have been unpacked over the year we’ve lived here. And my purple cuttings book is right on top. I sit crossed-legged on the floor and try not to pay attention to the lingering smell of Ted’s aftershave in here. Hugo Boss. It makes me think of our early dates in dark bars.

  I’m not sure many people would feel a tingle of pride looking at a picture of a cow dressed in a satin sash and wearing a crown of flowers, but the Psychologies article on Miss Heifer UK was the last thing I stuck in, not long before going on leave, and it still makes me smile. We were working with the Dairy Council who were getting a bit nervously sweaty under the collars of their farming overalls about what the huge surge in veganism was doing to their business. So we set up a beauty pageant weird enough to be worthy of Louise Theroux – organic farmers brought their finest, rarest breeds to compete for who had the best-tasting milk, who had the strongest muscle definition from their free-range lifestyle, and who was just (we had to play the kitsch card) the cutest cow. The oddities made it a great filler piece for glossies and local newspapers but we also managed to slip in the stats about how the farmers were suffering economically, risking the end of a Great British tradition, and how beneficial just the right amount of dairy can be in your diet. Plus, I fell in love with one long-lashed beauty called Maureen. So I made sure she got Miss Congeniality.

  ‘We told the story,’ I whisper to myself, remembering how Sarah, some colleagues and I fleshed the whole madcap idea out in a fancy gelato place near the office, surging ahead on the dairy power of a really good chocolate and hazelnut ice cream. We had a brilliant idea and we made it happen. It was risky, it was bold, it was creative. I can do those things. I have and I can.

  How did I leave myself so far behind for so long? The woman who dreamt up a cow beauty pageant was somehow the same one sobbing on the floor of a boarding school toilet. She went from proudly putting her ideas out into the ether to blogging in a furtive darkness, ashamed of how she really felt and definitely too scared to admit it to anyone.

  Was it at the delivery suite? Did I push and pant and scream so hard that some core part of Stevie took fright and legged it down the stairwell before I had time to realise? Or was all my vim and vigour slowly drained from me over the countless hours of feeding and soothing and singing during Cherry’s little lifespan? Can there be all that much left for yourself when you give so much to keep another person happy and healthy?

  As I place the cuttings book back on top of the Important Junk box, something is dislodged and slides out onto the carpet. A glossy white photo book, from our wedding. I pick it up and place it in my lap. We have a formal leather-bound affair, somewhere safely tucked away, but this is one that a group of our friends got together and made from all their phone pics of that day, and it’s by far my favourite version of events.

  Here I am crossing my eyes as the grumpy hairdresser sticks the forty-third bobby pin into my up-do and also my scalp. I mean, I did warn her my hair is crazy fine and slippy. She ended up using so much hairspray that even with the pins removed the next morning, the do held its own, like an organic motorcycle helmet, at breakfast.

  Here is Ted and his best man, Phil, conferring in the corner before the ceremony starts. They have no idea they’ve been snapped, and it looks like some deep and meaningful chat about commitment and love and responsibility. In actuality, Ted told me, the first time we leafed through this book with tears in our eyes, Phil was running past Ted the fact that he might include in his speech the story about That Time in Bristol when they were students and tried to barter services in a strip club. And Ted was telling him Absolutely Not.

  And here we are, clumsily dancing in a black and white snap, Ted trying to dip me back and me squeezing my eyes shut in half-fear, half-delight, a huge smile filling my face and possibly dislodging all my lipstick. I remember that moment being just like the schmaltz from romantic movies – everyone faded away. I knew there was a ring of all our nearest and dearest watching, cooing, filming the moment, but for the length of ‘A Million Love Songs’ they were just wallpaper. It was Ted and me. It was us.

  How did I come so far from that moment? I promised on that day to always love and care for Ted, my best friend, my challenger and protector, and as the vows slipped easily from my lips they seemed so obvious as to be a bit laughable. Of course I was going to worship this guy for ever – he was my world! Plus, he was a total fox! How could I envision doing anything but?! It was a no-brainer. Simple.

  And maybe because it felt so simple was why it was so easy to lose sight of. I’m not saying he hasn’t had his part to play in things going pretty wrong recently, and it’s definitely not my job to be ready for him in heels and a pinny when he gets in from work, steak and kidney pie cooling on the windowsill, but why didn’t I talk to him about my blogger side? My best friend, my challenger and protector. Why didn’t I let him in? That is definitely on me, just me. If I’d been honest about how I was really feeling he might never have suggested the Hong Kong thing at all. He might have known what was in my heart if I hadn’t been hiding it so deep down.

  Tears are falling on the glossy white cardboard cover of the photo book and I wipe them away quickly with the hem of my PJs. The photo that our mates chose for the front cover, a small little square of an image but pretty powerful nonetheless, is us at the cake cutting. Ted must have been preparing for the day by watching one too many US reality TV shows about weddings, because just as soon as we’d made the ceremonial cut into the top layer of our gigantic lemon drizzle cake, he dabbed a finger into the icing on the top layer and then playfully wiped it onto the end of my nose. Someone captured the exact moment that my eyes widened in shock and laughter and I turned to him, the knife suddenly looking very threatening in my hands, my lips pursed in mock-anger.

  That was the Stevie he married. Ballsy, in the moment, happy to laugh at herself but also hap
py to give as good as she got. The Stevie who put cows in pageants. The Stevie who could walk into any room and be on first-name terms with complete strangers within ten minutes.

  But the Stevie who left the hospital with a filled baby seat and a whole lot of stitches was nowhere near that woman. She was someone else. And if I admitted that to Ted, would he still want the new Stevie? She wasn’t exactly a bundle of laughs – neurotic, zombie-tired, a virtual hermit who at times didn’t even have anything interesting to say about the weather. I so wanted to be the old me again, but I didn’t quite know how to get back to her. I had no map. I had no petrol in the tank. I had no seat belt to hold everything together.

  Through First-Time Mum, I had my first road trip back towards Happiness. I was getting there. But it wasn’t so much a well-planned journey as a hairy hitchhike.

  My fingers start to tingle. This would make such a great blog post – this breakthrough in how I’m feeling. It’s honest, it’s something maybe someone else out there is struggling with. It could really reach people.

  I know who I have to write it for.

  Chapter 18

  It’s funny, Sarah has never met Nelle and yet they are totally in sync as great, great mates of mine. Within about twenty minutes of each other, they have messaged me this morning saying, ‘Are you really sure you’re OK with this?’ And I’ve reassured them that, yes, I am. I really am.

  Three days on, and still no word from Ted. Technically, he’s due back in two days and then I hope he will be ready to talk, to hear me out. But just in case he isn’t, I’m going to try another tack. One that can’t be ignored. Because I really owe it to him to be honest, and to set the record straight for both of us. Thousands of people out there have the wrong idea about us and maybe that shouldn’t matter but, in reality, it does.

  Apparently the keepsake craft day went really well and turned in not a bad profit for Nelle’s business – she’s thinking of another one ahead of the last day of the summer term for kids to make things for their teachers. She did sheepishly admit that lots of people were none-too-subtly asking about me and was it true that she knew me, all that bumpf, but the PR Stevie kicked in and I replied that there’s no such thing as bad publicity. And I really meant it. If my major gaffes can help boost Nelle’s customer base, then that’s something good to come out of all this mess. That’s something to focus on.