The Unmumsy Mum

by The Unmumsy Mum

  Anyway, my Page-3 boobs were short-lived and, at present, I’m quietly confident I could fit my tiny, empty sacks into the 28AA trainer bra from my pre-pubescent teenage years. ‘More than a handful’s a waste,’ apparently, which is just as well – you’d fit both of mine in one hand.

  I’m not overly bothered, actually. No real issues about having tiny man pecs. Though I really do need to go and get myself measured and buy myself some new bras (is Tammy Girl still around?), because you could, quite honestly, house small family pets in the vacant spaces in my bra cups.

  So long, ample C-cup breasts, you served me well.

  I Can’t Hold It

  My wee, I mean. I used to pride myself on my ability to ‘hold it in’. On those long motorway journeys in heaving holiday traffic I would say, ‘Don’t worry about stopping yet, let’s at least get on the M4.’ The ‘Next services 30 miles’ sign would have been plenty of notice. I may even have continued to sip water as we approached the stop, safe in the knowledge that bladder relief was imminent. One time, I travelled for eight hours in the car without the urge for a wee and I never needed a wee during the night. I was pretty hard core at bladder control.

  I do slightly mourn those days.

  I was okay(ish) after having Henry, but since having Jude it’s safe to say the old pelvic floor has been challenged. I think said floor works at around 50 per cent capacity, and there are days I wonder if it’s even still there at all. I was lazy at doing my pelvic-floor exercises: ‘Do them for half an hour while watching Corrie,’ somebody told me once, and I did try, but I was forever distracted (pelvic floor . . . pelvic floor . . . ‘Oh, I don’t like Gail’s shirt, do you?’).

  I should have exercised harder. If you’re reading this and you’re pregnant, do some now. The challenge is to do them without making a nonchalantly casual face like when you’re peeing in the sea (or, you know, how I imagine one might look if one were peeing in the sea …). Just take it from me, the shit they scare you with about bladder weakness is real and, nowadays, when I need to go, I need to go and, while there’s no requirement for Tena Lady yet, every so often, when I don’t get to the loo quick sharp, a little bit comes out. Sometimes, that happens when I race Henry to the park. Or run up the stairs with any kind of bounce. PMSL is a genuine threat.

  Things Down There

  Pelvic-floor failings aside, things down below are all right, but they’re not the same. Come on, they’re just not. You hear horror stories about third-degree tears and stitches and prolapses (genuinely, the latter makes me feel quite faint) so, once again, I feel I have been let off easy, but we all have a fanny tale to tell and I’m no exception.

  ‘It’s so much better to have stitches, it’s a lot tidier,’ somebody once remarked. Tidier it may be, but I’ll be honest with you, whoever stitched me up the first time was aiming less for ‘as it was before’ and more ‘virgin bride’. You probably don’t need to know this. Do you want to know this? Oh, sod it, I’m just sharing that this can happen because I, for one, certainly never expected to have a tightness problem post-baby (it was later confirmed said seamstress had indeed got a bit needle-and-thread happy). I had no stitches after Jude, and I’m not sure if that was the right decision. I can remember the midwife commenting that I could ‘use a few stitches’, but I think we all got a bit distracted by that attention-seeking placenta and forgot.

  So now I’m left with something that loosely resembles the original, if you get my drift. I’d rate it seven out of ten. Much like the shrunken boobs, it is what it is.

  Stretch Marks

  I was quietly relieved when I didn’t get any stretch marks with Henry. After succumbing to advertising campaigns about stretch-mark prevention I had Bio-Oiled myself up religiously throughout the pregnancy. Second time around, I didn’t have the time, the inclination, or the toiletries budget to oil up my boobs and bump so I reckon I half-heartedly massaged in some baby oil, once or twice at best. Maybe I’m a walking controlled experiment for Bio-Oil usage as, sure enough, stretch marks arrived at the very end of Pregnancy Two, but I strongly suspect it was less my lack of massage and more Jude’s one-week extra stay in the utero hotel (and subsequent extra pound of weight) that prompted those purple, thread-like fuckers to show up. Mostly on my hips and inner thighs. My thighs! Why my thighs grew so much in pregnancy I’ll never know but they did, and those now-silvery inner-thigh squiggles are the most visible pregnancy legacies I have (other than the children, obviously).

  I have seen some wonderful social-media campaigns all about empowering women to feel confident about their ‘Mummy Bodies’, and I think these are really important. They fly in the face of the ‘Beach Body Ready’ advertising campaign and make me want to high-five everybody involved. But I never feel quite empowered enough to share those ‘I’m a goddamn mummy tiger who earned her stripes!’-type stretch-mark pictures on Facebook because, at the end of the day, if we’re cutting out the bullshit, I’d quite honestly prefer to not be stripy.

  Overall Wellness

  I was at least partially prepared for most of the aforementioned body quirks. No major surprises, except the genuine risk of wetting myself on a bouncy castle, which I thought was an urban legend.

  The thing I probably underestimated most of all was the impact that having kids would have on my overall health. I’m not talking about my mental health (which undoubtedly suffered in the earliest months) but about feeling a bit ropey physically.

  A bit ropey all of the time.

  If I counted the days in each of my baby’s first years when I wasn’t feeling 100 per cent, I would get to at least 364. It always amazes me how little recovery time you get as a new mum, and I’m sure that plays a part. Whichever way the baby comes out – C-section, forceps, in the giant bloody bath – I’m sure that days later you still feel like you have been involved in a major traffic accident with an Eddie Stobart lorry.

  And yet you just get on with it, even though you’ve been thrown in at the deep end with nothing but a Bounty pack. Months later, after an average of 3.2 hours’ sleep a night, I think it all catches up with you and comes out as colds and sore throats. Nobody warned me about the not-feeling-100%-feeling-more-like-60%-at-all-times-except-when-you’ve-had-a-gin-and-tonic effect of having children.

  In fact, even if they had warned me, I would have just thought, ‘Nah, not me! I’ll be different.’

  So maybe that was for the best. Though I do wish I’d taken the mid-Corrie pelvic-floor exercising seriously.

  * * *

  ‘I took motherhood so seriously in the early years and as a result had a very unhappy time of it. I’ve since discovered that laughter is the best medicine.’

  Alex, Dorking

  * * *

  Nights Out: The Baby Years

  Ah, the GBNO (Great British Night Out). An institution of hair straightening and Lambrini swigging, followed by pubs, a club, a greasy kebab and the promise of doing bugger all the next day apart from drinking Coke and eating salt-and-vinegar crisps in bed.

  It’s way too depressing to conclude that this all has to change when we become parents, but it’s impossible to deny that an evening out is much rarer these days. When the opportunity does present itself, the GBMNO (Great British Mum Night Out) is slightly different from the consequence-free, alcohol-inhaling carnage of yesteryear.

  Back in the day, I used to spend the best part of a day getting ready for a night out. On occasion, if I had a proper event to go to, like a party or a wedding, preparations started the day before. This prep might have included preening activities such as nail painting, exfoliation or fake-tan application. Sometimes, on a Saturday, it might even have involved a late-afternoon nap followed by a long bath and some bacon sarnies to line my stomach.

  During the glory days (c. 2003–2011), a big night out with the girls used to be just as much about the getting ready (and getting hammered via the dangerously misleading strength of homemade cocktails) as it was about the time spent actually out. Once we had a
ll piled into one of our bedrooms, the drinks would flow, the hair straighteners and perfume would be out in force and Kiss FM or Huge Hits 2005 would provide the soundtrack to our leisurely make-up application. We’d discuss texts from boys and swap beautifying tips – there were no YouTube contouring tutorials back then, you basically just shovelled on bronzer and teamed it with the lip gloss you’d bought from Superdrug earlier that day. I can remember occasions when I got 100 per cent ready and then at the last minute decided to change into something else and/or redo my hair. Just for fun.

  Because I could.

  Right now, this seems ludicrous. I almost want to smack the pre-parent me in the face: a face fresh from sleep, a face which said, ‘I just can’t decide which skimpyfn1 outfit to wear, but no dramas because whichever one I don’t choose can be road-tested next week when I do this all over again!’

  Fast-forward to nowadays, and there is no substantial prep. No afternoon nap (pah!). No hot soak in the bath. No trip to Superdrug to buy a new lip gloss. No face mask. No hair mask (yes, I used to do these). No walking around in a post-fake-tan starfish, attempting to avoid the orange armpit line of doom. Nowadays, I rush a shower as Henry shouts, ‘Mummy? Mummy? Can I have a biscuit? Can you put Scooby-Doo on? Luke Skywalker’s trousers have fallen off! Mummy. Mummy? Mummy!’ from the living room while Jude pushes against the shower door and tries to grab my ankles.

  I haven’t exfoliated in years (I’m probably carrying around a load of dead skin and would be half a stone lighter if I set to work with some of those shower mitts), and my last attempt at fake-tan application was cut short by the urgency of Henry’s daily poo. I ended up with a ‘tan’ that started at my collarbone and finished at my knees.

  ‘Making an effort’ on a standard day involves throwing on a jazzy scarf over my trusty jeans-and-jumper combo and straightening the front third of my hair, which I do in thirty seconds flat and with a baby hanging off one leg. Those are the days I am winning. Other days, I wipe vomit-crust from my leggings with a baby wipe and later return from the chemist to find I left the house with toothpaste on my chin or Weetos in my teeth. (I know they are a children’s cereal, and an unhealthy one at that. I don’t want to hear it.)

  So what does become of the Badly Tanned Me on the rare occasions I am invited out somewhere for the evening? Invited out on the promise of conversing with grown-up people, the promise of drinking wine, the promise of dancing around an actual proper handbag like a clutch (a clutch!) and not a pram bag filled to the brim with bum-changing paraphernalia?

  For starters, getting out of the house is Mission Impossible. After tackling the bedtime pandemonium (and strategically skipping every other page of The Gruffalo’s Child because I’m already half an hour behind the getting-my-arse-out-of-the-door target time), I have to find something to wear. On my first evening out after Jude was born (a proper social outing, I mean, not nipping to Matalan to look at cot bedding) I made the mistake of trying on potential outfits at the last minute.

  Bloody hell.

  Even if you think you’re doing quite well post-baby, nothing screams ‘Wobbly!’ quite like squeezing your slightly engorged breasts and their unattractive nursing-bra container into a going-out dress from days gone by. On the evening in question, this situation was made all the more problematic because young Jude (around five months at the time) was still sleeping in our bedroom and I therefore had to rummage around quietly in the dark for potential going-out clobber.

  So I didn’t feel prepped or glam but, after very nearly throwing an ‘I Look like a Sack of Shit I’m Not Going’ hissy fit, I decided that, ultimately, it didn’t matter. What did matter was that I was within touching distance of letting my hair down and spending an evening not watching an ITV drama starring Suranne Jones (though, credit where credit’s due, she is great at dramas). I decided to throw on something resembling a dressy top and some skinny(ish) jeans freshly Febrezed from an earlier wear in the week. I wouldn’t let my high spirits about escaping the house be dampened by a slightly uninspiring outfit. I dug out some jewellery, located a pair of heels in the downstairs ‘messy cupboard’, packed a lip gloss (probably one I’d purchased from Superdrug in 2005) and, one hour later, I was in a bar, listening to actual music not sung by Justin Fletcher, drinking gin and chatting with friends. I was out.

  I have subsequently managed a few nights out with more successful outfit planning – this has become easier as the babies have grown bigger. I should tell you, though, that a jumpsuit is not a good outfit choice if the post-baby-bearing you needs a wee all the time. I spent half of one night out practically getting naked to go to the loo. What was I thinking? Usually, I’m just grateful to be wearing something that isn’t covered in Sudocrem or sour milk and chatting about something normal, you know, like the fact that music has become ‘just noise’ and that you need a second mortgage to afford a cocktail.

  These days, a ‘night out’ is just that. It is a well-deserved night out of the house. A well-deserved night away from the feeding and the sterilising and the simultaneous watching of the telly and Facebook refreshing. As long as my outfit is sick-free and I have some make-up in my bag, I will be winning as soon as I leave the house …

  … and losing at 5.15 a.m., when the euphoria of having escaped the daily grind and downing some Prosecco with people much cooler than me has well and truly worn off. When, after four hours’ sleep, I wake up with that fuzzy-mouthed, heavy-headed nausea to a declaration from my toddler that he needs a poo and I realise that there will be no salt-and-vinegar crisps and Coke in bed because I’ve agreed to go to a soft-play party and supervise the Passing of the Bloody Parcel.

  More than anything else, the worst bit about nights out when you are the owners of small people is the consequence of your short-lived freedom the next day.

  The show must go on.

  If only the night-out freedom lasted until brunch, eh?

  fn1 In the glory days, I had no regard for the ‘legs or cleavage’ rule so it was, in fact, very often, all out. With that in mind, I’m retracting the smack in the face and high-fiving the pre-parent me instead. The pre-parent me was badass. I love her and miss her every day.

  Soft-play Hellholes

  Soft play is love/hate for parents. Sometimes both at the same time. After my initial pained expression at the first-ever mention of a ‘soft-play date’ (Somebody make it stop!), I’ve grown quite fond of these places. And that is saying something. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, picture a huge room, usually windowless and on an industrial estate, filled with floor-to-ceiling squashy play equipment and slides. Usually named something like Jungle Juniors or the Krazy Kidzone (yes, that’s crazy with a K; absolutely scandalous), they are a hotspot for parents to meet up and let those Krazy Kidz run riot. Why? you may be asking. Just why? Well, soft-play establishments may sound like Dante’s Inferno, but they go hand in hand with the promise of catching up with friends and banking enough physical activity to safeguard a toddler nap in time for Murder She Wrote. It is also a change of scene – a squishy, stinky and grotesquely noisy scene but, sometimes, I’ll take that. It’s something to do that isn’t another afternoon in the bloody living room.

  Nevertheless, you must be mentally prepared for the experience. Shit is about to get real. Psych yourself up like you are going into battle. Here’s what you can expect from your soft-play adventure …

  Upon entering the building, your senses will be overloaded. The sights, the sounds, the smells. Kids will be charging around like monkeys on speed. You will initially feel like you are drowning in a sea of screaming Hello Kitty tights and snotty noses, but after half an hour your eyes and ears will become quite accustomed to this annoying orchestra.

  The whingeing and screams of ‘joy’ merge into a steady background hum, interjected only with panicked shouts of ‘Do you need a wee?’ and your own ‘If you can’t play nicely, we’ll go home!’ (This threat is never executed because you have still not asked your friend about that text
from the fit bloke at work, or drunk your now-tepid coffee, so, despite your children having no interest in each other, they will enjoy this play date if it kills you.)

  Your socks will be wet. Mostly, this will be from Robinsons Fruit Shoot spillage, but you should know that at other times your socks will be soggy because you have stepped in piss. Or vomit. I was first on the scene at a Category One Soft-play Emergency once, when a newly ‘potty-trained’ toddler shat on the slide. This could happen. Be strong.

  Trips to soft-play centres will remind you why you largely dislike other people’s children (and, at times, if we’re being honest, your own). They charge around like savages, and nothing is more infuriating than the ‘bigger boys and girls’ who insist on hurtling through the baby area. ‘It says “Under 5s”, you prick.’

  Understand that the owners of soft-play-hell labyrinths need to make money. It is a business, not a safe haven for mums who’ve lost the will to live in their living rooms. You will therefore be encouraged to buy overpriced soggy paninis and jugs of weak squash. And boiling-hot tea, which you will try not to spill on the feral children running between the Play Zone and Tumble Tot areas.

  ‘Children must be supervised at all times’ state the Rules of Play. Ha ha ha ha. This does not happen. There are parents at large who have misinterpreted ‘supervision’ to mean letting another child’s parent manage the situation while they sit on plastic chairs generally not giving a toss. It is not your job to keep lifting little Sammy over the squashy steps or to tell Bigger Boy Billy to stop elbowing everyone in the head. Do these people think you come here in the hope of taking charge of their unruly kids? That you enjoy being the fucking Pied Piper of soft-play strays? You must glare at the child and ask loudly, ‘Where are your parents?’ Everyone has to suffer. That is the real Rule of Play. Having said that, one of my favourite ever comments on my blog was a mum of two slightly older children noting that she had done her fair share of soft-play running around (after everybody’s children) when hers were little so had earned the right to kick back with a hot chocolate and Heat. ‘I’ve served my time,’ she wrote. This gives me hope for the future.