The Unmumsy Mum

by The Unmumsy Mum

  I may jokingly have posted a Facebook status which read: ‘What’s it like having two?’ ‘Well, like having one, but worse.’

  Actually, I haven’t found having two that much harder than having one, though I’m sure it’s different for everyone. For me, possibly the biggest adjustment about becoming a parent in the first place was accepting that my life was no longer my own. It was no longer my own from the moment we drove newborn Henry home from the hospital via the McDonald’s Drive Thru (yes, that was his first-ever outing). To be honest, my life is not really any less my own with two children and there is certainly no doubt I’ve mentally found the jump from one child to two children easier than the First-child Hurricane (not least because Jude has been slightly less of a crier and more of a napper).

  But – and it’s not an insignificant but – there are certain logistical challenges to having two small children we just never considered when we had one, and there are a couple of instances which really stick in my mind as times when I truly felt the strain of an extra child. So here’s the lowdown on the trickiest bits.

  You Only Have One Pair of Hands

  I know this sounds pretty obvious, but there have been many times since making the jump from one to two when I have genuinely not known which child to tend to. And which one to neglect.

  The worst such occasion to date was the first time I had the misfortune of taking both the boys to see the doctor. As we sat in the waiting room, with ten minutes to spare before Jude’s eight-week check, I thought I was doing quite well. We were on time, and nobody was crying. Things started to get a little tense when Henry got off his seat and lay face down on the floor of the waiting room. When I asked him what he was doing, he shouted, ‘I’m resting!’ and, as I was mid-breastfeed, I didn’t quite know what to do. He wasn’t screaming and nobody had complained about having to step over him on their way to Reception, so I figured it would cause less fuss if I just left him there.

  And then, at the exact moment Jude started kicking off (windy or tired, one of the two), the newly potty-trained Henry announced that he needed the loo. There is only one loo at the surgery we go to, and it is not big enough to fit the pram in.

  I hadn’t planned for this dilemma.

  After it became apparent Henry couldn’t hold it (he was doing the Wee Dance), I had no choice but to pass the baby to a very kind but completely randomly chosen old lady so I could fulfil loo duty. I am relatively certain I would not have left a total stranger in charge of my baby the first time around (understandably, it is not the Done Thing). But on this occasion my gut told me that getting to the loo was the priority and, judging by Henry’s worsening waddle, the risk of a dirty protest in the waiting room was a genuine one.

  It was a good job we didn’t chance it, as it soon became apparent he had indeed chosen this particular moment for his daily poo. Marvellous. I’d never before felt quite as torn as I did that day; knowing I needed to hold Henry on the loo to finish his poo but equally feeling immensely anxious that my poor abandoned baby might just have become the plot inspiration for the next series of The Missing.

  Mission Poo finally accomplished, I was relieved to find that the kind old lady hadn’t snatched my baby. She was, in fact, holding him up in the air, and he was laughing his head off, obviously delighted with his new Granny Stranger.

  Granny Stranger then informed me that, during the time we’d spent in the loo, we had missed the call for our appointment and somebody else had gone in instead. So the now very tired Jude had to wait another twenty minutes for the doctor while Henry proudly counselled the other patients on loo hygiene: ‘You must wash your hands! Bottom bottom farty pants!’

  I immediately texted James to inform him that I would never, ever be taking his two children to the doctor again.

  Sometimes, the Stress is Doubled

  When you have two (or more – Jesus, I can’t even imagine!), embarking on a proper outing (getting in the car/on the bus/packing up a day bag, etc.) can be more than a bit stressful.

  I was alerted to the reality of this new dynamic one day when I woke up full of parenting courage and decided I would take both of my children (one just turned three years, the other five months old, at the time) to the beach.

  In the car.

  On my own.

  The day before, I had found myself pissed off beyond words at being stuck in the house with a crying baby and his brother running from one end of the lounge to the other (and back again) shouting, ‘You’ll never catch me!’ so I decided on a whim that, the next day, we were going out.

  ‘Right, boys, we’re going to the beach!’ I declared. Unplanned and unpacked, this felt quite . . . liberating. Henry got quite excited, and I decided this must be what Fun Mum feels like.

  ‘Let’s go to the beach! Right now!’ God, I can be so much fun!

  This was at 9 a.m. We would pack a bag and leave immediately, I told them.

  It was 11.47 when we got in the car.

  From the birth of my plan to the moment we were all strapped in the car, three hours had passed. I won’t bore you with the full breakdown of those hours because, if you are a parent, you will simply know how bloody impossible it is to get out of the house (and if you’re not yet a parent, trust me, there are days when it is bloody impossible to get out of the house). But on this day in particular, the added bonus of an extra child to get sorted just made it seem harder. There were several nappies, two bottles, at least ten ounces of vomit (always a pleasure, Jude) and one fairly major ‘I’m not putting any clothes on’ tantrum from Henry, which morphed into a tantrum about ‘Cat’ the sun shade as soon as we got in the car (Cat had fallen down and he couldn’t pet it). Life is unbearably unfair when you’ve just turned three and everything is conspiring against you, including cat-shaped sun shades.

  Henry then proceeded to shout, at regular two-minute intervals, over the top of his brother’s crying, ‘Why are we going this way?’ ‘Are we lost?’ ‘Put the sally nav on!’ (It’s lucky he didn’t remember the previous road trip, when I ended up yelling, ‘There isn’t anywhere to turn around, you stupid bitch!’ at poor ‘Sally Nav’).

  When we finally arrived at the seafront, I couldn’t find a parking space; I’d forgotten it was sodding half-term. There isn’t much regard for half-terms and summer holidays when you are on maternity leave and every day is one almighty Groundhog. I finally found a space to squeeze into and nervously eyed the large groups of people.

  I’d packed sandwiches and had imagined an idyllic tartan-blanket picnic on the beach but, as Jude had just got to sleep (and I was drinking in the lack of crying), we ate it in the car. I felt proper sorry for Henry because, had it just been the two of us, we would have eaten our sarnies on the beach. Instead, we admired the sea view from the Astra.

  When Jude woke up, we headed out. I had a plan. We would go for a walk along the seafront first (with the pram), and then we would shove everything back into the car and take just our merry selves on to the beach. I could totally handle this two-child parenting on my own, I thought.

  I was stressed within two minutes.

  Though Henry had previously been adamant that he didn’t need a wee, the old ‘I’m desperate’ jig surfaced again and we had to run to the loos. When we got there, despite my nagging warnings, he touched pretty much every visible inch of drug-taker-wee-infested loo rim. I, too, needed a wee, which I performed by hovering with the cubicle door wedged open by the pram. We then washed our hands in a sink which looked equally as contaminated as the loo, and I was left wondering if I should order a DIY disease-test kit.

  Jude started crying because he was hungry.

  Henry ran back along the seafront, fell over, hurt his hands and joined in with the crying.

  When we finally made it to the beach for our fun family outing, I sat on the sand feeding Jude while Henry proceeded to give me a heart attack by shouting, ‘I’m burying a dog poo!’, which, he later clarified, was ‘just pretend’. (Something is wrong with a child w
hose buried treasure is pretend dog shit, no?)

  We walked down to the sea, with me holding Jude and Henry holding my hand. That was nice. I mean, that was actually really nice. I breathed in air that didn’t exist in my living room and had a moment. I patted myself on the back for braving the adventure. I may even have Instagrammed it (#beachlifewithmybestones).

  And then, after a final poo from Jude, whose nappy I awkwardly changed in the boot of the car, it was time to go home. Naturally, Henry didn’t want to go home, so I got down on his level and reasoned with him about why we were leaving. (I bribed him with a Creme Egg.)

  On both the aforementioned occasions, and others besides, the dynamic of having two has indeed proved a bit more testing.

  But we were feeling pretty tested already.

  In for a penny, and all that.

  Girl or Boy? (What You’re Not Allowed to Wish for …)

  Since becoming a parent I have had a fair few thoughts and said a fair few things I have later gone on to feel guilty about. Things I now find it hard to admit to. Usually, these have not been true feelings at all but spur-of-the-moment outbursts brought on by the frustration of another bleedin’ night feed or a protest-planking toddler. We all say things we don’t mean in the heat of the moment, and I have said many things I don’t really mean about my boys. Never directly to them (unless you count the sweary rants at them when they were babies, when I’m pretty sure they were none the wiser); they are usually directed at James; or at nobody in particular, as I stare at the ceiling grinding my teeth. They are flashes of resentment that are less regret about having children and more regret about finding myself sitting, covered in baby sick, completely off my face with tiredness, psyching myself up to ‘offer the second breast’.

  One time, after a particularly hairy night with Jude (who was a couple of months old), I woke at around 5 a.m. to find Henry in our bed with soaking-wet pyjamas. He had wet his own bed and then climbed into ours. Even thinking about this now makes me feel awful, because it wasn’t his fault, but the commotion of me jumping up and throwing the covers back woke the baby, whose cot was still in our room (and who had been up half the bloody night already). Upon realising it was Saturday, that this was my weekend, I flipped out. I was calm enough to give the toddler a cuddle, put him under the shower and tell him it didn’t matter at all that his bed was sopping wet and so was ours (I’ve developed an Oscar-winning smiley smiley Carol Smillie mum face). I was calm enough to take him downstairs and put some cartoons on and ask if he wanted Rice Krispies while James fruitlessly tried to get the now-savage baby back to sleep upstairs. But I had lost it. As I stomped back into our bedroom, deliberately slamming the door, I stripped the bedsheets and shouted (above the crying), ‘I wish we’d never had kids. What a mistake! A mistake! Happy fucking Saturday!’ I later cried, because I’ve never truly wished we hadn’t had kids at all. I just wished in that moment that one of our beds could have remained piss-free and that our weekend lie-in had extended beyond 5 a.m.

  Generally, I recognise that such outbursts are irrational. They are momentary, and not a reflection of my true feelings. I didn’t really mean it. So I try not to beat myself up about them. But, in the grander scheme of all the thoughts and feelings I’ve come to regret, there is one that was less heat of the moment and more deep-rooted. One that lingered. A feeling I am not proud of. A feeling I regret having but am sharing because I promised I’d give you my honest account of motherhood.

  At our twenty-week scan for baby number two, I lay with my tummy smothered in jelly and once again felt the butterflies and slightly anxious knotty feeling that something might be wrong. Baby Two might not be healthy. They do, after all, call it the ‘anomaly scan’, and I’m sure all parents have a pang of desperate hope that everything remains anomaly-free. We had one healthy child at home already. Our beautiful destroyer of peace, Hurricane Henry. All anybody would wish for would be an equally healthy sibling. Right? Well, I did wish for that. But I also wished for something else. Something seemingly far less important but which became all-consuming in the run-up to that scan.

  I wished for a girl. I wanted a girl.

  And, when the moment of truth presented itself, it was clear to see that this wasn’t to be. There wasn’t any searching between the baby’s legs at this scan. Half the bloody screen was willy and balls at one point. We had been blessed with a second son, and all was well. We were so very, very lucky.

  And yet I cried.

  Not at first. At first, I delighted in the healthy-baby news and laughed at the obvious gender identification. Another little rascal like my Henry. Really nice for him to have a little brother.

  But, outside the hospital, I burst into tears. And more tears came later that afternoon, and later still in bed. I felt huge disappointment that we were having a second boy. I also felt like the world’s worst mother – how pathetic and selfish of me to be disappointed. I was so angry at myself for reacting that way. What a dick. I’d always been baffled at those people you read about who keep trying for more children until they get one of the gender they have been longing for. The kind of stories that lend themselves to Channel 5 documentaries (Twenty-five Sons and Still Breeding, or similar – although I’d absolutely tune in and watch that, to be fair). I just didn’t believe that ‘gender disappointment’ was a thing – surely nobody could be disappointed?

  I truly never thought I would have a preference. I would just be grateful if we could have a healthy family. And yet there I was, with a funny feeling in my chest that wasn’t pregnancy heartburn. My head was frantically trying to churn out rational thoughts to counteract this (We’re blessed to be able to have children; he’s healthy; we should be celebrating; get a grip, woman). I desperately wanted to snap out of it, to erase all feelings of disappointment. But you genuinely cannot help how you feel and, at the time, that is how I felt.

  Well, I am now the proud owner of two boys and, though it’s a bloody cliché to say you can’t imagine life any other way, I genuinely can’t imagine life any other way. When Jude smiles at me or chuckles at my dodgy rendition of ‘The Wheels on the Bus’, I get a pang of guilt about the tears I shed in the hospital car park that day (and later that week, and much later still, when I found out my best friend was having a girl . . . yes, I know; absolutely ridiculous). I am now so content with my two boys it would be easy for me to deny I ever felt such disappointment, to laugh it off and forget about it. To delete my post-scan blog post and erase that sentiment for ever. But, now that I’ve had over a year to reflect on those feelings, I have come to terms with them. It makes sense to me now in a way it did not at the time (though I was fat and hormonal then, so not a lot made sense).

  I’ve realised that the disappointment I felt at the news that Baby Two was to be a boy was not at all rooted in not wanting another boy. I had spent two years with my glorious Henry and, despite finding motherhood immeasurably hard (immeasurably, I tell you), I was remarkably fond of our mother–son bond. There was something special about the thought of two boys. Brothers. I still like saying, ‘My boys,’ now (and even include James in this, when he’s behaving).

  But back then I just felt a temporary (albeit overwhelming) sense of sadness that I would not have a daughter. Growing up as one of two girls, I had always imagined having daughters. I dreamed of spa breaks and shopping trips and chats about boyfriends. I am sure that losing my mum when I was fifteen heightened this sense of longing to have a daughter of my own. I wanted to recreate the memories I still hold so dearly. Bra shopping in M&S for that 28AA trainer bra we both knew I didn’t need but was nevertheless essential to avoid the social suicide of being discovered braless while getting changed for PE. Singing in the kitchen to Eternal feat. BeBe Winans’ ‘I Wanna Be the Only One’ and acting out ‘protect you from the rain’ with raindrop fingertips like total loons. The breakthrough of being allowed a Collection 2000 eyeshadow palette for Christmas following years of being told, ‘It will make you look like a tart.’ Despite never
having been a particularly girly girl, I really cherished all that stuff – even more so when I realised how seriously ill Mum was getting. I think I clung on to the typical mother– daughter chats about starting my period and not squeezing spots because I knew they would soon be taken from me. My dad has done (and continues to do) an unbelievable job, supporting me throughout all the crucial life moments, and I am so very lucky to have him. But it has still proved heart-breakingly sad to go through all the ‘big stuff’ – falling in love with James, getting married, becoming a mum – without having my own mum there to share any of it. I think my imaginary daughters were partly born from the promise to myself that I would be there for chats about going on the Pill and for wedding-dress shopping. It was such a clear future snapshot, maybe I had just never imagined an alternative. An alternative which, despite being fabulous in its own right, required me to let go of all I had imagined before.

  I knew we wouldn’t be one of those couples who keep on trying – we wanted two children, and we were lucky enough to have two children; they would be our lot, thank you and goodnight. My ‘gender disappointment’ was not related to anything other than my realisation during that trip to the Royal Devon & Exeter that I would never have a girl. It was like mourning an idea I’d had in my head for twenty-seven years that I now knew would never come to pass. I really hope saying so is not unfair to my boys and that, one day, they will understand. Because saying ‘I would have liked a girl’ is not saying I didn’t want boys. My dad often joked that he would have liked a son and, as his second daughter, that nugget of information never lessened my sense of self-worth. We used to laugh at him: oh, how outnumbered he was! We knew he loved us unconditionally, just as I love my boys. Just as they outnumber me.