The Unmumsy Mum

by The Unmumsy Mum

  There are always going to be times when I ponder the benefits of having a girl. Like the times I bypass all the pretty clothes in Next and head straight for the jeans, T-shirts and trainers again. Sigh. The times when, despite my best efforts to promote the ‘Let Toys be Toys’ message (by buying doll’s houses and kitchens), my boys still favour the so-called ‘boys’ toys’. My life is Ninja Turtles and Star Wars and, no, neither of my sons likes my suggestion of sitting down nicely to do a puzzle because they would rather pretend to shoot me while hanging off the back of the sofa. I am yet to meet girls who obsess over all things poo, bum, pants and farts-related as much as little boys do. Not once have I witnessed my niece, or any of my friends’ lovely girls, shout, ‘Farty farty bum bum pants knickers on your head!’ from the top of a climbing frame. Yet, secretly, I laugh at this humour and, despite my dislike of gender stereotyping, I smile at observations from strangers that they are ‘proper little boys’ (while outwardly having a stern word about the ‘bum bum pants’ shouting, obviously).

  Boys and girls are very different and – I’m not going to lie – one of each would have been nice: I always said ‘one of each’ was like the Holy Grail; to achieve it is to hit the jackpot. And yet I’ve come to realise that ‘two of the same’ is a stupid thing to say because no two children are the same. The willy-and-balls identification at the scan is, so far, the biggest similarity my boys have shared; they are chalk and cheese personality-wise. We don’t have two of the same at all.

  A full year after blogging honestly about that twenty-week scan, I’m surprised that I still receive messages about it. From the mum who imagined she would have a houseful of boys and went on to have three girls. The mum who ‘just knew’ she was having a girl then had a pang of disappointment when ‘she’ came out with a willy. The mum who had one of each and secretly felt awful that she was so relieved, guilty that she would have cried if it had gone any other way. The common thread throughout was that none of them had ever shared these feelings. Maybe it’s just not something we are allowed to say. But it’s too late for me to put the cat back in the bag.

  I still feel like a prize twit for how I reacted. The kind of stupid you feel when you have a drunken argument and then wish you could take it back. I wish I hadn’t shed those tears. I wish I could have behaved like all the other parents, who really don’t mind either way. It all seems so bloody irrelevant now, but I can tell you it was a very real feeling at the time. It shocked me. Maybe it is better to allow yourself to ‘have a moment’ rather than bottling up the unsaid. When people declare, ‘You can’t say that!’, what they really mean is ‘You can think it, but you mustn’t say it.’ I don’t think keeping thoughts to yourself makes them any less real.

  My boys will undoubtedly wind me up more in the coming years, knowing I once longed for a girl. I hope they know that what I longed for most of all was a family. And a family I have got. I’m sure there will be days when I would pay good money to swap Batman roleplay and stinky-poo-poo-bum conversations with princess parties and hair plaiting (though if she was anything like me, any daughter of mine would probably have preferred Batman anyway). Mostly, I think I will feel contentment when I’m picking up my boys’ trainers and hoodies, contentment that they are both healthy. Having two boys has proved pretty special already, and this is only the beginning. I truly am happy with my lot. If only they would fart a bit less.

  * * *

  ‘When I was pregnant with my second child and I asked my daughter whether she would be having a brother or a sister, her reply was, always, “a bugger”. Quite an accurate description of her brother, as it turned out.’

  Emma, Taunton

  * * *

  Second-child Shortcuts

  ‘We’ll treat them both the same,’ we said, with the sincerest of intentions. We were painting our (then unnamed) second bump’s nursery and mulling over the unfortunate tendency we’d witnessed in other families to fuss massively over their firstborn and leave the second child to be, well, just a bit unfussed.

  Not us. We would treat our second baby-boy bundle exactly the same as we had our first. Deep down, I think we knew this was a lie even then.

  Not a sneaky malicious lie, but a lie rooted in the most genuine of intentions. The truth was, as James and I merrily glossed the skirting boards and chatted about Bump Number Two, we discovered we both felt a kind of protective appreciation for his second-child status. We had a connection. As second children ourselves, each with an older sibling of the same sex, we had been brought up knowing the second-child drill.

  Not that being the second child has been a bad thing – we haven’t suffered in any way because of it. It’s definitely not as if I still hold a grudge that my parents took my sister to Brownies and dance lessons but didn’t bother taking me to either; or that my dad could never remember my date of birth so used to offer my sister’s as the default. Scarred for life. (Just kidding, Dad, I know I’m your favourite. Bet you can’t remember the year, though.)

  All right, so we’ve fared just fine as second children, but we also appreciate the inescapable reality of life with an older sibling.

  Who always does everything first.

  Whose hand-me-downs we were forced to wear years later.

  Who always has the bigger bloody room.

  The writing (or, in this case, painting) was very much on the wall of Jude’s (50 per cent smaller than Henry’s) nursery as we decorated it that day.

  Our little foetus had already been allocated the box room.

  It had begun.

  I’m glad we voiced our determination to treat our babies the same (the will was there, Jude), but we were stupid to state this intention before we had experienced the reality of a toddler-and-baby combo. It was wrong (and naive) of me to scorn other parents from afar for the lack of fuss they gave their second child compared with their first. I just didn’t get it.

  Now I’m living with the at-times-impossible task of juggling all that nice baby fuss and attention with answering to my other child’s commands as he launches himself off the sofa, shouting, ‘You be Chewie, Mummy. Do the voice!’ (I do a pretty top-notch Chewbacca impression, it has to be said.) So I really wish I could say I had iMessaged James with the moment Jude clapped for the first time (as I’m confident I did for Henry), but the truth is I don’t know when that happened. I probably missed it while I was making a cheese sandwich and/or putting away the pens and pencils that provided entertainment for all of fifteen seconds while sighing, ‘Can everybody just calm down a bit?’

  Jude has not been treated the same as Henry was, but I don’t really feel all that bad because, despite claiming we hadn’t overindulged Henry, I have since realised that much of what we practised the first time around was unnecessary. In many ways, I much prefer my second-child parenting behaviours. Less anal, less worrisome, less superfluous (such a great word ‘superfluous’, I’m not sure I’ve ever used it before; I hope my editor lets me keep it).

  I’m not saying we have been slack second time around, but we have definitely been more relaxed. And by ‘relaxed’, I mostly mean we’ve been too preoccupied to fuss.

  In our first few months of parenting Henry we expressed grave concern at every slightly damp spot on his sleepsuit shoulder. We analysed every nappy noise and, where there was doubt, changed him anyway. Even at 3 a.m., when he had drifted back to sleep, we awoke him from his slumber to investigate (because a screaming baby was obviously less of an issue than the risk of a wet fart). We used to change him into a new Babygro if there was the slightest of marks on the old one. We clearly had too much time on our hands. Or too much surplus space in the washing machine.

  With Jude, ‘grey area’ nappy noises are ignored unless we can smell something (and, even then, in the sleep-deprived early hours, I have been known to turn a blind eye, and ear, and nose). Our Babygro-changing rule these days is simple: if it is dry and largely stain-free, it stays put. Admittedly, we reached a new parenting low when Jude was around four mo
nths old and we used the hairdryer to give the sicky, wet shoulder patch a quick blast. While he was still in the baby-gro. But it was the cool setting and babies like white noise, and I think I had probably been crying and James thought it best just to get the kids to bed sharpish. (I’m definitely not recommending this as an approach to laundry, just so we’re clear.)

  Arguably, the biggest change between the treatments of our boys as babies has been the rules. You know, all the stuff you’re supposed to do. Or not do.

  With Henry: ‘I don’t really want to introduce him to unhealthy food at all. There’s really no need, is there?’

  With Jude: ‘What’s that on his chin? Oh wait, I think it’s relish from your Big Mac.’

  With Henry: ‘Let’s give him another bath and a little massage with some of that nice lavender stuff.’

  With Jude: ‘Do you think his neck smells a bit cheesy? Pass me a wipe. I’ll give him a proper wash tomorrow.’

  With Henry: ‘We need to buy some more books. I’m running out of stories for the bedtime feed!’

  With Jude: ‘Shit, he’s six months old and I haven’t read to him yet.’

  As a first-time mum, I agonised over the feed/sleep routine. (‘He can’t nap now, it’s 5.30 p.m.! Do you think Gina Ford would let this happen?!’) Some days, I paced the living room for up to an hour to ‘stretch out the feeds’ in pursuit of the target gap between them.

  Second time around, I just wouldn’t have dreamed of getting myself in a state over it. In fact, one time when I was feeling quite poorly, I breastfed Jude pretty much every time he moved. There was no stretching-out of feeds that day. I had lost all regard for the time of his last feed and chose instead to feed him into a milk stupor because I was also having to supervise my toddler’s living-room re-enactment of the Great Fire of Pontypandy. There were other times, too, in those early months when I gave baby Jude an arguably unnecessary top-up feed and let him nap way later than was sensible just so I could do the washing. And watch Made in Chelsea.

  Then there’s all the material stuff, where we’ve definitely failed at equality. For Henry’s first Christmas we overspent. We bought him an array of toys and clothes that he would ‘grow into’ and sat unwrapping them for him, saying, ‘Wow, do you like your new toy, darling?!’ as he disinterestedly crawled off to find a candle to chew or a patio door to lick. Jude was just fifteen weeks old for his first Christmas and, as he wasn’t really sitting up and had no interest even in the wrapping paper, we decided we’d buy him just a couple of token gifts. A small part of me felt like I was letting him down that morning, but a bigger part of me knew he didn’t need a gigantic stocking. I hope we’ve made up for it since.

  So, when you read this, Jude, my little pudding face, I hope you accept an apology on behalf of your dad and me, who, despite our best intentions, have already failed miserably at treating you the same as your brother.

  The following is for you, and only you (written after I suffered a second-child-guilt meltdown):

  To my little Ginger Biscuit,

  I’m writing to the Future You to say sorry.

  Sorry that I haven’t been religiously recording your milestones in your ‘Baby’s First Year’ keepsake book. I kind of wish I hadn’t bought one because all the gaps remind me I have no idea when you started to do stuff (My first tooth came on . . . good question. The outfit I wore home from hospital was . . . erm . . . well, it was that, um . . . I don’t know. Literally no idea).

  I’m sorry I’ve neglected to get things on video. Somewhere on the computer you’ll find a video of the day Henry crawled for the first time and I recorded one of those cringey voiceovers (‘September 2012, and he’s on the move! Watch out, ladies!’ [chuckles at own funniness]).

  I forgot to get a video of your early crawling.

  I forgot to get a video of you sitting and clapping.

  In fact – where the hell are all your baby videos? It’s like one day you were a crinkly newborn and the next you were cruising the furniture and biting things with teeth; teeth I definitely forgot to record in that bloody book.

  I doubt you will ever need to know the date you first rolled over, or the date of your first beach trip, or what your favourite puréefn1 was during weaning. But if you ever do want to know these things I will probably scratch my head trying to remember and the answer will be a guess. I’m sorry about that.

  I hope these things won’t matter to you. Because it’s true I have been a bit less attentive. It’s true I haven’t shared as many baby pictures of you on Facebook (because there just aren’t as many baby pictures of you). It’s true I make that startled face when people ask me questions I really should know the answer to.

  But I love you just the same.

  I love you because you are not the same. You are special for all of your own quirks and I bloody love the bones of you.

  I hope you know that, although it may seem like I am always putting your brother first, you are just as important. It’s just that when you were very small he was the one charging around shouting, the one asking me why the roadkill on the road had to die, the one needing poos at inconvenient times – he was three years old and demanded my time. I never had the chance to take you to baby massage and rotate your small, oily legs while singing about Daisy, Daisy and the bicycle made for two.

  In the first year of your life we actually spent very little time just us two, but your turn will come, my little potato head. Henry is going to school this year, and when he does you can rest assured you will not be spending the day sitting in the Jumperoo or sucking a breadstick.

  Being second born does not mean you are second best.

  It just means you are one of two, and Mummy is finding that doing the best by everyone is a challenge.

  I love you forever ever, my Angel Plum Plums.

  Mum xx

  PS All the best people are born second. Don’t tell your brother.

  fn1 You didn’t actually have purées. Not homemade ones like I blitzed in the blender for your brother, anyway. You survived on manufactured jars and pouches. I’m sorry about that, too.

  ‘Staying at home all day is almost always a terrible idea.’

  SAHMs, I Salute You

  ‘Nice gig if you can get it,’ I once said about stay-at-home-mums. ‘I’m sure we’d all love to be at home all day.’ How nice it must be never to get that Monday-morning feeling, to plan your week around play dates and park trips and fucking babycinos in Costa. What a life!

  I take it all back.

  I had no idea. No bloody idea. If you are reading this and you are a SAHM (not a term I like, by the way, but one that has stuck), you should know that, right now, I am doing that embarrassing ‘we’re not worthy’ gesture people do to demonstrate admiration and respect. You deserve some recognition here. You deserve an apology from dimwits like me who once thought you had it easy. I hadn’t lived it. I didn’t know.

  I know now. Turns out being at home and in charge of small people day in, day out, is not quite the easy life I’d imagined. And when I say it’s not quite as easy, I mean it turned out to be some serious mind-messing shit that I was not prepared for.

  I know several mums who have taken the best part of a year off on maternity leave. I didn’t even reach a year for both maternity leaves put together. The second time, I cut my pre-agreed maternity leave (of six months) short to just five after emailing my boss to ask if I could come back early. I wasn’t coping all that well at home. I couldn’t hack it. I couldn’t hack being at home all day every day (every week, every month).

  I have been asked a few times, ‘What’s so hard about it, then?’ and it’s a good question. But where do I start?

  I’m not sure there’s any one thing about staying at home I can’t cope with. Perhaps that’s why I thought it would be easy. Because, taken by themselves, keeping up with the housework or calming a grizzly baby or nipping to the shop do not sound unmanageable. Sometimes, I manage these things just fine.

  But the culm
ination of a whole host of factors in a day spent at home with small people is a mental boiling point unlike any work stress I’ve ever experienced.

  It’s the whingeing. Jesus Christ, the whingeing! Hour upon hour of slightly whiny noises intermingled with less regular but more severe bouts of crying or screaming.

  It’s not being able to complete any task successfully without interruptions. Some days, all I want to do is hang out the wet washing from two days ago (which is smelling so mouldy I’m considering rewashing it), or eat one piece of toast before my child declares himself to be ‘starving’ and I find myself handing him his second breakfast after I’ve eaten half of one crust. Sometimes, as I battle with bumped heads (‘For God’s sake, what did I say about using the sofa as a slide!’) and the daily protests about putting pants/coats/shoes on, I realise I am pinning the entire success of my day on at least one of my children having a nap.

  And then there’s the monotony. I know it’s not socially acceptable for mums to say they find motherhood boring but, sometimes, I find motherhood boring. That’s not to say my kids are boring – far from it, they amaze and entertain me every single day. But the nap routines and chores and repeats of Fireman Sam before the seventeenth weekly trip to the park can on occasion seem just a bit dull. I wish I didn’t feel that way, but I do. I suspect I am not alone.

  SAHMs deserve a bloody Pride of Britain award for patience. Sure, everybody loses patience at times (stuck in traffic/on the phone to HMRC/trying to assemble flat-pack toy storage/dealing with knobheads in general), but I never felt overwhelming surges of impatience until I started spending full days at home with small people. Patience-testing moments for me during a day at home include:

  Henry having an ‘I will/I won’t’ tantrum. If you’ve never played this game with a three-year-old, let me tell you, it’s a real treat. You ask them to do something (like go for a wee before you leave the house) and they point-blank refuse (‘I won’t’). The consequence of this is a warning, followed by the time-out chair, where they scream, ‘I will! I will! I will!’ until you remove them from said chair and steer them towards the loo. Where they forget the preceding ten minutes and shout, ‘I won’t!’ and another piece of your soul is destroyed.