Patrick ambled through the door at 5.20pm, chatting away on his mobile on a work call. I watched him walk past the spare room (unaware that I was huddled on the floor) and into the kitchen. I heard the fridge door open and close, and him ending the call. He then called my name:
‘Tiff? Where are you?’
‘In here . . .’ I uttered meekly.
He walked in through the door looking confused, a bottle of sparkling water in his right hand.
‘What are you doing in here?’ He gave me a quizzical look and came and sat next to me. ‘All OK?’
This was the moment. I handed him my mobile phone and told him to look at the screen.
‘Cool,’ he said, registering the photo. ‘Who’s pregnant?’
He didn’t think for one minute it could be me. Instead, he stood up as though to walk away, sighing heavily. I forgot sometimes that the lack of children was hard on him too, that he felt utter deflation on finding out another of our friends was pregnant whilst we were still barren.
‘It’s not a friend,’ I whispered to his back, the air getting caught in my throat as I did. He turned around in slow motion and saw me remove the pillow from the bed, revealing the five positive pregnancy tests. ‘It’s me.’ The words tumbled from my mouth and the tears followed. ‘We are having a baby. I’m six weeks pregnant.’
Believe it or not, I had been due to start IVF the following week, when we returned from our holiday.
* * *
My dream of becoming a Mummy Concierge started to nudge at me again once I was newly pregnant. The moment it all made sense to me was mid mini-breakdown in the middle of a department store at three months pregnant, whilst clutching a Ewan The Dream Sheep toy and exclaiming loudly, ‘Will this make me a better mummy if I buy this?’
I had excitedly bounded down the King’s Road in Chelsea, shopping list in hand, ready to buy all of the baby essentials that I had spent hours researching. Four hours later, I was standing in the middle of the department store, surrounded by buggies, sleeping bags, bottles and sterilisers, manically chanting, ‘I must have this, and this . . . the baby needs it.’
It wasn’t my most glamorous moment.
Later that evening and back at home, a cup of tea perched on my blossoming bump like a makeshift table, my husband questioned what had happened earlier. It appears that a sales assistant had managed to relieve me of my mobile phone and tapped away a message to my husband: ‘I think your wife needs you. 4th floor Peter Jones. NOW.’
Patrick had, on receipt of that text, bounded up the escalators 40 minutes later, panting and sweating, convinced something awful had happened. Instead, he found me calmly chatting to a fellow pregnant woman about perineal tears and the pros and cons of water births versus natural labour. When he took me to one side and asked what was so wrong, he had to be summoned from his work at 11am on a Tuesday morning, I calmly showed him two breast pumps and asked which one he thought would be more comfortable for breastfeeding.
There was no doubt about it: I had lost the plot . . .
But let me assure you, I was not the only pregnant woman to feel this way. Ask anyone rocking a bump about how prepared they are for becoming parents and you will see the fear flicker in their eyes. There’s a desperate look that pregnant women get, the fleeting, ‘Oh my fucking God, what am I doing and how do I do it?’ sideways glance that confirmed to me everything I needed to know.
Pregnant women needed help – and I was going to be the one to make it happen.
PART TWO
FIRST TRIMESTER
Chapter 4
Setting up the business is probably one of the hardest things I have ever done. I spent hours at a time on Google, lengthy lists were made and numerous conversations all started with the sentence ‘You’re going to do WHAT?’ between friends and family. The hardest part for me was actually coming up with a name for what I wanted to do. One Wednesday evening, glass of wine in hand, I sat down at my kitchen table whilst Patrick cooked supper, and started writing down options. Three hours later and I was still going – the list had grown to 42 potential business names – and my head was in my hands. I’m actually quite a creative type so enjoy this sort of brainstorming a lot, but I’m also a perfectionist and the right name for the business just wasn’t coming to me. So, in a moment of exasperation, I turned to my husband (as a side note, he is certainly NOT the creative type so I didn’t think for one moment he would actually be able to help). He tilted his head to one side, stirred the spaghetti he was making on the aga and then quite simply said, ‘The Mummy Concierge?’
I must admit, I was blown away. The name worked perfectly: it was approachable, described exactly what my role in the business was and also meant I could create an amazing brand around it. I didn’t sleep that night – I was so excited by the new name and all of the possibilities that went with it (what my website would look like, what my tagline could be, what images I needed to shoot to illustrate what I was doing) that by 5am the following morning, I had an entire A4 notebook filled with ideas – essentially the blueprint to my business and something I still treasure to this day.
Designing my business website was tough – I’m not a website designer at all – but to save costs, I decided to give it a go and having been pointed in the right direction by entrepreneurial friends, I managed to upload and design it. Next, I had to get the word out about who I was and what I was doing. Thankfully, my past career as a journalist helped a lot and I contacted people I had worked with in the past – who now worked on parenting magazines – and told them about my new venture. The press coverage was insane – I think the fact that what I was doing was so unique and that I was actually the only person in the UK doing it piqued interest – and before I knew it, I had a double-page spread in a national newspaper, was being talked about in the news and emails started pinging into my inbox from mummies needing help.
The Mummy Concierge was well on its way to turning into a successful business.
Looking back, I have no idea how I actually managed to set up a business and survive the first trimester at the same time. I think a second nature must have kicked in where I was determined to survive what could be described as a pretty terrible first trimester by distracting myself from it as much as possible. It makes me laugh when I think back to those moments when I was sitting happily in front of my laptop, designing my website and getting excited about my plans for The Mummy Concierge and then next thing I knew I’d be dashing to the bathroom to be violently sick before gargling some mouthwash and getting back to work.
One day, when morning sickness had completely crippled me, I was determined to head to a meeting I had arranged with a prestigious baby clothing brand in central London. Whether it was the rocking motion of the tube or the stifling hot weather that made it hard to breathe whilst 400 feet underground, before too long I was dramatically throwing up into my Mulberry handbag and cursing morning sickness out loud for everyone to hear.
A woman who had been sitting opposite me when my sickness episode happened kindly moved over to sit next to me and held my hair out of my face until I had emptied the entire contents of my stomach. She then took out a piece of paper, scribbled something on it, handed it to me and without saying a word, got off at the next stop. With sweat dripping into my eyes and down my neck, I fanned myself with the piece of paper before I felt able to read what was on it.
There were two words: Sea Bands.
As soon as I bolted out of the doors at Bond Street tube (fresh air at last!), I got out my phone and googled those two words. I had an idea of what a sea band was but no idea if it worked for morning sickness, so standing stock-still in central London, whilst everyone else buzzed and zoomed around me, I researched as much as possible before promptly pressing ‘buy’ on my order.
When I eventually arrived at the beautiful children’s clothing store a few minutes later to meet with the owner, I relayed my tube story and, amidst fits of giggles (why do people find public nausea so
funny?), she turned to me and said, ‘Seriously though, the thing that saved me when I was pregnant with my first was apple cider vinegar.’ She watched as I gently stroked a cashmere baby grow that she had passed my way. ‘And my friend swore that her electric toothbrush always made her sickness worse, so store that away if you have one!’
As the day progressed, I became addicted to the search bar on my phone. As I moved from meeting to meeting, I searched for every known morning sickness cure out there – from the normal suggestions (ginger biscuits) to the more bizarre (heave spritz, a spray for your pulse points whenever you feel nauseous). It was only when I returned home that evening and was sorting through prenatal vitamins (some brands can make you feel sicker than others, apparently!) that I noticed my notebook was filled with over four pages of potential morning sickness relief options. When I say I had done my research, my goodness did I mean it! My notes included tips from African tribes, tips that were used in the 1920s, science-approved cures, homeopathic cures, machines that can help with sickness, tablets, drinks, foods, feng shui . . . Honestly, if there was someone who knew everything possible about morning sickness, then that someone was me.
Heading back over towards my newly designed website, I hit the edit button and added another ‘skill’ to my packages.
‘The First Trimester – helping you navigate everything the world throws (up) at you in the first three months, morning sickness tips included’.
13 things about the first trimester that nobody tells you
1. You will stand in front of the mirror naked and try to guess what you will look like when you’re nine months pregnant. You may even get a pillow and shove it under your dress to complete the picture. However, those pregnancy hormones are going to come into play here too and you’ll undoubtedly turn into an emotional wreck whilst you try to decide if you love or hate your pregnant body.
2. You will become a hermit. The thing with getting pregnant is that for the first couple of months, you’re likely to keep it to yourself. This means that when friends call you up suggesting a boozy night out, you have to find an excuse not to go. Teamed with pregnancy tiredness, you will probably find that the thought of going outside seems far less appealing than snuggling up in your PJs and watching a good box set.
3. Your online shopping orders will become uncontrollable. As if a girl needs an excuse to shop! But when you are pregnant and can’t sleep due to the nerves/excitement of that little baby inside of you, I can guarantee you will turn to Amazon. You will discover pregnancy things that you never knew existed and that you will convince yourself you need IMMEDIATELY. Such as the THREE pregnancy pillows I bought, the 27 baby outfits I added to my basket and the ‘C-section pants’ that promised to make my tummy look like normal after the birth.
4. You will read every pregnancy book going. What to Expect When You’re Expecting, The Day-by-Day Pregnancy Book, How to Grow a Baby and Push It Out . . . Hell, why not order the complete Amazon charts? Tick. Tick. Tick.
5. Online communities will become your new obsession. I promised I wouldn’t go there but I did. The second I found out I was pregnant, I was on every ‘pregnant mummy’ app there was: Mumsnet, BabyCenter, ‘what fruit is your baby today’ . . . Seriously, it’s madness but at the same time, it’s strangely comforting. When you’re up at 4am with morning sickness, you know there will be someone in one of your online communities who will be feeling the same – and because they are complete strangers, you don’t mind talking about the more disgusting aspects of pregnancy such as constipation and wee samples.
6. You will spend hours trying to work out how to conceal your bump. In those first couple of weeks, you will feel excited but also petrified about being pregnant. Everything you read will tell you that those first 12 weeks are the most ‘dangerous’ and it’s ‘safer’ not to announce your pregnancy until you’re past the three-month mark. (I have a completely opposing opinion to this, which you can read about later on in this book!) So, if your bump is starting to appear, you’re going to want to hide it. Which means you have to find clothing that is still ‘you’ without looking like it’s pregnancy clothing. My saviour: waterfall cardigans. Just genius.
7. You will then hate every pregnancy piece of clothing you buy. When you do eventually decide to start buying pregnancy clothes, you will wait in eager anticipation for the courier to deliver them. When they arrive, you will have a meltdown. The problem is: pregnancy clothes are awful. I have literally never come cross a single pregnancy wardrobe that is stylish. Apparently, if you are pregnant, all fashion sense has to go out of the window and you are destined to live in striped nautical T-shirts and elasticated pregnancy jeans.*
*The one light at the end of the tunnel? Pregnancy jeans are AMAZING. Amazing in that they will be the most comfortable thing you have ever worn and you may still be wearing them six months after you give birth . . .
8. Medical advice varies hugely depending on what country you’re in (and this will drive you mad!). Did you know that the French don’t sterilise? Here in the UK, we buy every piece of sterilising equipment we can get our hands on, whereas the French simply put all baby gear in the dishwasher and have done with it. Same goes for blue cheese and wine. The French say ‘oui’ during pregnancy, the British say ‘no’. I know what nationality I’d rather be . . .
9. The exhaustion is unbearable. You will literally feel as if a 20-stone man is hanging off your eyelids.
10. You will google ‘how to find out the sex of your child’ and then do every old wives’ tale going, in secret, in your bedroom. After all, who wants to be caught in public dangling their wedding ring on a piece of string over their belly?
11. You’ll suddenly want to become best friends with any of your circle who are also pregnant, even if you hated them before. It’s a cold, hard fact. Once you’re pregnant, you will become fascinated with everyone else who is also pregnant or who has had a baby and you will want them to be your best friend immediately. Cue lots of Instagram stalking and Facebook ‘likes’ under photos of their perfect family.
12. You’ll convince yourself you need EVERY baby product on the market. Even that double breast pumping bra. I kid you not, even I fell for that one.
13. You’ll sometimes use your pregnancy as an excuse. Don’t fancy staying out late at a boring colleague’s dinner party? Want to reject that invite to visit your parents-in-law? YOU NOW HAVE A VERY LEGITIMATE EXCUSE. Pull the ‘morning sickness card’, pretend you’re ‘so exhausted you need to be at home’ or (the best tactic by far) just scream and shout and cry and then blame it on the pregnancy hormones. They will literally get you out of anything . . .
Chapter 5
It’s not usually considered normal to walk through central London with a Mulberry handbag slung over the crook of your arm, heaving with the following items: 20 × sick bags, two cans of ginger beer, ‘poo’ drops (I’ll explain more later), two wristbands that look like something an eighties aerobics instructor would wear, non-alcoholic red wine and a tub of peanut butter. In fact, I’m pretty certain if I was suddenly hit by a bus, the paramedics who opened my handbag and revealed the contents would add ‘probably a little insane’ to my death certificate.
But, once again, it’s just part and parcel of my job. And today is no different. Shrugging my bag over to my other arm, I squint at the map on my iPhone and then back up at the road. Nodding decisively to myself, I march on a few more steps and then ring the doorbell of the pastel blue front door in front of me. I hear the chime echo inside the house and then a distant ‘clacker clacker’ of designer heels on marble making their way towards the door.
Instead of the typical ‘yummy mummy’ I was expecting to come face to face with, the door opens to reveal a 20-something woman, hunched forward, waving frantically with a plastic bag in front of her face. I step back, alarmed.
‘Sorry, sorry . . . I warned you my morning sickness was bad. I can’t seem to go anywhere without this.’ She gestures towards t
he plastic bag, which I suddenly realise must be a makeshift ‘sick bag’ and then ushers me into her home.
I don’t have time to take in my surroundings as I’m far too concerned about my latest client. Her pallor is pale with a greenish tinge and she looks as though she hasn’t slept in weeks. Her hair is tied up in what suspiciously looks like a pair of knickers and every time she begins to talk, she claps her hands over her mouth and starts retching. Despite not yet being formally introduced, I feel a real sense of compassion for her – this is one newly pregnant lady who is really suffering and I need to help her.
Carefully taking her hand amidst the fear she might be about to collapse on me, I lead her down the marble corridor and into what must be her living room. The room is bathed in light, thanks to two huge sash windows looking out onto a small but immaculate garden. The whole room, I notice, is completely pristine. There is a huge white L-shaped sofa to the far right, which sits in front of a marble coffee table, currently adorned with the biggest bunch of peonies I have ever seen.
Acqua di Parma candles burn brightly (and smell gorgeous) on a small coffee table next to some beautiful-looking books all about fashion. A Brora throw in a pale, creamy green lies elegantly across a winged armchair and behind it stands an Art Deco gilded mirror, which is the size of the entire wall. The room is – without a doubt – absolutely stunning.
Placing my newest client – who has now formally introduced herself as Lucy – down onto the armchair, I find the kitchen and pour out a glass of water from the tap. Halfway, I stop myself – would this client drink tap water? – and toss it to one side whilst opening the fridge and taking out a bottle of sparkling Perrier water.
I walk back into the living room and hand over the glass, which Lucy accepts gratefully. She has composed herself a bit and a slight hint of colour has come back into her face, I notice.
Secrets of the Mummy Concierge Page 3