Secrets of the Mummy Concierge

by Tiffany Norris

  Looking back, I don’t know what caused me to have the meltdown, but what it did do was confirm to me that I still needed help. When I got home that afternoon, I immediately called a perinatal psychologist. After my first session just a few days later, I agreed to start taking antidepressants. Within a week, I had stopped crying every day – something I hadn’t even realised I’d been doing – and the cloud lifted.

  To say I lost myself that first year is no exaggeration. I don’t recognise my face when I look at photos; all I see is my false smile and a tired, desperate look behind my eyes. Like many people, my first year of motherhood was undoubtedly the toughest time of my life. I think it’s safe to say that I was traumatised afterwards and it took me a long time to feel like me again.

  For me, the antidepressants, support from my family and weekly chats with my psychiatrist helped tremendously, but there’s no denying it took a huge toll on my husband, too, watching his wife, his best friend, fall apart before his eyes, turning into someone he didn’t recognise. There were times when I caught Patrick sitting in the kitchen, Rupert asleep on his knees, just staring into space. He looked exhausted and beaten. Something I have learnt is that postnatal depression doesn’t just affect the person dealing with it – it affects the family around you too – which tells me there is even more reason to get help as soon as you can.

  Sometimes clients will ask me if I have ever had experience with postnatal depression. I have always been very open about what I went through and there are times when I will chat to mummies about it when I feel like I can see they are slipping into something similar. I’m no doctor, but I honestly feel that once you have been through it yourself, it’s easier to spot in someone else – it’s the look in their face that confirms it, the sheer panic behind dull, unseeing eyes.

  A few years ago, I did have to deal with postnatal depression face on again, but not from one of my mummy clients. When my phone rang at 6am one day, I immediately assumed it must be one of my clients going into labour with last-minute questions about their hospital bag, but when I answered, I was greeted by a man’s voice.

  I could immediately sense he felt scared.

  ‘I don’t know if you’re the right person to talk to, but my wife is always singing your praises and I didn’t know where else to turn,’ he mumbled. He had a well-educated accent – the type you might expect from someone who went to Eton. I nodded into the phone and gently asked how I could help. His words came thick and fast.

  ‘My son was born a few months ago. The birth was pretty traumatic – my wife ended up being rushed into surgery and lost lots of blood, but she and the baby were fine.’ He stopped and stammered, and I could sense tears were falling at the other end of the phone. ‘When the midwife handed me my son, I felt nothing. It was like a stranger coming into my life. I didn’t get that rush of love. My wife struggled when we came home so I had to put on a brave face and make sure everything was going along smoothly. I even extended my paternity leave so I could be at home and help with the baby and look after my wife. It meant I wasn’t paid for a few months so that was a bit of added stress.’

  Listening to this stranger talk, I felt an overwhelming sense of wanting to help. I knew where he was going with this, I understood his pain.

  ‘Anyway, it all came to a head last night – I was changing my son’s nappy and he wee’d all over me. Rather than laugh it off, I felt an intense feeling of failure. I couldn’t do this anymore. I ran downstairs and into my garden and just screamed.’

  ‘Have you spoken to your doctor about this?’ I asked gently. I was no expert but to me the signs of hopelessness that he was feeling and the lack of control sounded just like I had felt in my darkest times.

  ‘That’s the thing. I’ve read a lot online and I suppose the reason I’ve called you is because I think I know what it is, if it’s even possible? I sat through those NCT classes when they spoke about how women can get postnatal depression, but to me, it seems that’s what I’ve got. Is that even possible?’

  I’ll never forget that conversation and it sparked in me something that I still try to encourage today. A lot of antenatal classes talk lots about how mothers might feel after the birth of their little ones, but they rarely touch on the partners. Fathers – despite this being the 21st century – are still expected to take everything in their stride when it comes to having a baby. Their role is to look after their new baby, their wife, finances, but dads need support too.

  Chapter 20

  When Rupert was just six weeks old, I remember looking idly on the calendar on our wall and realising that it was the wedding of two of our closest friends who we had met in Australia many years ago. To those of you thinking ‘How can you forget a wedding?’, I promise you, in those first few weeks with a newborn, it’s easy to forget anything.

  Panicked, Patrick and I ran around our home desperately trying to find the wedding invite (it was stuck on the fridge hidden behind a ‘breastfeeding schedule for Rupert’ routine I had pinned there a few days before). The wedding was in Suffolk and thankfully at the bottom of the invite in small letters were the words, ‘Babes in arms welcome’. In a complete daze, Patrick and I managed to confirm the hotel we were staying at, pressed ‘buy’ on a silver teapot on the wedding list and started to gather together everything we might need for a night’s stay away with a newborn.

  ‘This should be easy!’ Patrick joked, as I tried on yet another dress which didn’t fit before throwing it on the ground in a huff. ‘Isn’t this part of your job? Telling people how to travel with a newborn?’

  ‘We will have to get a travel cot and make sure we have enough nappies, and baby grows . . . What if he gets sick whilst we are away? We don’t know a doctor in Suffolk. What if he needs feeding during the church service? And his naps – how will his naps work? We need to make sure he naps otherwise—’

  Patrick cut me off before I could finish by simply placing a finger over my quivering lips.

  ‘We can do this,’ he said softly. ‘Sure, we are new to this, but it’s not going to be the hardest thing we ever have to go to. It’s a wedding. With friends. And they know we have a newborn. We will figure it out, I promise.’

  That night, I lay in bed and I didn’t feel so certain. Rupert was asleep on my tummy and I was desperately trying to write a list of all the things we needed for the weekend away in order to attend this wedding. So far, the list totalled 78 things.

  Opening up my phone and being careful to quickly turn the bright screen away from Rupert’s face, I typed into Google: ‘Wedding essentials with a newborn’. Hundreds of websites appeared before my eyes and I rapidly clicked through each one, adding items I hadn’t thought about to my list as I read. At 4am that day, I had had exactly ten minutes’ sleep and there were 123 things on my list.

  How the hell were we going to do this?

  * * *

  Four days later and we arrived (two hours late!) to the wedding. Trying to be organised, I had woken at 6am in order to leave enough time to get everything sorted and in the car before our 10am departure. I had embraced the morning with an attitude of ‘I can do anything’ and had been happily loading up the car (note to reader: NOT advised if you have just had a C-section) since 6.35am. I had my list with everything I needed now neatly printed out on A4 paper and was contentedly crossing everything off one by one as I loaded it all into the car.

  The meltdown happened approximately 43 minutes later. With Patrick still snoring happily in bed, Rupert had since woken and I was attempting to feed him whilst simultaneously pouring out enough cat food for our cat Rooski to keep her content whilst we were away. The inevitable happened: the bag of cat food overflowed, biscuits spilled everywhere, Rupert stared yelling (probably because in my shock at the cat food explosion I had moved quickly and stopped feeding). Trying desperately to placate Rupert, I spun around quickly and the bottles of breast milk – which I had spent days before expressing as though my life depended on it – fell to the floor with a cr
ash. And that’s when the tears started (me, not Rupert). At this stage I was attempting combi-feeding, to rid myself of the guilt of stopping breastfeeding, and these were the last bottles of breast milk that I had.

  It didn’t go unnoticed that I was literally crying over spilt milk, but as any mum who has endured hours of being strapped to a breast pump in order to have some milk as a backup knows, this is possibly the worst thing that can happen. Not only had all my hard work literally gone to waste, but in my desire to be organised, I had already got dressed ino my grey silk dress for the wedding and now it was stained all the way down the front with stale-smelling milk.

  An hour later, our bedroom looked like the Apocalypse. Every item of clothing I had ever bought was strewn all over the wooden floorboards and there I was, in the middle of the room, sobbing again. Patrick was at his wits’ end.

  ‘What’s happened? Where’s Rupert? What HAVE you got on?’ He came and pulled at the fuchsia pink pashmina which was hanging from my shoulders and (not so subtly) trying to disguise the ‘far too small’ floral minidress I had bought from Topshop about 12 years ago.

  Yup, it certainly wasn’t my best look.

  ‘Rupert’s in the washing machine. I’m having a meltdown and I’m wearing this because nothing else fits me and I hate my body and I’m not going to the wedding!’ I wailed dramatically and waited for Patrick to sort everything.

  ‘Rupert’s in the washing machine?’ A horrified look passed across his face.

  ‘No, not IN the washing machine . . .’ I didn’t have time to explain as Patrick dashed downstairs and returned ten minutes later with a contented-looking Rupert in his arms.

  ‘I thought you’d lost the plot and put Rupert in for a spin cycle!’

  I laughed despite myself (and just in case you’re wondering, I had actually put Rupert in his baby bouncer in front of the washing machine – a brilliant hack that I now tell all of my clients, as babies love the noise and motion of watching the water go around). As I pulled myself up off the floor, Patrick grimaced in my direction again and handed Rupert over to me.

  ‘You’re not really going to wear that, are you?’ he said, nodding in the direction of my floral ensemble. At that point, as if comic timing couldn’t happen more accurately, Rupert promptly vomited all over my dress. In the immortal words of eighties pop band D:Ream: ‘Things can only get better’.

  Thankfully, despite the unprecedented start to the day, the wedding went like a dream. We crept into the back of the church just as they announced that the bride and groom could kiss and Rupert congratulated them in the only way babies can, by farting loudly. The rest of the day zoomed past in the blink of an eye. Everyone wanted to hold and cuddle Rupert and for the first time in a long time, I had a couple of minutes child-free to chat to friends I hadn’t seen in years and enjoy a sneaky glass of champagne. As if determined to prove he was a good baby, Rupert slept soundly throughout the wedding breakfast. We had brought along a small Moses basket that sat safely next to our table in the corner of the barn where the wedding was taking place and he didn’t even wake when a six-piece Australian band started blaring out nineties chart hits. Looking back, I feel sad that I spent those four days in the run-up to the wedding in such a state. I did what I presume most new mummies do and conjured up every possible nightmare scenario that might have happened (poo explosions over the bride’s dress, hysterical crying during the father-of-the-bride’s speech, an inability to even put the baby down for five minutes so as to have a wee), but as is usually the case, none of them actually happened.

  When Patrick and I flopped into bed that night (at 9pm, I must admit, as it was already way past Rupert’s bedtime), we lay in the darkness and just squeezed each other’s hands. We didn’t have to say anything, but the unspoken words were clear: We had done it. We had survived. We were superhuman.

  The next day, I was woken by a new client who (talk about fate!) had just been invited to a wedding and was panicking because her baby would only be a few months old. I smiled happily down the phone, reassuring her as I spoke that she would be fine and even sending her a WhatsApp photo of Rupert, the day before, being cooed over by a clatter of bridesmaids. As I finished the conversation, I reached for my laptop (Rupert and Patrick were still happily dozing) and made a note of some tips I could share with any clients who might be attending a wedding with a newborn. I still use this list to this day:

  How to survive a wedding with a newborn

  1. Bring as many muslins as humanely possible. I packed ten for this wedding. TEN! And you know what? I wish I’d packed double the amount – it’s simply amazing how many go missing/get thrown up on (and that’s even before you get to the church!).

  2. If you want to drink, bring your breast pump. Everyone knows weddings = champagne, so if, like me, you want to indulge in some bubbles, then a pump will be your new best friend. There were three fellow pumpers at the wedding – all covering up with shawls as the pump did its thing – and then happily quaffing back champagne. ‘Pump and Dump’ is an expression that will become an integral part of your vocabulary if you like a drink or two!

  3. Make a pact with your other half that you will share the childcare duties. The last thing you want at a wedding is to be holding the baby for the entirety so, before you head to the church, agree that you will take it in turns to share the baby load. Patrick and I had determined this the previous day, with me looking after Rupert during the reception (so he could catch up with old school friends) whilst he manned him during the wedding breakfast so I could eat (it’s amazing how difficult eating a full meal becomes when you are a mother).

  4. Get some baby ear defenders. Unfortunately, I hadn’t thought about this in advance. Once the wedding breakfast was over, the party started and the band started playing in full force. Whilst we were happily dancing away, with Rupert in-between us, it was then that I noticed every other baby in the vicinity was wearing small fluorescent ear defenders to block out the sound of the music (and presumably not damage their little eardrums!). I felt like an awful mother as the realisation dawned that I was exposing my baby to live guitar, drums and a sax at a deafening volume, which led to me disappearing outside and ferociously typing ‘baby ear defenders’ into an Amazon order straight away.

  5. At the church, make sure you can sit somewhere with an easy escape route. At the end of the aisle or the back of the church is perfect. After all, the last thing you want is for your baby to start screaming blue murder just when the priest asks if anyone objects to the marriage going ahead!

  6. Stock up on breast pads. There’s nothing worse than rocking a new dress and then noticing you have wet milk patches where your boobs are. It’s always a good idea to have a pashmina or shawl with you at a wedding. Not only does it double up as a breastfeeding shawl, but you can also drape it around you to disguise any milk stains!

  7. Palm your baby off to anyone and everyone! The great thing about weddings is that almost EVERYONE (and I mean everyone) will want to hold your baby. We had a completely fabulous moment when one of our friends from Australia insisted that she take the baby for a walk around the estate grounds to give us a break. If only I’d had a camera to capture her, slightly tipsy, pushing the pram across the lawn with one hand, an espresso martini in the other!

  8. Understand that there will be unglamorous moments. Mid-wedding breakfast (and due to an intense dislike of breastfeeding in public), I found myself traipsing across the car park (in the POURING rain) to get into the back seat of our car in order to feed Rupert. Whilst everyone else was partying the day away, I was boob out in the back of a BMW – oh, the glamour!

  Chapter 21

  It was 11am on a Monday and my working day was commencing with a swim in an infinity pool in Ibiza. The translucent turquoise of the pool water rolled over my shoulders as the sun warmed my back and I did lap after lap. As I pushed my head up out of the water to catch my breath, I could see the unending expanse of the Mediterranean Sea below me, the craggy shelv
es of the cliffs on either side melting into it.

  The flight over had been bittersweet. I was so excited about my work enabling me to travel abroad, but at the same time I was desperately worried about leaving Rupert, who was only a few months old. Granted, he was being looked after by my family and Patrick, but I was already missing those captured smiles in the middle of the day, or the odd gurgle that I had been so used to witnessing, day in, day out. But work called and as it was only a few days away, I knew it was something both Rupert and I could survive.

  When I took on this job, I had a sense it was going to be glamorous. I had been working with Paulina, a new mummy of a six-week-old, since she was eight months pregnant. During her last trimester, I had done bits and bobs for her, such as finding her an antenatal class and packing her hospital bag, but I knew that she wanted to use my services more once the baby arrived. So, when I received a phone call from her, telling me she had booked me a flight to Ibiza, it didn’t really come as much of a shock.

  Heaving myself out of the pool, I reached for my bottle-green sarong that I’d discarded on the floor 40 minutes earlier and drew my wet hair off my face. That was exactly what I needed – a relaxing swim before the chaos started. Feeling refreshed, with the outside thermometer showing 33 degrees, I made my way up the cobbled pathway towards the Ibizan villa that was to be my home for the next four days.

  When I had arrived that morning, sweating profusely under all my luggage and desperately trying to remember some of my schoolgirl Spanish so as to direct the taxi driver, I landed on the villa doorstep with a thump (the luggage, not me!) and an overwhelming sense of awe.

  I don’t think I had ever seen anywhere as beautiful.

  Paulina’s holiday rental was just exquisite. The rustic stone walls, terracotta roof tiles and clouds of pink blossoms heralded it as a traditional finca at heart, but as I stepped inside, I could see that a modern style had been added to the home so as to satisfy more elite and stylish occupants. The entrance hall was seashell-smooth and decorated in shades of cream, sage and coral. Walking into the main open-plan living room, I could see flashes of Ikat painting, blue-painted wooden beams and quirky sculptures (the focal point was a larger-than-life alabaster face). A pillow-piled, two-corner sofa ran along the perimeter of the room’s three walls, taking in the views of the Mediterranean from the floor-to-ceiling sliding doors opposite. As I stepped out onto the main terrace, I was lavished with an unending sight of blue sea, dotted with four elegant wooden sailing boats, their flags dancing in the wind. To the left, I could see some tiny turquoise and white fisherman’s cottages, wrapped in fuchsia bougainvillea. I made a note to go for a walk later that evening and try to find the hidden beach that Paulina had insisted I visit, ‘when all the work is done’.