Becky Boop

Unbelievably, my maternity leave is almost over. On Friday I go back to school for a shiny new academic year, and Craig’s turn at baby wrangling begins. It feels moments since I sat on my bed in January, writing an annoyed blog post about watching Mandy Moore have triplets in ‘This is Us’, but all of a sudden M is seven months old and I’ve been off for ages. In the spirit of reflection, I have decided to jot down the best and worst bits of my leave, before it’s over. So here it is: Maternity Leave, The Review. Best Bits ·          Every morning in the week, C makes a bottle of milk and a cup of tea and leaves them next to me, before depositing M in our bed still all warm and snuggly in her PJs. She has the bottle, I have the tea, and then we lie around until I remember she is wearing her overnight nappy and therefore there’s wee in the bed. From next week, I will be the bringer of sustenance but also the shutter of the front door at 7.15am, leaving my two faves to snuggle. It’

I have had the great privilege recently of knowing not one but two families in the early stages of raising twins. Obviously I can’t speak for them – I can’t even imagine the complexity of such a mammoth task – but one thing I do know, because they have told me, is that it is hard. One friend, when I saw her last week, told me she was deliriously happy but also felt she had no understanding of quite how tough it was going to be. Partly because nobody  really  told her what to expect. I was chatting to the parents of some friends about this (who have also raised twins) and we were thinking about the nature of advice, and how every new mother feels, somehow, like they didn’t really know what to expect and that they could have been better forewarned / forearmed. This is such a predominant theme among new parents, and I have heard variations on it (and said it myself) a zillion times. Why wasn’t I warned? How could I feel so unprepared? Why did I go in blind? Why wasn’t this in the bo

After last week’s very serious post about empathy and children, I have been thinking more about my absolute inability to ‘curate my viewing’, as my friend Ben put it, in the light of impending/new maternity. If you had asked me a year ago which films should be avoided in this psychologically delicate state, I would have got as far as ‘Rosemary’s Baby’, and that’s about it. I’m not a horror nerd, although I do like horror films, and I am sure there are several involving pregnancy and babies, but they had not crossed my path. Children, sure –  The Shining ,  Don’t Look Now , even things like  The Woman in Black and  The Others . But not necessarily babies. What follows is a list of films I have watched recently that seemed, as per the previous post, to be SPEAKING DIRECTLY TO ME, and which I almost immediately wished I hadn’t seen. Massive spoilers ahead. The Witch Have you ever considered the answer to the question, ‘how can we make breastfeeding frightening’? Robert Eggers has

When I was at university we had a professor who surprised everyone by saying that, if it were possible, he might like to have ‘The Pillowman’ banned. The play, which features a series of brilliant but brutal scenes and stories of abuse, had changed for him fundamentally as he grew older. He mentioned having a child as a turning point, a softening. The suggestion was that by becoming responsible for a tiny life, your view of the world could shift. Art which you had previously tolerated, even liked, could suddenly take on a new meaning, your tastes changing as your perspective shifted. At the time I didn’t fully understand what he meant – I think as a class we prided ourselves on our ability to handle quite shocking drama and subjects – but I am beginning to now. It goes without saying that the first few days of motherhood are emotionally overwhelming, and that new mothers cry  a lot . What I hadn’t really bargained on was the longer term effect it would have on how I saw the world,

Last week C had a week-long job scheduled out in Germany, and we decided that the nicest way of managing his potential time away from home was for me and M to go along with him. We’d hang loose in the daytime, just as we do normally, and then we could fill our evenings with Weissbier and sauerkraut and Craig wouldn’t have to go ages without seeing his beloved firstborn. This seemed a sound plan when it was made a couple of months ago – a 15-week old sounded practically grown up to us at that point. But man did it roll round quickly. And so it was that I found myself at 4am last Saturday deliberately waking Maggie up in order to get her into the car to Heathrow (much to her chagrin, since she was just getting used to being told to put a sock in it at 4am). Here is what the ensuing week taught me: 1. Babies need hold luggage C booked carry-on only for the bambino, reasoning that her clothes are very tiny and there would be a washing machine there anyway. Clothes ain’t the half of

There is a website where you can buy maternity bras, and it is called Hot Milk. Just think about that for a second. Hot Milk. I don’t even know where to begin. The following thoughts occur to me: 1. It would hurt if your breasts dispensed hot milk. 2. It would also give a whole new dimension to the idea of the Babyccino. You could start your own sideline as a baby coffee machine. 3. Hot denotes sexy, and linking this to milk suggests that lactating boobs are therefore a sexy proposition. This is pretty niche. I am awed by the female body, including our ability to feed infants, but I’m not sure ‘sexy’ is the word I would use. 4. Is it a riff on Got Milk? Have they jettisoned the question mark in order to make people feel more certain about buying their bras? 5. This website seems to be suggesting that maternity bras themselves can be sexy, rather than the unsupportive boob-squishing pseudo-sports bra design that I have become familiar with. And it is on point five that

There is a button, introduced to me by my friend Simon, which I use more and more the deeper I get into maternity leave. It is not a real button, it’s a metaphorical one, but I still imagine it as big and red, and making a satisfying ‘thunk’ when activated. This is the charmingly-named ‘fuck it’ button, and you use it to keep yourself sane. For example… Scenario 1: The door bell rings. You pick the baby up. The baby suddenly does a poo of such velocity that it miraculously leaps from her nappy and down her leg, from whence it travels all down your boob and also your leg and, somehow, a bit of your hair. When to activate the button: You’re still going to have to answer the door, so you press the button and use the baby as a human shield to cover up both her and your own pooey state. This exacerbates the clean up operation no end, but at least you look clean when you open the door to the Yodel guy. Scenario 2: You and the baby go swimming, you are delighted with how much she lov

When you become a parent, you become someone else’s lifeline. Obviously breastfeeding makes this fact very palpable and obvious, but it’s true of every aspect of looking after a baby. The responsibility can be overwhelming if you think about it for more than five minutes / when tired / when hormonal. It’s quite often said in baby books and on the several thousand websites I seem to peruse daily that mothering is hard because it’s all give and not much take. You’re the lifeline, busy providing and sustaining, but sometimes you need to be the one being looked after. And I have been, in so many ways, by so many people. This is a list of some of lifelines that have been cast my way in the last 11 weeks, big and small. I couldn’t have done it without them. Midwives, because they… Look sympathetic and give you a hug when you burst into tears in hospital about the fact you have constipation, despite the fact that they are juggling a dozen far more serious issues, as well as other crazy

So, there I was, twenty hours into labour and being told the baby was breech. My first thought was “bloody hell”, my second thought was “my sodding midwife”, and my third thought was “thank Christ for that, my vagina is saved”, in that order. This meant that I promptly burst into tears and then recovered myself in very quick succession. I was told that there was no chance of manually turning the baby as my waters had broken (wouldn’t have done that anyway, sounds awful) and my options were to have a C-section or attempt delivery. I think I’d opted for a section before the doctor had even finished her sentence. After that everything sped up. I was taken to a room on a different floor, where an earnest anaesthetist explained the risks of the operation and the anaesthetic. I tried manfully (womanfully?) to listen politely, but by this point my contractions were coming every two minutes and it felt like my womb/pelvic floor was transforming into some kind of Iron Maiden. Periodically

Diary of a Day in Labour Yesterday I got a lovely message from an old friend who had a baby a while ago. In it, she mentioned how much about the first few months of motherhood you forget. As babies get older, new memories replace the old, and new challenges eclipse those you faced the weeks or months before. The last few weeks have gone so fast, and my daughter has changed so much already, that I have decided to try and record what I remember about the whole experience before the details get lost in a fog of sleeplessness and outgrown baby grows. In this spirit, I have had a go at recapturing what happened the day M was born. You spend approx. eight months considering all the possibilities surrounding labour and birth, worrying / planning / daydreaming your way around all the details, and then – as with everything in life – nothing plays out quite how you expected it. This is what I remember, with as few details left out as possible – for which, apologies in advance. Setting t

Tiredness is… Emptying a can of sweetcorn into a sieve in the sink, before realising the sieve is upside down. Walking down the ridiculously steep hill you live on, feeling quietly proud of yourself for getting the baby in the sling and all her bits and bobs in a bag, then remembering you’ve forgotten to put your own coat or jumper on. Locking yourself out of the house with the baby inside (not quite as bad as it sounds – see previous post). Forgetting to invite one of your best friends to your birthday. Making it to the Post Office 0.5 miles from your house and feeling like Captain Oates. Being so bad tempered that you tell the cat to fuck off. Also, envying the cat for sleeping so much. Having utterly nonsensical arguments that go something like this: You: I’m so sad I can’t leave the house tomorrow to meet X because the baby has a cold. Them: Not to worry, you can always rearrange. You: WHY ARE YOU ALWAYS TELLING ME OFF? Consuming three bowls of cereal, three