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’s going to be weird.
·
The creation of new grandparents /
aunts and uncles is (to use my friend Matt’s phrase) utterly utter; people you
know so well in one capacity suddenly show a whole new baby-adoring side. This
is also true of friends, and M now has a zillion pseudo godparents scattered
around the country (nay the world – HEY MALAWI!) Plus I have loved the freedom
to visit my mum and dad more – a midweek stay at Hotel Des Parents is a bloody
top treat, even if I always drink too much, sleep terribly, and demand constant
naps though my own poor impulse control.
·
Discovering new places. There are
walks / cafes / shops around Brighton that I never knew existed until I had the
luxury of time to explore properly. The last few months the city has felt more
like home than ever before.
·
New friends. My new parent pals are
far from convenient coffee drinkers used to pad out an otherwise lonely day. I
have met some amazing people through NCT / Mush / clubs – women who are
doctors, architects, business owners etc. etc. and who care even less about
Cath Kidston than I do. And their menfolk are pretty sound too. They are
wicked, I owe them a lot, and one day I will write a whole post just for them.
·
For a long time he didn’t read any of
this blog because he was convinced I would be writing embarrassing things about
him, and I didn’t even pen a father’s day special for fear of making him blush.
All I will say is that for the past few months he has been a rock. A big, sexy,
new-daddy rock who is much better at baby tickling than me, and is an all-round
bloody miracle.
Worst Bits
·
Mornings again. I really, really,
really want a lie-in and M really, really, really doesn’t. Must begin going to
bed at 8pm to maximise zzzs and stop watching hours of The Good Wife when I
have a night to myself.
·
The run-up to the birth, when I was
huge and lonely and cross, was a bummer. I have made a solemn vow NEVER to tell
anyone to ‘make the most of it’ when they are lying on the sofa awaiting the
arrival of their babe. You cannot bank sleep. I’m still pleased I finished a
fortnight before my due date, even though M was late – going to work at that
point would have been a feat of endurance and pretty miserable for my students,
too, as I was a Grade A grumpster.
·
Local geography. When you have a baby
you suddenly feel compelled to go for a walk every day, and thus you become
very familiar with your surroundings. I live on a very steep hill which is
infested with wheelie bins. I thought I would get less sweaty doing the hill
climb as I got used to it. I was wrong. And the wheelie bin horde is growing
ever stronger.
·
Personal grooming. I took M when I
had my highlights done, and she has come several times to the ‘brow bar’. She
has always been good as gold and yet I really hate it – highlights and
threading always take longer than I realise, and I spend the entire time
thinking (unfairly) ‘she is going to cry, please hurry up, she is going to cry,
please hurry up’ on a loop.
·
Some days I do things other than sing
‘the wheels on the bus’, e.g. write blog posts, read ‘Mumsnet madness’, lie
down and imagine I am on a beach, etc. And when I glance over at M amusing
herself with a teddy / spoon / box / pair of secateurs / deadly tarantula I
feel one of two things: “Independent play is so important! She looks so happy
and content!” or “She looks so lonely! Is she lonely? She is considering ending
it all with the secateurs”. These feelings come and go throughout the course of
every single day.
·
The cat. Deep down I love our cat,
but more than once I have called her a ‘needy bitch’ out loud. Mainly when I
was very sleep deprived. I am not proud of this, but I have never known such a
clingy feline; it’s like living with five different animals all desperate to
sit in the sink while you pee / trip you up on the stairs / prod your face at
3am. And she only wants to sleep in cots, high chairs, buggies, or anywhere
else where the discovery of fluffy deposits of black fur will annoy me the
absolute most.
·
Constantly being in the house and
constantly doing some form of house work. Leave me alone, dishwasher.
I am trepidacious about going back to work and
managing it alongside being a ma. I used to get so tired after a busy week that
I would retire to bed at 9pm in tears for no reason, and I keep wondering how I
will manage when I feel like that AND have all the other stuff to worry about
too: getting home in time for bedtime, riding out night waking and teething,
missing her ridiculous grinning face. But I also have a job and colleagues that
I really, really like, and I’m looking forward to being part of it all again.
Plus, C is on full paternity leave until Christmas, so the navigation of
nursery etc. doesn’t start quite yet, and he can deal with the dishwasher and the
cat for a bit.
I reckon we’ll be alright.
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