But what happened to me?

I had lunch with a friend this week.  She has a delicious little boy who is now about 7 months old and has just started weaning.  She sat at the table trying to post grub in to his little mouth whilst contending with flailing arms and spoon grabbing and raspberry blowing and all the other joys that come with weaning.  “It takes so long…” she said to me.  I think she was expecting me to show her how to make it all go more smoothly – surely this wasn’t the way it was supposed to be?  By the end of a half hour most of the food was either on my friend, the floor, the walls, or the dog had eaten it as it had fallen on the floor and was fair game…  Her son looked pretty pleased with himself until she tried to wipe his face which was the final insult.

It takes a lot of time feeding babies…  You can trick them in to letting you hold the spoon by giving them a second one, you can use a second person to distract them or to restrain the flailing limbs, but generally speaking it is a messy and time heavy occupation.  It is also very emotional feeding a child who is not as enthusiastic as you are about the carefully crafted courgette puree with poached free-range chicken.  “It does get better…” I found myself saying to my exasperated, vegetable smeared friend.  “It is definitely better than it was..” she said, her voice slightly tired.  She has been doing this three times a day for about a month now and it is improving but she still has a long way to go.

What is really amazing is that you really do forget how long it all takes that by the time number two comes along you are strangely unprepared.  Again.  You have to relearn it all and now have the added distraction of a toddler running around your ankles.  Already thinking about number two, my friend and I had the brief discussion about the perfect gap between babies.  I did advise that she try sooner rather than later given that it is perfectly normal to expect one in three pregnancies to end in a miscarriage and sometimes conceiving for a second time can be strangely elusive.  I do advise everyone who is considering it to seriously think about being pregnant with number two before your first-born turns two.  The terrible twos can really take you by surprise in some children and had I not already been pregnant when it hit my eldest daughter, I possibly would have thought about the benefits of just having an only child, so extraordinary was her behaviour.  As it was I was already pregnant and it was too late to do anything but watch in amazement and wonder what I had created.

Which leads me to my point, after you have had a baby, what happens to you?  Where do you vanish to?  Your whole life is taken up by the wonderful life you have created and consequently the fundamentals of who you are:  your job, your friends who haven’t got kids, your hobbies, your figure and things you used to enjoy (do you remember going to the cinema… oh the luxury – and what about Sunday morning lie-ins reading the Sunday papers with a cup of coffee… what happened to that!?) seem to be fall by the wayside.  Where is the “me” time…

I do think it is important to try to get as much of your own life back as soon as you can, but also acknowledge that for a lot of us, something has to give and that tiny person becomes more important than ourselves – as it should be.  Your family relies on you and you are the lynch pin, about which everything revolves.  Your priorities as a couple shift and it is usually the mother who carries the largest burden.  I am here to tell you, though, that with a little patience and some lateral thought, you will find yourself again at the other end of that dark tunnel.  I remember running after my children in a playground whilst a lady sat reading a magazine, and her smiling and saying “soon…” and she was right.  There comes a time when you can read a whole book, go to the hairdressers, get some regular exercise, sit on the loo without someone sitting on your knee and spend time with your partner, get a babysitter and go to the cinema and with a little training your children can get themselves breakfast and let you lie in on a Sunday sometimes, too.  You may even find a new and different challenging career to focus on which fits in around your children.  But you do have to get through the hard, mucky bit first.

My friend sat there yesterday, showered and dressed, having driven across London to arrive on time for lunch, her son fat and happy, well cared for and healthy - a little miracle!  We chatted about how hard motherhood was but how worth it, too.  “When they are at school,” I said with a smile, “you suddenly find yourself again…”  My friend’s face fell a little bit “But that is so long!” she wailed.  Yes, I know that six years seems a very long time, but it is all relative, and in the life of your baby and you, really it is such a short time, and the sacrifice really is worth it.  I promise.