Hell is other people

I’ve never been any good at joining in. I’m not a team player. It’s no accident that I choose to spend my days in the corner of a library, head down, ears stuffed with ear-plugs. I don’t ever get lonely - solitude is something I thrive on. Without it I get twitchy and somewhat dysfunctional.

So I wasn’t worried about being on maternity leave. I had no office, no colleagues to leave behind. I liked the idea of me and the boy-child hanging out on our own, just the two of us, doing whatever we liked, without anyone knowing what that was.

Unfortunately, I hadn’t reckoned on the compulsory sociability that descends on first time mothers, the unchallenged assumption that you need new friends in the same position as you – comrades to share the burden and discuss sleeping patterns and bowel movements over cups of coffee and slices of baby-weight maintaining cake.

It started with our NCT class before the birth. I was already starting to get twitchy as Papà A and I dutifully trundled off to a church hall to learn how to be parents. It was all my fault, of course, for insisting that we join because it was the thing to do. All my friends had done it, and made lasting friends who got them through the first crazy months of motherhood. They swore by it.

I swore too on the way back home after the first meeting.

‘?!?!****! I won’t do it,’ I muttered to Papà A. ‘I won’t go to any more meetings. I can’t. And all those women are thinner than me! I hate them.’

‘You don’t have to go.’

‘I do! Everyone does! It’s the way it is. I hate it. I don’t want to have a baby if I have to do that.’

[Silence from Papà A]

I spent the first few weeks after the birth launching my new book, and using it as an excuse for not meeting up with the other mothers. Then, feeling guilty, I bit the bullet and joined an exercise group in the park, a post-pregnancy Pilates group, a baby massage class, and singing in the library. But afterwards, while the other mothers chatted nicely and then went off to lunch, I made my excuses and left, desperate to escape. It wasn’t as if we were actually doing anything – a trip to the supermarket at the most – but it was better, in my sleep-deprived mind, than talking to other people in the same boat.

I knew I was being weird.  The other mothers were perfectly nice. We had, at least, the babies in common. They might have been my friends. And everyone else could do it. I hadn’t felt so bad for not joining in since Martha Porter’s party in 1983 when I sat in the corner and refused to sing Happy Birthday.

Even worse, the Boy Child seemed to pick up my bad attitude. Whilst all the other babies lay nicely on their backs in Pilates he would begin a commando attack, inching forward until he could swipe their toys, screeching loudly if anyone stood in his way. I had to struggle not to feel a certain pride and relief when the instructors suggested that it ‘might be time for him to graduate.’ We’d been expelled, and so could leave the class with no guilt.

But the Boy Child must be socialised. He needs an education. And thus it was that I found myself recently in a baby group – not any old baby group, but one with a philosophy, one that leads to a nursery, and up to a school.

The group takes place in the crypt of a church. I approached it somewhat sulkily, intimidated by the mothers milling about outside, chatting while rosy-cheeked children clothed in hand-knitted jumpers ran around screaming.

Everything about the place was wholesome and organic and hand-made.  I managed to secrete the Boy Child’s plastic toy under the pram as the playgroup leader (although she declared that no-one was really the leader, and we must develop our own dynamic) welcomed us in a hushed voice. Babies lay on sheepskin rugs, gurgling. Suppressing my fears about the Boy Child’s ability to be quiet, I joined the other mothers, who were sitting cross-legged in a circle on the floor.

‘We’ll just observe them in free play,’ the leader said, ‘let them do as they wish.’

As the Boy Child lurched towards a cupboard, pulling everything out and putting it in his mouth, I calmed myself with a home-made piece of banana cake and a cup of fennel tea.

The other babies rolled and gurgled and cooed. The other mothers smiled.

‘It’s for his education,’ I told myself. ‘You have to do this.’

I held out quite well for the rest of the afternoon. I didn’t flinch when we had to join hands to make a magic circle. I sang songs to the tune of ‘what shall we do with the drunken sailor’, the words changed to cater to the sensibilities of small children and Islington mothers to ‘what shall we do with the lazy baby’. I even participated in ‘craft time’, where we sat and wound wool around cardboard disks to make pom-poms, something I was bad enough at when I was in the Brownies, and at which I clearly haven’t progressed since, looking at the ratty lump of wool.

When it was time for the Boy Child’s milk, I got his bottle out of my bag. As the leader looked slightly nonplussed, I realised that the other mothers had been breastfeeding on and off all the time we’d been there.

‘I need to warm this up,’ I said sheepishly. ‘Is that a microwave over there?’

‘Oh no!’ she said in horror. ‘We don’t use microwaves here.’

I snuck out soon after, raggedy pom-pom dangling forlornly from the Boy Child’s pram…

Crying it out

I write this sitting at the kitchen table in the dead of night, the Boy Child asleep upstairs. I am wearing - for the first time in a year and a half - an underwired bra. 

I am not telling you this for salacious reasons, like one of those bored housewives who tells eager callers about her lingerie for cash as she does the ironing. There is, in fact, a link.

The major design flaw in our adorable Boy Child is that he isn’t a fan of going to sleep. Granted, when he was tiny, he would snooze in the corner of the kitchen in his pram.

‘If he carries on like this,’ I told Papà A fondly, ‘I’ll be able to get loads of writing done. You hardly notice he’s there.’

How wrong I was. As he grew bigger, the Boy Child’s naps grew shorter – both during the day and at night. When he was born he’d happily sleep for five hours at a stretch, but by the time he was three months he was waking every two, demanding succour from the Lady V bosom and not giving up until he got it. Bleary-eyed, I would stagger from my bed, pick up the writhing little scrap, get back into bed, lean back and doze off while he slurped and snuffled at my nipple, until, satiated, he would give a sharp flick of his head (gums still attached to tender flesh) to let me know he was finished. I’d put him back in his cot hoping for the best but knowing that in a couple of hours he’d be back for more.

My days were spent on auto-pilot, waiting for when it was time to go back to bed. I pushed his pram around the streets feeling I was wading through mud. My front door keys were left in the lock for passers-by to break in. I filed yoghurt away in the cutlery drawer. I had conversations that I couldn’t remember 5 minutes later. It was like being very drunk but without the fun.

Try as I might, I couldn’t work out what was wrong. At two months we began a bedtime routine, as suggested by all the books and about the only thing they all agree is absolutely vital for a good night’s sleep. Wind-down, story, bath and bed in his own cot away from everyone else. The Boy Child resisted, screaming that he wanted to rejoin the party. 

I talked to other mothers, who smilingly told me about their babies sleeping through the night. The Boy Child’s lack of sleep became a topic of discussion all over Islington, in playgroups, Pilates classes and prams in the park.

Over the summer, in Italy, things got worse. Whipped into a frenzy of excitement by the various goings-on described in my previous post, the Boy Child decided that he didn’t want to miss any of it, and began to wake every hour. One night we even drugged him with Calpol. Instead of dropping off into sweet slumber like all the other babies I know of, he went into a strange, giggly state, stoned, yet alert, and still he did not sleep.

By the time we returned to London I was on my knees. After a particularly embarrassing breakdown at a house party in Somerset, by which time I had begun to hear noises instead of conversation and see dizzying, hallucinatory flashes of colour instead of people, we made the decision: to try controlled crying.

Now, people say all kinds of things about controlled crying. For some, it’s akin to child abuse. For others, it’s the first step on the road to showing your child who’s boss. I didn’t have a position on it. I just knew that I needed to sleep, and that if the Boy Child slept then so would I.  It would also – and here’s the link to the bra – mean that I’d be able to stop breastfeeding, which was vital for me being able to get back to the library and write the masterpiece that would keep us all in Chianti for years to come. As long as the Boy Child kept waking through the night, I would have to keep feeding him, because the thought of going downstairs to warm up bottles was even worse. So the two would happen together. We had just a week to get it right before Papà A went off to Southern Europe in his own frenzy of consultancy hunter-gathering to keep the family fed and watered.

The technique is thus: when the baby cries, you go to it and settle it but don’t pick it up. After a minute in the room you leave, and wait for five more minutes before going in, then a minute inside, then wait for ten. Repeat until the baby has sobbed itself to sleep.

The only strategy, it seemed, was to divide and rule. Everyone I spoke to told me that controlled crying is horrible for the mother, who has to be prevented by the father from going to the child. We decided to swap rooms for the duration - Papà A and Shu Shu T sleeping in my room next to the Boy Child; me and DJ S (delighted at the thought of a week’s proper sleep) scuttling downstairs to the basement out of earshot.

The first evening Papà A and I settled down in front of a movie and waited. When the first small whimpers came, I felt a chill run through my body.

‘This WILL work. I’m going to break him,’ said Papà A, with a certain amount of satisfaction.

I gave a small whimper of my own and tried to turn my attention to the screen. As the screams grew louder, Papà A took the baby monitor and turned off the sound, so all I could see was the red flash of the light, which means full on screams. A flood of maternal instinct began to wash over me.

‘I’ll go.’

‘No, I’ll go.’

‘No, really.’ I set off up the stairs before he could stop me.

I opened the nursery door to see a small, frenzied child beating his head against the bars of his cot, screaming loud enough to break the sound barrier. As I walked towards him he raised his arms towards me to be lifted up. ‘Shh,’ I said, ineffectually, and stroked his forehead. There was a moment of silence, probably from shock, then he started again, louder than before. It’s hard to count to a minute when a baby’s screaming like that, but those are the rules. As I stood up and walked out of the door, my breasts began to leak as if they were crying in sympathy.

I came downstairs shaking.

‘Do you think, maybe, we could…?’

‘No! I knew you would crack if you went up there.’

Papà A and I have never had a row before, however there followed a few minutes that I shall not describe, since I suspect they would make neither of us look very good. Suffice to say that words were spoken through gritted teeth and I soon made my excuses and retired to bed.

The next morning when I went into the Boy Child’s room to start the day there were none of his usual smiles: he turned his head away. As the day went on, and he continued to ignore me, I began to panic. I started to imagine the therapist’s couch in years to come, the Boy Child now a suicidal adult, muttering that ‘of course, my mother never really loved me, she used to leave me to cry myself to sleep EVERY NIGHT.’

There were tears before bedtime that day, and not just from the Boy Child.

Most babies are, to use Papà A’s phrase, ‘broken’ after a couple of nights of this. Perhaps it is a tribute to the Boy Child’s staying power that it took him a week. Slowly, but surely, he began to get the message, and Papà A would come downstairs looking marginally better rested, and utter the longed-for words ‘he only woke up once.’

And finally, joyfully, the Boy Child started sleeping through the night. I have stopped dreading going to bed. I can walk up the stairs without feeling like I’m going to pass out. I have participated in a conversation where someone used the term ‘ideology’ more than once and I understood what was going on. In short, I am a new woman.

Even better, from DJ S’s point of view, is the change in underwear. One of the worst parts of pregnancy and childbirth, according to her, was the vile and enormous lingerie that it required. Underwires not being recommended as they can damage milk ducts, and flip down cups necessary for feeding, I have been forced to contain the Lady V bosom in bras that can only be described as serviceable. Still, installed in the front window of our kitchen, I would unhook said serviceable items and expose myself to passers by like a whore in Amsterdam’s red light district. I found breastfeeding an odd experience, involving bodily exposure in the most unlikely of places, from the middle of an Ikea showroom to an audience of giggling schoolchildren at a literary festival in the French Alps. Some women find it the zenith of feminine nurture. For me it was a bit uncomfortable, slightly embarrassing and somewhat damp.

But now, thank god, it’s over. And so, to celebrate my newfound freedom to sleep, and the return of my body to other pursuits, I shall be taking a trip to Rigby and Peller, purveyor of lingerie to the Queen. I shall be reporting back, forthwith.

Fa latte

Summertime. And as the watery British sun filtered through the clouds, our little family cut its losses and did what was only right and proper: fled the country, weighed down by a plethora of bottles, sterilisers, eco-nappies for the Boy Child’s sensitive little bum, squeaky toys and improving books. Plus assorted robes, headdresses and jewels from the National Theatre’s costume department for our annual costume party at our house in Tuscany. (NB: I am aware that this makes us sound like New Labour politicians - or at the very least, somewhat smug. Although we live in Islington we could never be accused of being champagne socialists. We drink only prosecco, imported directly from the motherland).

I am not going to recount the journey – which happened to be the Boy Child’s first trip on a plane. Having eschewed budget airlines for British Airways it was a slightly better experience than expected, but still painful. Enough said.  Thus followed a short visit to the ancestral home and to Granny, who had spent weeks agonising about bedroom allocation so as not to alert the maid to The Situation, almost resorting to forcing myself and Papà A to share a room until he pointed out that she had in fact never shared a room with her own husband and that it was quite proper for a family of aristocratic standing to – in matters of repose at least – divide and rule. The Boy Child behaved impeccably, taking one for the team as he dipped and bobbed in the pool, which she had had cleaned especially, almost without a murmur.

Duty completed, we drove off down the peninsula to our little Tuscan hideaway. This may conjure up images of rolling hills dotted with cypresses and the odd medieval hilltop town. Wrong. Where we are is cowboy country, swampy marshland once drained by Mussolini and now covered in dense woodland, which houses a menagerie of wild boar, wolves and venomous snakes. Maremma is the Gordon Brown to Chianti’s Tony Blair – darker, brooding, and not remotely concerned with keeping up appearances. The valley in which the house is situated is known - by us at least - as Mordor, due to its tendency towards howling gales and storms whilst the rest of Tuscany basks in golden sunlight.

However, as we inched up the almost vertical hill that leads to the house, pushing our hire car to its limits, I breathed a sigh of relief at being back. This place has many happy memories for us, one being our decision to take the leap of faith into the strange and wonderful world of parenthood. I wondered to myself how the presence of the Boy Child might affect the holiday.

As the house filled up with the usual assortment of misfits, drunks and homosexuals (ie our friends), I began to realise that the answer to my question was at once not much and entirely. On the surface of things little had changed: prosecco was still opened at 11am, a medley of cheesy pop and 70s Afrobeat boomed from the speakers, and dinners stretched on late into the night. But the Boy Child was there, and making his mark. I began to realise that being on holiday with children is not being on holiday. It’s like every other day but without the reassuring routine of home. It means entertaining them without the usual means at your disposal. Children don’t know that lie-ins are the main point of being on holiday. Before the arrival of the Boy Child the only time I experienced morning was if I hadn’t been to bed the night before. Now I was up at 7 every day.

However, luckily, I wasn’t the only mother in the house, which gave me the long awaited opportunity to observe at close quarters an entity of mythical status: the Italian Mamma, revered, reviled, respected and feared by the males in our house in equal proportions. I was eager to find out why.

My sample was:

C: ever-smiling primary teacher from Bologna. Mother to 4 year old twin boys, married to the equally smiley F, who copes with the never-ending energy of their sons by making frequent dips into an jam-jar containing some of the strongest weed ever known to man. Makes excellent ragù.

Parenting style: firm but fair, videos of Toy Story on repeat, food offered at regular intervals, small glasses of red wine imbibed at regular intervals, JM cigarette constantly to hand.

M-C: throatily glamorous divorcee from Sicily. Mother to the 4 year old R, a golden-locked ridiculously beautiful boy, given to fighting with above-mentioned twins and wearing his mother’s jewellery. Makes excellent gin-and-tonics.

Parenting style: damage limitation of son’s violent streak, finger painting to Botticelli standards, food offered at regular intervals, large glasses of white wine imbibed at regular intervals, Marlboro Light constantly to hand.

S: a force of nature, known to dive for octopi clad in nothing but bikini bottoms and a knife between her teeth, ripping them from the rocks with only her bare hands. Mother to the 3 year old F, a light breeze to her mother’s tornado, and the smiliest, roundest little cherub you ever clapped eyes upon, and who will of course be leading the Boy Child up the sentiero di giardino as soon as he’s old enough to follow her. Partnered to The Silver Fox, a genial Sicilian of middle years, of Falstaffian proportions and appetite.  Likes to offer traditional Sicilian remedies for all childhood ailments, which usually begin with the phrase ‘first grind together with salt and garlic the carcasses of 25 slugs.’ Makes excellent everything.

Parenting style: has only to raise an eyebrow to get her point across, screenings of the execrable 70s cartoon Heidi when F will not go to bed, cordon bleu standard food offered at regular intervals, entire bottles of prosecco imbibed without interval, Camel Light constantly to hand.

A sudden gust of fresh air blew away the army of Islington yummy mummies that I’d spent the last 6 months with.  Gone was any pretence at remaining organic; the thought of post-pregnancy Pilates banished. These were women who said that their obstetricians insisted that they didn’t give up smoking whilst pregnant because of the shock it would give their unborn child. Bottles of lunchtime beer were explained away by the handy phrase ‘fa latte’ – or ‘makes milk.’

My downfall was swift.  One night, after an excellent dinner, having given the Boy Child to his father for the night, I sat at the kitchen table with S & M-C. A few bottles in, I gave way to a year and a half’s worth of cravings and demanded cigarettes.

That first inhalation was divine – and all the better for being the epitome of mummy badness.  S and M-C welcomed me into the bosom of bad maternal behaviour and we toasted to the agony of childbirth, telling ourselves we deserved a little bit of fun.

Before I knew it, it was 7 am and I woke, naked and sweating alcohol into one of the bunk beds that we had had made for future use by the children. Cursing lightly, I fumbled for my expressing machine so that I could express the boozy milk, a practice somewhat vulgarly known as pump and dump. Papà A and I had agreed on this strategy the night before – all was well. Apart from the loss of a valve absolutely necessary for the functioning of said pump.

Which is how Papà A found me crouched over the bathroom sink trying to milk my ample bosom, by now bursting with vile and poisoned liquid, weeping lightly at my bad behaviour. Giving a light tut, he sent me to bed and took the Boy Child off for some formula.

I woke, several hours later, to a raging headache and the dulcet tones of C, who not only reassured me that I had done NOTHING wrong and that frankly, ANY mother would feel the same way, but that she had nipped down to the village and hired a breast pump which we could keep for as long as we liked. Bursting into tears of gratitude, I immediately attached it to my enormous tits, and sank into a state of blessed relief.

We found the rogue valve two hours later under the barbecue.

I am still working on the retrieval of my lost dignity.