Lies We Tell Mothers: A True Story

by Suzy K Quinn

  What a relief.

  I told Lexi that the new baby was called Laya. Like the princess in Star Wars.

  Lexi asked again about chocolate.

  I worried Lexi would be upset about me being in hospital, but she was getting loads of attention from Nana and Grandad. Her sobbing, anxious mess of a mother was not a necessity.

  Things were OK.

  After a few nights in hospital, during which I met a woman who had a fourteen-pound baby that needed two doctors to lift it out, Laya and I were driven home by – yes, you’ve guessed it – the same Thai-sunset taxi driver.

  That was a long journey.

  #28 LIE – TWO KIDS ARE THE SAME WORK AS HAVING ONE

  Home at last and so it began – another cycle of newborn nurturing.

  We should have cracked this baby business by now, but there were more lessons to learn before we reached the holy grail of family happiness.

  Exhaustion, recovery from a major operation, morphine withdrawal (I’m not an addict!), baby blues, an energetic toddler AND a newborn baby made me a physical and emotional wreck.

  I was so, so anxious for the first month that I barely slept.

  Bloody hormones again.

  I just wasn’t myself. I snapped at Demi over everything (he might say this is exactly like myself, but he is wrong – like he is about everything . . .). I cried for no reason. I kept going on and on about how I couldn’t do this. I felt totally overwhelmed.

  When I wasn’t panicking about the near future, there was the long-term future to worry about.

  How on EARTH was I going to work when my brain had stopped functioning? I was so much dumber than when I’d had Lexi. Post-Laya, people’s names escaped me. People I’d known all my life.

  Laya grew up learning that ‘Umm . . . Errr’ were common enough vocabulary words to use on a regular basis. ‘Umm . . . Mummy, errr . . . need a wee.’

  If I couldn’t think, I couldn’t work and I couldn’t earn money and Laya just woke up again and ARRRG! WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE!

  If I’d bothered to slow down for a minute and connect with reality (nobody is dying and I hadn’t gone that mad from lack of sleep), I would have seen that everything was fine.

  Better than fine. My parents were around to help out. Demi was lovely. The kids were healthy. We had a family home and a mould-free shower. A very safe family car. We knew how to fit the child seats and fold up the buggy in a matter of seconds.

  Still, anxiety gnawed at me day and night, and this time I couldn’t escape into a world of cheery Christmas rom-com with a sleeping baby on my stomach. Childcare was now twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.

  Before I had Laya, people said two kids were easy. ‘You’ve already got the equipment, so you just sort of slot them in. It’s no more work than one.’

  For me, it felt like a LOT more work.

  I fed Laya every two and a half hours. I changed her. I rocked her and put her to sleep. I did humiliating breast-pumping on my sore boobs. And in the brief moments she slept, I cared for a verbally abusive toddler who screamed because I wasn’t paying attention to her latest scribbled masterpiece.

  When Lexi was born, there were some OK moments. Usually – and no, I’m not trying to be funny – when she was asleep. I got to watch a lot of Christmas movies and eat chocolate cake.

  With a toddler and a baby, you don’t get chocolate cake. Or Christmas movies. Well, you might get the chocolate cake, but you have to stuff it into your mouth while your toddler isn’t looking.

  I could not sit and stare into space while the baby slept, idly considering all the washing-up I should do.

  No.

  Lexi demanded adoration all day. And three meals. And a bath. All this while feeding and jiggling a newborn every few hours.

  With Lexi, I’d still clung to the last remnants of my old life – albeit with white knuckles. Demi and I had a meal out occasionally. I did yoga once a week. Sometimes, Lexi and I ventured out of the house together. I had a small degree of independence.

  (Demi: ‘I don’t remember having meals out. Are you counting eating fish and chips, sitting on our pink carpet because we didn’t have a dining table back then?’)

  All that changed with baby number two. This was for real now. Parenting with a capital P. No turning back. Swim with the tide or drown.

  My biggest struggle with Lexi had been feeling like I was doing a shit job.

  This time around, I was fully accepting that I was doing a shit job. My struggle now was wanting a break from the shit job.

  ‘You need to slow down,’ said Demi. ‘Take things easy. Accept you can’t do as much. Get used to being at home. Enjoy it.’

  ‘But I don’t want to do that,’ I said. ‘That sounds really boring. I just need to get organised. Do some forward-planning. I’m sure if I work out the timings, I can take a newborn breastfeeding baby and a toddler into town and have a nice lunch somewhere.’

  ‘Well, if you’re sure . . .’ said Demi uncertainly.

  I decided not to drive the car into town because I couldn’t drive and breastfeed Laya at the same time, and this would make timings extremely difficult.

  A trip to town on the bus was planned.

  Road trip!

  At first, things seemed OK. Lexi left the house with two different shoes on and her pyjama bottoms, but she was dressed so I counted this as a victory. I breastfed Laya at the back of the bus, glaring at anyone who looked in our direction.

  Then it all went horribly wrong.

  I’d forgotten.

  Toddlers take so long to walk anywhere.

  With a newborn screaming to be fed, dragging a toddler to the nearest toilet is awful. So is sitting on a closed toilet seat with a toddler at your knees, urging a newborn baby to hurry up and feed.

  On the way home, the bus driver wouldn’t let us on the bus.

  ‘I’m not set up for that,’ he said, jabbing a thumb at the buggy. ‘You’ll have to wait for an accessible bus.’

  ‘When’s that due?’ I asked.

  ‘Could be three hours or more. Who can say? We’ve only got a couple of them on the route.’

  ‘We need to get on this bus,’ I insisted. ‘For medical reasons.’

  ‘What medical reasons?’

  ‘I have to breastfeed in ten minutes. I’ll fold the buggy up. It folds up.’

  Ignoring the bus driver’s protestations, I humped the buggy on to the bus, dragging Lexi behind me, and proceeded to empty the overly full buggy basket of wet wipes, spare clothes, boob cream, snacks, etc. on to the luggage rack.

  Then I tried to fold the buggy, kicking the Maclaren folding mechanism like a motorbike pedal, until eventually it succumbed.

  ‘You can’t put that buggy on the rack,’ said the driver. ‘It’s dangerous.’

  ‘Not as dangerous as I’ll be if you don’t let us on this bus!’

  He let us on.

  I got home in tears, vowing never to leave the house again. But I really wanted to leave the house.

  I began to sympathise with those 1950s women who took ‘mother’s little helpers’ to see them through the boring days.

  When Demi came home, I let it all out. How furious I felt about being trapped inside, not able to stretch my legs, getting fatter and fatter, not even being able to watch Christmas movies because I had a toddler running around saying ‘Mummy, Mummy, Mummy!’ and wrecking the place.

  True, sometimes Lexi went to nursery and sometimes my parents took care of her. But most of the time she was home with me.

  I didn’t enjoy sitting on my big, fat arse, breastfeeding while trying to entertain a toddler.

  I did not want to be this bovine, atrophying human body.

  To stay inside all day – well, I hated it.

  Demi, in his nice calm way, said, ‘Maybe you’re just trying to do things too fast. Taking the bus into town was too big a challenge. Why don’t you try something easier? Tone down your expectations?’

  It was unpleasant yet
sensible advice.

  ‘I want an extra-strong hot chocolate from Costa in a paper cup with whipped cream on top,’ I sobbed. ‘Is that too much to ask?’

  ‘There’s a Costa Coffee concession at the supermarket,’ said Demi. ‘Why don’t you take the kids there in the car tomorrow and get yourself one of the Christmas-special hot chocolates? They’re doing Black Forest gateau this year.’

  A trip to the big supermarket? Hardly the adventure I craved. Still, Demi was usually right about things. Damn him.

  The big supermarket wasn’t as exciting as travelling around Thailand, but actually – well, it was a nice day out.

  Supermarkets are geared up for mums and toddlers. Extra-large parking bays. Trolleys with space for two kids. A mother’s feeding room. It’s nice to feel loved and wanted.

  If someone had told me, pre-kids, that I’d count going to the big supermarket as a ‘day out’, I’d have been mortified. Shit, what had happened to me?

  But finally I was getting it.

  I needed to change. Slow down. Let go of the past and embrace the new. And not care what the old independent me had to say on the matter.

  Enjoy the supermarket. Live in the moment.

  However, while this mega mind-shift was taking place, there was a final mountain to climb before we could settle into family happiness.

  I was worried about money.

  Our expenses had gone up again since Laya was born, but my working hours had been severely curtailed.

  Before we had kids, Demi’s brother had told us that having a baby was pretty much the same as keeping a cat, cost-wise. There were the wet-wipe expenses and the initial outlay on equipment (buggies and so forth). But he assured us they weren’t the huge financial burden people imagined.

  Did I mention Demi’s brother only has one child?

  One child can slot neatly into a two-bedroom apartment. Who needs to buy a house with a garden? If one child wants to play outside – well, let’s get our coats and go to the park. No, not that coat. The other one. Why have you taken your socks off? For the love of . . . you can put them back on yourself. And why do you want to bring a bag full of stones with you? No, you don’t need to drag that along . . .

  By the time we had two kids, the financial needs of family life were hitting hard. We had a mortgage, that sensible family car, nursery bills and many, many pairs of shoes to buy (stop growing!). Birthday parties, Santa’s grotto at Christmas, Easter-egg hunts, books, craft materials, repairing things your kids have damaged. It all adds up.

  I felt worried.

  We needed to make more money. Raise our game. Make sure our income matched our new family outgoings.

  It was no longer OK simply to earn rent money and a few beer tokens. That didn’t cut it with two dependants.

  My first two novels had done OK, but I needed to hit the bestseller lists to make any kind of living, and that was exactly what I intended to do – write a bestseller. Ideally, many bestsellers.

  ‘I need to get back to work,’ I told Demi. ‘Immediately. Or we’re all going to die.’

  ‘Don’t you think you’ll be a bit stressed if you do that?’ Demi asked. ‘Your eyelid is twitching. I’m looking at new jobs. Something with a stable wage and—’

  ‘WHAT ELSE CAN I DO?’ I yelled. ‘Do you want our children to starve to death?’

  ‘You’re worrying about things that haven’t happened yet,’ said Demi.

  ‘Well, someone has to!’

  ‘Everyone worries about money when their kids are young,’ said Demi. ‘But it’ll all be OK. Lexi will be at school in a few years and we’ll have more time to work. Just be patient.’

  ‘If I’m patient, we could starve!’

  I came up with an elaborate childcare plan involving my parents, two-hour breastfeeding windows, a laptop and some headphones.

  ‘No one’s going to starve to death,’ said Demi. ‘We’ve got enough food in the kitchen cupboards to last at least six months.’

  Admittedly, this was true. During my many healthy-diet experimentations, I’d bought weird and wonderful dried-food products and powders that had been tried once then pushed to the back of the kitchen cupboard.

  I’d gone wheat-free for a while (rye flour, spelt flour and corn flour). But when those first batches of muffins and pancakes went horribly wrong, the dusty, wholesome flour packets were abandoned.

  ‘Wouldn’t you like normal pancakes that aren’t burnt and don’t have holes?’ Demi had tactfully suggested.

  I’d ignored him and gone full-on gluten-free.

  ‘Coconut-flour and rice-flour pancakes this time! Let’s see how this batch turns out!’ They were even worse than the wheat-free ones. ‘Coconutty sawdust’ was Demi’s description. ‘Coconut omelette’ was Lexi’s.

  It was true – we did have a lot of food in the cupboards and were unlikely to starve to death.

  Still, I felt anxious.

  Demi told me to calm down.

  It’s amazing how that never works.

  Financial worry was hardwired into me and it wasn’t going to just go away.

  I should share a little of my family background at this stage.

  My maternal and paternal grandparents all came from the sort of poverty-stricken, broken-down towns you see in Wild West movies. Bleak mining areas where half the houses and shops are boarded up, slack-jawed drunks weave along the pavements, and faded Lux soap packets blow on the breeze like tumbleweeds. No work and no prospects.

  All my grandparents moved down south to work in factories – some of which gave them mild lead poisoning. They saved every penny and never wasted anything. My maternal grandfather could make a piece of chewing gum last all week. My paternal grandmother only used soap on a Friday.

  My grandparents were very anxious about money because they’d known a life without it.

  They passed this anxiety to my parents, who passed it on to me.

  Essentially, none of this is my fault. Are you listening, Demi? This is inherited worry.

  But knowing where your worry comes from does not make it feel less real. And we had experienced a huge income drop, coupled with more outgoings.

  ‘This is just a temporary situation,’ said Demi. ‘I studied this phenomenon in Sociology. Before you have kids, your disposable income is high. Then, when you have young kids, your earnings drop to poverty level. And then when the kids go to school, your earnings go up again.’

  ‘We’re at POVERTY LEVEL?’ I exploded. ‘That sounds awful. We’ll have to wear potato sacks and do our own dentistry. I won’t let our family sink that low.’

  I careered forwards with my crazy work-schedule plan, taking Lexi to nursery, breastfeeding Laya, passing Laya to my parents, then desperately trying to push my mushy brain into shape and get some work done. As soon as I got going, I’d have to get back into baby mode again and feed Laya. Or pick Lexi up from nursery. Or cook a child-friendly, healthy meal that wouldn’t get eaten.

  It was stressful.

  ‘Things have changed,’ said Demi. ‘You can’t work the way you used to. We’ve just got to accept how things are. Stop buying all those crazy gluten-free flours you don’t eat. Forget about holidays for a while. We can repair our own boiler and roof.’

  ‘How about we cancel your Sky Sports subscription?’ I suggested.

  ‘Why don’t you stop buying all that expensive hot chocolate?’

  ‘Fuck off!’

  Things were getting serious.

  We weren’t playing at life any more – the kids had made sure of that. Somehow we had to make this work.

  Demi applied for new, better, more stable jobs.

  I bought an extra-strong brand of coffee called ‘hair curler’, got my head down and started writing.

  There would be no more Big Brother episodes of an evening, not for a long while.

  For the next couple of years, I would work harder than I’d ever worked before.

  I would write like the wind, I tell you. The wind. And event
ually it would all pay off.

  #29 LIE – THEY GROW UP SO FAST

  Childcare. Working. Childcare. Working. Occasionally a bit of sleep and a hot chocolate. More working and childcare.

  After a long, difficult few years, Lexi was finally nearing school age. Laya was toddling around, wrecking stuff and voicing opinions.

  Time hadn’t ‘flown by’ as people claimed it would. Not in the slightest. Laya’s first few years were possibly the longest of my life.

  I wrote 6,000 words a day, working on blind faith that if I put in the hours I’d create a mega-bestselling manuscript.

  When Demi wasn’t working or looking after the kids, he applied for stable, well-paying employment.

  We’d put the kids to bed at 7 p.m., then pull out our laptops and tippy-tap away until we were too tired to stay up any longer. Then we’d go to sleep and start all over again the next day.

  The house was permanently a catastrophe – Laya was toddling around, talking nonsense and carefully moving tidied-away objects out of their designated places and on to the floor.

  Laya pictured here after finding a jar of Sudocrem. You know something bad has happened when they go quiet.

  Lexi was a proud big sister, telling Laya everything she knew whenever possible.

  ‘Yes, Laya. Broom. Br-oom. For sweeping the floor, yeah? Tape measure. To measure us. We are grow-ing things. GROWING. Like you, yeah? You’re growing.’

  The kids were growing.

  But very slowly.

  I kept imagining the future, when the kids could dress themselves, go to the toilet by themselves, stop throwing food on the floor, etc. Life would be better then, right?

  ‘When Lexi starts school,’ I said, ‘then things will be easier. I’ll have more time. When Laya is potty-trained and gets her free hours at nursery. When Laya stops eating the insect repellent and saying “Spicy, spicy!” then life will be better.’

  I knew I should live in the moment. Enjoy this beautiful time. Focus on the positive. But I also knew that unless we pushed to the next level financially, life with two dependants would get tougher and tougher.

  Before I had kids, I thought I was hardworking. After all, I’d get up at 6 a.m. to write 1,000 words and then do a full-time job. It’s a hard, insecure life being a writer. But fun too. It has a certain romance, doesn’t it? I get up at 6 a.m. to write . . .