Confessions of a Single (Irish!) Mother

by Marisa Mackle

  BABY’S FIRST CHRISTMAS

  It’s baby’s first Christmas. So exciting. I think I’ll celebrate Christmas Eve by taking him to the local boozer and spend the day getting merrier and merrier as a form of goodwill. Actually, I’m not being serious. I plan to spend the day at home with home with him but sadly other people don’t share my view that Christmas time is for children.

  Last year I went with my boyfriend to a bar in a five star hotel for cocktails on Christmas Eve. We planned enjoying a couple of festive drinks in peace but instead found ourselves under seize from little people screaming and shouting while their parents, who should have known better, were busy air kissing each other and making plans to meet again on Stephen’s Day at the races. It wasn’t the kids’ fault. They had no choice in the matter and I’m sure they would have been far happier at home with their toys.

  Plonking the younger ones in front of the TV to watch films I can understand because, there’s lots to be done, such as getting the Christmas dinner prepared and wrapping all those last minute gifts. But throwing a few bags of crisps at them and expecting them to amuse themselves is appalling. It’s beyond selfish to take your children to the pub and let them amok while you indulge. Why bother having kids in the first place?

  The only time I see it acceptable to have kids in a bar is away on holidays when you don’t want to leave them with a strange hotel babysitter. Obviously, as we’re reminded every time we see poor Madeleine McCann’s photo, it’s not safe to leave kids alone in an apartment. But even still, there should be a cut-off point and you should be home by 10pm. I find it really upsetting when abroad to see kids (and they always seem to be Irish kids!) running around bars at midnight while their parents belt out The Fields of Athenry. And don’t even get me started on that couple in the Canaries whom I saw staggering back to the hotel at 3.00am. The mother was so scuttered she fell down and had to be helped to her room by the hotel security. Her little boy, aged two was laughing. He obviously saw this often and thought it was fun.

  I don’t want to sound pious as I love to go out partying myself. But I don’t bring baby Gary with me. And I make sure he’s staying at my mother’s if it’s going to be late. It’d be much cheaper of course to bring him everywhere but it’s the height of bad manners to foist your baby on adults at a party. Recently I was at one such party and a couple had brought their baby. ‘Did you not bring yours?’ the mother asked me.

  ‘No, I didn’t.’

  There’s a time and a place for showing off your child. And late night Christmas parties aren’t it. Happy holidays!

  FEELING BLUE

  Last week I got dumped. The man had been feeling down since Ireland was cheated out of the World Cup. ‘It’s not you, it’s the referee,’ he said. The next day I lost my job. I wondered how I was going to fill my days but then the house flooded so I was kept busy mopping up. Then the roof flew off in the middle of the night. My mother said to me, ‘what you need is a holiday.’ So I thought I’d go away for Christmas. It’d be great to get some sun. I booked Budget Travel and well… you know the rest…

  Actually I’ve exaggerated. Sorry, but I’m a fictional writer so I’ve been known to stretch the truth a bit. Okay I made the man thing up. I wasn’t dumped. Not recently anyway. And I didn’t lose my job but I’ve been informed by the publisher that they are drastically cutting back. What that means I’m not sure, but it doesn’t sound very promising. Luckily where I live wasn’t completely flooded but after all the rain I noticed to my horror that there was a leak from my bathroom ceiling, and although the roof didn’t quite take off, a fair few slates smashed to the ground. I haven’t been onto the insurance company yet. I haven’t had time I’ve been so busy lamenting the loss of Budget Travel. I’m finding it difficult coming to terms with the fact that it’s folded. Every Christmas for the last decade or so I have gone to the sun with that company.

  Now, I know many people organise their own holidays online, but I just love the fact that when I land in a foreign airport there’s a friendly Irish rep waiting with a welcoming smile, directing me to a coach. It makes me feel nice and safe. And wanted. This year, especially with the baby, I don’t fancy being in some unfamiliar airport searching for the information desk.

  I hadn’t actually booked this year’s trip but by strange coincidence I’d been on the travel company’s website until the small hours of last Tuesday morning, the day they announced their closure. I’d seen a resort I liked and the only reason I hadn’t physically booked it was because I wanted to check with the baby’s dad that it was okay for us to head away. I imagined Baby Gary under a huge parasol. I pictured pushing his prom along a sunny promenade looking out to sea. And my heart sank when I realised that now that probably won’t happen this year.

  I now have a fear that cheap sun holidays are about to become a thing of the past. Years ago only the rich could travel abroad to tropical climes. The rest of us went to Tramore and made do with sandy, soggy sandwiches on a windy beach, sheltering behind rocks. Hmm. Maybe I should invest in a second-hand caravan now before there’s a sudden run on them.

  MY KIDS BETTER THAN YOURS!

  Isn’t it awful the way parents become incredibly competitive about their tots? ‘My son is almost walking,’ said a Mummy in the park the other day whose child is roughly the same age as mine. What about yours?’

  ‘Oh, he’s already throwing the javelin,’ I boasted. ‘Like, hello?’

  Actually no, I didn’t say anything that obnoxious. Instead I just smiled through gritted teeth and merely congratulated the woman on her wonderful child. I also neglected to mention that my child isn’t even crawling. I don’t know why he isn’t. Maybe he just couldn’t be bothered. I leave him on the floor and he chooses just to stay in the same position. I reckon he gets his laid back personality from me. Anyway, it’s not a flipping race you know. I feel like telling this to all the competitive mums out there. Haven’t they anything else to be doing other than making out their children are more advanced than other peoples’ kids? I wish I’d all the time in the world to get Gary walking and singing, tying his own shoelaces and shouting ‘Mummy I love you’ from the rooftops. But I’m a busy woman running a business, trying to write a new book and juggling a million things at once. So my baby son will just have to develop in his own good time. Look, we all get old way to fast so why should I be pushing my child to get ahead and grow up before he’s good and ready? I’m already dreading the day he doesn’t want a kiss from me because he finds it too embarrassing. Apparently it’s heart breaking the first time they push you away and say, ‘Mummy, stop!’ I’m really enjoying the fact that I can place a big smacker on his cheek whenever I feel like it and he has no choice in the matter because he is firmly strapped to his high chair with no chance of escape.

  Mind you, I’ll let you in on a little guilty secret. At the moment I’m trying like mad to train him to say ‘Mama’ before he says ‘Dada’. If his first word is ‘Dada’ I’ll see it as the ultimate betrayal. At the moment all he can say is ‘Wub’ which isn’t a word I’ve ever heard of and I don’t think it means anything but he says it a lot for some reason. Maybe it’s a slang word in baby land. I, on the other hand, only ever say one word back, and that’s ‘Mama’. I say it at least a hundred times a day and point to myself in the hope of somehow brainwashing him. If he says ‘Mama’ first I’ll be the happiest parent alive, and also, I really think I deserve that credit after all I do for him.

  You could go mad urging your children to grow up quickly, but panic not if there are delays en route. Here’s an interesting fact: Einstein didn’t start to speak until he was four.

  BABY-FREE HOLIDAY

  Last week I sat by the pool in Marbella hiding my tears behind my sunglasses. You see I’d just spotted a mummy and her little baby at the pool and suddenly I was overwhelmed with guilt. I went away because I desperately needed a break away, yet there I was basking in 25 degrees but feeling wretched. If she can bring her tot, I should have been a
ble to bring mine, I thought.

  I went away with my friend Avril who was subjected to watching photos of baby Gary an hourly basis and I even treated her to video clips of him in the evening. Every time we passed a baby clothes shop I went gaga for the cute little outfits. Every time a Spanish baby passed by in a buggy, I was tempted to reach out and kidnap him.

  ‘It’s not that I really want the baby here,’ I tried explaining. ‘But I’d like somebody to bring him to me so we could have a little hug. Then I could give him back and happily go to the beach.’

  Before I left for the airport my mother had said to me, ‘now enjoy yourself, and don’t waste time missing him.’

  I’d agreed away. A few days in the sun, a few fun nights out, and most of all my freedom was on offer here. Would I miss that opportunity? No way. But then on the first night, I spotted a store room in the hotel where they kept the cots. I felt that first pang of sadness. I could have brought him. He could have slept in my room. I could have plonked him under the sun umbrella and let him play with his teddy. I could have brought him into the pool for a little swim and he would have been able to kick his little legs around.

  If you’re not a mother yourself, you can’t imagine what it’s like going on holidays without your baby and I’m sure my friend was thinking In the name of God, would she ever just shut up about the baby.

  When I came home there was a couple in front of me at the check-in desk. With a double buggy. Again the guilt. They brought two and I couldn’t even bring one. Was I bad mother for wanting to get away from him? On our second night we escaped death by about five seconds when the car behind us, driven by a drunk driver completely lost control and smashed into a wall. I kept thinking how close baby Gary had been to becoming an orphan. It was scary. On the plane home I just stared at photos of him. When we landed I was so excited. I’d see the baby in less than an hour. And then I was at home. Overwhelmed with joy. And baby Gary just stared at me blankly. He was obviously wondering who the hell I was.

  FIRST TEETH

  My son got his first two teeth this week. Or maybe it was last week. I’m not too sure. You see, I was over in Mum’s at the weekend and she looked at me crookedly and said, ‘You never told me!’

  ‘Never told you what?’

  ‘Baby Gary ’s teeth! He’s got two of them. Why didn’t you tell me?’

  I was genuinely surprised. ‘Oh, I didn’t know. Nobody told me.’

  ‘But you’re his mother!’

  I suddenly felt a bit guilty then. I mean, I should have known. I should have been the first to discover them, but the truth is that I’d been looking in his mouth for months and there was no sign of them so I just gave up. Like buses, two came along at once with no warning.

  I texted his dad to tell him and then spent a bit of time wondering what other parents do. Do they celebrate occasions like this? Do they stick a camera down their baby’s gob and post the pics on Facebook? Isn’t that a bit OTT? Other people don’t really care, do they? Just because they feign initial interest in your tot doesn’t mean they’ve given you the green light to bore them to tears every time they meet you for the next few years.

  I saw a book in a stationary shop recently where you can stick all kinds of things onto it such as a lock of your baby’s hair, and records all kind of important dates like baby’s first teeth etc. I wouldn’t really be into that though. I don’t want to become too obsessed. It’s unhealthy. Mind you, my mother thinks I’m the other extreme. Baby isn’t even christened yet because we can’t decide on Godparents. At this stage he’ll be making his Holy Communion before his christening. He’ll be walking up to the church himself and maybe even pouring a jug of water over his own head.

  It’s a difficult time though. Teething can be so frustrating for both parents and babies. Nobody likes to hear their little one in visible pain. Gary ’s gums are sore and sometimes he screams so loudly I have to check to see nobody’s torturing him. I’ve tried everything from rubbing Bonjella on his gums, to sticking his teething ring in the freezer and I sing Hush-a-bye-baby from morning to night. All of it helps but there’s no miracle cure.

  I met a friend of mine recently and told him I was wrecked because of my baby’s teething.

  ‘He’s not sleeping, poor mite, and neither am I,’ I told him bleary-eyed.

  ‘I remember,’ he said, commiserating with me and shook his head. ‘I remember my own son’s teeth coming down. But’, he went on, ‘it’s much worse when they lose them.’

  ‘That must be painful too,’ I agreed.

  ‘Painful on the pocket,’ he said gloomily. ‘Recession or no recession, the tooth fairy demands to be paid. And he hasn’t brought his prices down in line with the current economic climate!’

  COMPETITIVE MUMMIES

  I met with some school friends recently. I was looking forward to some girlie gossip but it ended up being sort of like a competition to see who could talk the longest and loudest about our kids. I felt slightly left out because all their children could say marvellous words and do wonderful things whereas my fellow can’t even say Mama.

  Endless photos were all passed around to a collection of oohs and ahs and thankfully the wine was flowing which made the whole rigmarole more bearable. And then one friend said something surprising.

  ‘Do you ever think,’ she said, ‘that his real mother will come looking for him one day and you’ll have to give him back?’

  I almost hugged her in a show of solidarity. You see, ever since Gary was born I’ve had this weird feeling that somebody was going to find me out and realise that I’m not a real mother at all, that I’m only a chancer who pretends to being a mother in order to fit in, and that his real parents will one day arrive at my doorstep and rightfully claim him back. Sometimes I feel like I’m just on an extra-long babysitting assignment which isn’t at all well paid.

  It can be very disconcerting. I thought I’d feel more grown-up or something being a mum, but I’m still a prankster at heart. Surely that’s wrong. Even when I walked out of Holles Street with the baby carried by his daddy in his car seat, I was amazed that the porter didn’t try and stop us. I’m sure I went red and looked a bit guilty the same way I always do when passing the security guards at Dublin airport on my way home from somewhere.

  Then when I got him home, it was weird that there was no nurse there. It was just him and me. Back in my darkened bedroom. And I was looking at him going, where the hell did you come from?

  Of course I do know technically where he came from but I used to be very much ‘me’, and now that we’re ‘we’ he’s like an extension of myself. Wherever I go he comes too, although I don’t go checking on him now on the hour every hour. At least I’ve cottoned on to the fact that me getting no sleep and being a grumpy sourpuss does not a good mother make. I’m also coming to terms with the fact that he’s a human being now and not just a baby in a babygrow with fluffy sheep on it. When his PPS number came through the door in an official envelope, it suddenly hit home that he was now not only a real member of the human race, but that in just over seventeen years’ time he’ll become a tax payer and have to pay bin charges and water charges and God knows what else. By then there’ll probably even be a charge for breathing.

  WELL-MEANING FRIENDS

  ‘I’ll babysit anytime,’ friends say. ‘Any time at all.’

  How nice, I think. Or used to think. Until I found out that ‘any time’ usually means ‘never’.

  A week ago I desperately needed somebody to babysit. My regular sitters had been booked to mind other children so I tried my friends. One was working late, another was hungover, another was busy studying for exams, one was abroad, another had a date with her boyfriend, four never got back to me and one particular friend said she was heartbroken because she’d just been dumped. Right. But I couldn’t see why she couldn’t have been drying her tears in my bed rather than her own. I have plenty of tissues and wine and Bridget Jones type videos over at my place.

  I was rac
king my brains. I had to get somebody. I couldn’t ask any of my 1000 or so Facebook friends because I’m not sure who most of them are, and scrolling through the numbers in my phone I realised with a shock that I hadn’t spoken to most of my contact list in almost two years. That left me in a bit of dilemma. I mean you can’t just phone up somebody you used to work with years ago on the pretence that you are wondering how they are, only to suddenly ask them to babysit a baby they might not even know you have!

  I fished out an old address book from the bottom of my wardrobe and wiped the dust off it, but most of the numbers weren’t even in existence any more. I phoned an aunt and asked how she was. Immediately she started talking about her bad back so that put an end to my hopes that she might mind my son. I phoned my sister and got no reply. I phoned a girl I used to go clubbing with and she said she couldn’t help me that night because she was going, well, clubbing. But any other time, she said.

  I was just short of phoning the talking clock in New York to see if it could help, when I got a call back from baby’s Dad to say he’d mind him. Then I got out last year’s Christmas card list and a red pen. I need to make some drastic cuts on my friends’ list.

  Now, maybe it’s karma. After all, I don’t ever remember babysitting any of my friends’ kids, although I’m sure I offered, and flippantly said ‘any time’. And I don’t expect people to mind my baby when that’s my job, but this really was an emergency and none of the thirty odd people I phoned were able to help.