Confessions of a First-Time Mum

by Poppy Dolan

  ‘Not the Golden Ticket moment I imagined for today, kid,’ I say gently down to the pram, ‘but we’ll cash Mummy’s cheque another day.’

  The payment from the Metro had arrived in the post this morning and I’d had to squeal with excitement into a cushion so Ted wouldn’t rumble me. They’d said they could pay via a bank transfer, and it would be much quicker, but I knew that way they’d have an account name and I’d be well and truly rumbled. No, thank you. Snail mail and paper money would do just fine for the incognito First-Time Mum.

  I couldn’t wait to get down to my local branch and open an account just for my blogger earnings. I’ve been watching YouTube tutorials at night, with my headphones in while Cherry drops off after her feed, all about monetising your blog and driving Facebook follows. It’s a whole other world and it might be my world, if I keep at it. The thing I’ve realised is that I have to supply a steady stream of ‘content’ or I’ll lose this wave of interest I’m riding. So I’ve started a Twitter account for First-Time Mum, too, and linked up my Facebook posts so they automatically feed out there. When I’m fully in the swing of it, I’ll have to get good at churning out proper, unique Tweets but, right now, that just feels like one task too many. I do get a little blip of thrill when anyone follows me, though, and I tend to follow them right back, health shake company or spam bot, whatever. I’ll take a follower!

  Quite a few other requests have come in via my Facebook Messenger over the last week, and I’ve been snapping them up like a Hungry Hippo: other bloggers asking me if I’d like to do a Q&A for them (‘Sure! But I am NO expert on parenting/careers/relationships/pretty much anything bar Homes Under the Hammer’); an organic clothing company offering me some free vests for me to try on Big Baby and review (‘OK! But I’m going to be REALLY honest about how well they repel sick stains’); and even a digital feminist radio station suggesting I do a phone interview down the line for a podcast. This one I couldn’t just drum out an instant big fat YES to, because it made me a lot more nervy than the others. What if someone recognised my voice? What if I slipped up and said Cherry or Ted’s real names? It would be an amazing way to speak to loads of other parents in the same boat, but I’m more comfortable with First-Time Mum on screen for now, rather than creeping onto the airwaves, too. I said I’d think about it and let them know.

  And when I’m not thinking blogging, I’m thinking Nelle and the keepsake party. Father’s Day is in two weeks and she has got one of the family cafes booked out for an entire Saturday just before, so mums (and dads) can drop in to make something special for the following Sunday. We decided more decoupage would be the way to go, even though it took me three days to get the last nub of green tissue paper away from my head. The materials are relatively cheap, the craft process is simple enough for parents to help the tiniest tots choose where to glue their patterns or for older toddlers to be let loose on their own, and the clay and pottery turned out to be far from shatterproof in the end. Nelle didn’t fancy enforcing a ‘If you break it, you buy it’ policy on guests, so we’ve stocked every colour of paper under the sun and three sizes of trinket boxes. And I’m going to keep my baseball cap close by in case Esme and Olive pincer me with another one of their wigs.

  Will volunteered to be stock co-ordinator and I’m writing poster and flyer text for us to put up around the town and surrounding villages. I must finish it tonight, in fact; I promised Nelle she would have it yesterday. Will’s done his part and I don’t want to let my new mates down. If this works, it could be a revenue shot in the arm for Nelle’s business, and something she can repeat for the summer holidays, Halloween, Christmas, Mother’s Day, Easter… We just need bodies through doors to kick this first one off.

  ‘Hey, Stevie!’ I hear a familiar voice call my name. Nelle is rounding the corner with her own pram to push. She puffs over to the play park. ‘Seeing you has brightened up my school run no end. How are you doing?’

  ‘Good thanks, love. How about you? How are your nights with lovely Joe?’

  Her eyebrows shoot up. ‘You know how it goes. You get two good nights and you think – here we go, we’re on to a winner. Plain sailing from here on in. Then the next evening it’s cluster feeding and random screaming and that sinking feeling that you’re totally out of your depth at 2am when all they want to do is look at you and blink. Not sleeping.’ She leans down into Joe’s basinet and says this last part gently. ‘So I set off early today to see if I could sneak more napping from him on the way. It’s not working and I’ll be fucked if I’ve got the patience any more. And because I’m rattled I had a stupid row with Darren over some deck chairs, if you can believe it. I mean, that’s perhaps the most ridiculous subject I think we’ve ever rowed about. And I can’t even remember what the context was now…’ Nelle spaces out and I can see all-too familiar grey shadows under her eyes.

  ‘Snap. Except our argument was about cheese.’

  ‘Hah! That is a good one. Maybe we should start a list for the blog!’ She nudges me in the ribs. ‘So, how did you fall out over cheese? Did he snaffle the last Babybel? Swine!’

  ‘He wanted us to go to a cheese festival, for a family day out.’ Now I say those words out loud, I worry that I’m sounding pretty ungrateful. And slightly mental. ‘But… he doesn’t get all the work that’ll be for me. Trying to sort out a clean nappy in a temporary loo someone might just have heaved in. Having nowhere private or comfortable to feed. What if it rains? I have to factor this stuff in. Ugh, maybe I should have been gentler about it. He’s been in a right sulk ever since.’

  Nelle pats me on the arm. ‘I’m sure you were entirely reasonable. Festivals aren’t for parents and that’s the sad truth of it. Not real festivals, anyway. You get your special festivals for kids and everything they like, but it’s hardly Glastonbury for us grown-ups. Having to spend over the odds for macaroni cheese and listen to Justin’s House songs. Not quite the same thing as the Stone Roses after a hash cake. Ah, good times.’

  ‘You’ve been to Glasto, then?’

  She lets out a long sigh. ‘Hard to believe to look at me, but yes. It was 1998, I think. A few years before we actually got married. If I knew then what I now know, I would have savoured every lazy minute of it: drinking, lying on the grass, getting sunburnt and henna tattoos. Not having to watch out for anyone wandering off or accidentally drinking absinthe. I have heard Glasto can be great with kids and they love it but, like you said, more work for us. More lists, and anxieties, and if you’re not mostly pissed when you sleep in a tent I just don’t see the appeal of it.’

  ‘If they could just take the kids off into a little fenced-in bit, with no booze allowed inside, everything covered in crash mats and one huge screen playing CBeebies, then we could have our own area. Where it gets messy. Until 9pm. Because no one can magically whisk those early starts away, even if you do have a VIP pass.’

  Nelle snorts. ‘ParentFest.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘A ParentFest. That would be awesome. I mean, don’t lock the kids in a cage, but can we put our fun first, for once. Because, you know, parents—’

  ‘Parents are people, too,’ I say before she can, echoing Will’s words from the keepsake party between us.

  As if he knows he’s being quoted, my phone vibrates and I see it’s a message from Will. The image has a ‘play’ triangle so I press it, baffled.

  It’s a GIF of Will holding up a copy of the Metro and swaying side to side, a huge, excited, open-mouthed smile fixed to his face. Nelle peers over my shoulder and soon neither of us can talk for laughter or see straight for the tears in our eyes.

  Will: Tracked down a copy!!!! Come see!!! You’re famous, love xxx

  When she’s recovered, Nelle pushes me towards the gates. ‘You need to get over there and see your words in the actual newspaper. I need to collect my rabble from school. I know who I’d rather be right now!’

  I’m shaking my head and tsking like mad, but also unlocking the brake on the buggy to speed-walk over to
Will’s. I need to see it for myself or it just won’t be real. None of this really seems like it’s actually happening to me, still.

  * * *

  I smooth out the crackling newspaper gingerly, the faint light of Cherry’s rabbit-shaped night light making it impossible to read the words. But I pretty much know them by heart.

  I wish I could tell my mum about this. Or Ted. Or the newsagent. But First-Time Mum can’t leave this house, not unless it’s by high-speed broadband. This half-page of paper will have to go somewhere special, somewhere secret. But even if no one else knows it’s there, I do. And it feels as weighty as a university diploma. This proves I can do something. This proves there’s some sort of person underneath my stained baggy shirt and past-their-best leggings. A person people want to hear from. A voice worth listening to.

  I tuck the paper under my side of the mattress very carefully and then tap the Twitter app on my phone. It feels like a good time to Tweet any other mums out there, stuck in the small hours wilderness.

  @First_Time_Mum: Who else is awake? New parents, truck drivers, nurses on the graveyard shift? We’re all desperately trying to keep awake for one reason or another, right? Say hello if you’re about. I always like a friendly tweet! xxx

  @First_Time_Mum: But if it’s ‘friendly’ advice like ‘Get all the sleep you can while the baby’s sleeping!’ you can DO ONE.

  My inbox announces a new Twitter DM.

  @BBootsMum: Hello, FTM. I’m here. My babies aren’t exactly tiny any more, but I just have this horrible insomnia most nights. So I’m downstairs ironing, if you can believe it. Do you ever get so lonely that you start talking to the iron?!

  My heart lurches as I read this. Yes, I have been that lonely and, yes, I’ve half-cloaked it in humour before. But it doesn’t stop it being real. I quickly reply.

  @First_Time_Mum: Morning! Or is it still night? It should still be, but if your brain is whirring with stuff it won’t really listen to you pleading to go back to sleep, I know. Put that iron down, though, and get yourself to a Netflix account. Immediately. If you’re going to miss out on sleep, it might as well be for some awesome, trashy US telly. And message me if you ever want to chat.

  @BBootsMum: Thanks. That means a lot xxxxxx

  I chuck my phone onto the duvet and rub my hands down my dry, flaky face. I remind myself that the next time I’m lovingly rubbing E45 into Cherry’s neck and arm folds, I’d better slather the leftovers over myself, too. Some top-notch self-care if ever I saw it. Boots’ message is not the first one of its kind and I feel both heartened and saddened by that. Heartened – that I’m not the only person to feel overwhelmed by motherhood. Saddened – that so many of us feel so down, and that we only feel we can talk about it via social media.

  I’ve started to get all these messages from women, telling me their mum stresses and asking for my opinion. Besides the fact I can’t teach anyone anything about parenting – except maybe the best biscuits to eat job lots of without feeling sick (Digestives, Rich Tea – but don’t go beyond three custard creams or you’ll barf) – these messages are sacred. It feels like such a treasure they are trusting me with – their inner gripes and worries and longings – that I want to respond, but I’m not sure how. And if I carefully respond to one – and it might take me a good thirty minutes to think of just the right thing to type – do I have enough hours in the day to go back to them all? I mean hours in the night, really, seeing as I grab my chances to write on my phone while Cherry is zonked out and Ted is asleep in the bedroom.

  Reading back through some of the readers’ messages, a theme starts to poke out at me:

  ’I love your blog. THANK YOU for admitting it’s not just me that feels lost.’

  ’So many times I’ve nearly said hello to another mum by the slide, or in the Tesco car park, but then I bottle it. What if they ignore me and I look like a bell end?’

  ’WHY is it just MY baby that screams during the baby massage class? The time when you’re supposed to be all calm and bonded and my little boy is squirming like he hates me. Why can’t I have one of those lovely, calm babies?! I think your Big Baby and mine might be long-lost cousins, or something.’

  We all feel so alone. We all feel like it’s just us finding nature’s greatest magic trick – creating a whole person from the tiniest cell – absolutely impossible to pull off, and the audience is hating us silently.

  Even though I know I should finish Nelle’s posters and press release – and I will, in a second – I let my fingers fly over a new blog post.

  IT’S NOT JUST YOU, IT’S THEM, TOO (EVEN THE PERFECT ONES, HONEST)

  Hey mums, dads and any combination of the two,

  I just had a lovely 3am chat with my new Twitter mate @BBootsMum and, you know what, it made me feel a lot better about things. (So, @BBootsMum, is your account name from the fact that you work in a Boots or that you wear crazy killer thigh-high boots?! I like to think it’s both. Seeing as you don’t have a profile pic it’s just how I have drawn you in my head, stacking Lemsip boxes in creaking PVC. Sorry, not sorry.) Sometimes that little connection with someone in the same boat can mean so much.

  And it’s hard, right, finding those connections—? I’ve wittered on to you all a million times about how hard I find baby classes and sitting in a cafe when my baby turns into a screech bomb and trying to think of anything, anything interesting to say to a fellow adult when your brain is barely running on caffeine and cat naps. But now I’ve met you lot through the life-saving channels of social media, I know it’s not just me. So many of us feel lost and lonely and at sea.

  Tricky not to feel these things when you see a Pampers advert with a mum head-to-toe in spotless white, looking orgasmically happy to be changing her thirtieth nappy of the day. It must just be me that near-retches at saffron-orange poos welded onto a tiny bum cheek, then. Or at the baby class – all those smiling, engaged tots loving the nursery rhymes and coloured lights, while yours just wants to try and eat the fire extinguisher and yells with pure rage when you pull them away. It must just be me that has the weird kid who will grow up to have no friends and live like a hermit in our shed, surrounded by well-chewed fire safety equipment. Or, heaven forbid you should come across a Perfect Parent type, who is dolling out unflavoured rice cakes and carrot sticks as ‘treats’ to a brood of immaculate offspring, while the chocolate-button-drool racing down your baby’s chin is joining approximately thirteen other stains on their vest. It must just be me that always means to pack, but totally forgets, a Tupperware of halved grapes for the car. And I should have been soaking my kid’s entire wardrobe in Vanish last night but I just wanted twenty more minutes of RuPaul’s Drag Race. I am selfish. And lazy.

  But you know what? It’s not just you. It’s everyone. The Pampers woman isn’t real – she’s a childless 24-year-old model who was probably smoking a fag and looking longingly at a quiche during breaks in the filming. You can eat a quiche whenever you fancy it, because you are a real person. If you delighted in scraping gluey faeces from under your finger nails then I would be very, very worried about you, my dear.

  And EVERY baby in that class has had a meltdown at some time or other. Fact. Even the most Buddha-looking babe has gone purple at some point for no reason at all. The reason those mums look so happy and at peace in that class is because – for that forty-five-minute slot at least – they’re dodging the bullet and they’re just grateful to get out of it alive. As you would be, right?

  Likewise the Perfect Parent: maybe they look like they’re raising the Von Trapps in matching Joules pinafores but behind closed doors you don’t know what epic tantrums over screen-time go down. And all the time they’re putting into chopping raw veggies and steam-pressing pleats, they’re missing out on the best drag queen make-up tips and fiercest put-downs. Pity them. Pity the fool with no time for RuPaul.

  So try and remember, if you can, that you are not alone. Say it with me: I am not alone. Write it on a Post-it and stick it on your alarm clock. Put
it on the fridge door. Embroider it on a pillow, if that’s your thing. I am not alone.

  Parenthood is hard. We’re all just about surviving, albeit with different methods, rates of success and levels of hair-washing. When you’re too nervous to approach that smiling mum at the soft play for a bit of a chat, just remember that they too have an inner voice telling them, It must just be me… You might make their day by saying hello. Wouldn’t that be amazing?

  And I’m always here, for pre-dawn moan sharing. But @BBootsMum you’d better have stepped away from that ironing by now!

  Love,

  First-Time Mum x

  Chapter 11

  I can feel all eyes on me at the weigh-in and, for once, I love it.

  OK, so it’s not because I have the most perfectly behaved baby in the room (Cherry managed to be sick on her red health book; I have no idea how). And it’s not because I look crazy stylish and well kept (hello, Dorothy Perkins jade jeggings for the millionth time). It’s because I’m sitting next to Will and everyone is trying to work out our deal. Are we a couple? I am clearly not gorgeous enough to have produced Olive and Esme, and I would have had to have waited a full five minutes after their delivery to get pregnant with Cherry, so maybe all the other mums are marvelling at the HOW?! of that scenario. I know I would be.

  It’s been four weeks since we met at one of these weigh-ins, and it’s mad how different I feel now; still like I’m a C-mum at best, but able to laugh about it, which I think is the real key. Will had suggested we come back after his last attempt went awry – he needed to get the girls weighed as part of their two-year health review and because he’s about seven months overdue getting this done, the health visitors have sent him a stream of snarky letters. When his GP called because they had been alerted to ‘irregularities’ in the girls’ records and Will picked up a hint of condescension from the female GP, as if a dad could not understand the importance of these things, he decided to show them what was what. And that his girls were perfectly healthy, thank you.