Recollections on madness

Sometimes if I know that I have a short amount of time for writing, I'll try to amass some sentences to start me off for when I'm washed and dressed and sat in front of my screen. Then by the time I've finished my shower, all the words have rinsed straight off me, the last of them wicked away by the towel I use to dry myself off with, and I come out clean - clean of my sleepy disarray and clean of words.

Today I've decided that I'm going to sit and write something anyway. This morning my thoughts turned again to that short period of nearly ten years ago when I went mad. I don't like to talk about that openly with people, and it occurred to me this morning that even though mental illness is a prevalent thing in society - and something that is much better understood than it used to be - it's still a shameful thing for those of us who have ever suffered at its hand. Shameful because it does two things very well: its appearance subverts the parameters of what is socially acceptable and, more importantly, it reminds us of what we mistrust most about human nature (helping to relegate certain kinds of experience to the shadowy realm of taboo) – loss of control.

My intellect isn't nearly as good as it was ten years ago. Motherhood changes you physically, but nobody tells you how it reshapes your mind into a primal calculator, stripping it of all but the barest pragmatic functions. Streamlined and reactionary, it churns up the gravel of each real moment and interprets our best chances of survival. Before motherhood, before adulthood even, my mind was a furious thing, like a wasp trapped inside an overturned glass. When I went mad, that wasp began to consume itself. I was under attack, on a level so microscopic I didn't realise that I was the source.

Some pretty frightening things happened during that time, but a few interesting things happened too. I felt very powerful for a while. The night I spiralled out of control, for instance, I was convinced that I was a genius. To prove this to myself, I did what film and television depicted mad geniuses doing a few years later: I made spidery charts out of bits and pieces from my train of thought, connecting these up with arrows, isolating some in cloud bubbles, until I reached the epicentre of the storm. I can't remember what this chart revealed to me, but it shamed me to come across it once I was feeling a little better, and I threw it away. I made so many charts and diagrams, even from my hospital bed, where I was convinced that I was being lied to about what time of day it was. I was trying to prove this by diagramming the trajectory of the sun in relation to the direction I believed my window to be facing.

The thing is, I don't know what to do with any of these recollections. Sometimes I wish I could harvest the energy from these ancient, muscular delusions; rinse them of their toxicity and put them to good use. I can put them down here as an example of something that happened to a person you wouldn't glance at twice now, with her fingers wrapped around the handles of a push chair, making steady progress from one place of stability to the next. I can mount their heads above my mantelpiece as a reminder of why I no longer tap against the sides of the overturned glass; why I no longer capture venomous creatures, however small.

Or so I imagine

So much to say, no time to say it!

Whenever non-parents try to visualise what life might be like with a child, I have to try very hard not to bite my fists and scream into them.

Bruce once told me about a dream he had a very long time ago - a nightmare, wherein he was in hell, on a kind of circular conveyor belt, and studded throughout the belt were knee-high razor blades. He had to jump over the razors as the conveyor belt rotated, because if he didn't, well... Anyway, the belt never stopped rotating, the razors never stopped coming, and that is a fairly good analogy for what it feels like to bring up a baby, obviously with some very nice moments thrown in.

It could be another two or three years before the conveyor belt finally slows down enough for me to catch my breath. I don't imagine it will ever stop, and even if it's going at the pace of a tortoise, you can't ever let your guard down entirely. On your quietest day, with your child somewhere very far away, perhaps in university, you will put down your book and wonder why you haven't heard from him in a while.

Your feet will propel the conveyor belt of their own volition as you make your way to the telephone, and even though you'll look very still as you pick up the receiver, dial the number and wait for someone to pick up at the other end, you are in actual fact calmly, expertly jumping for your life.

The penultimate post of November, oooh

Photograph by Julieta Sans

A few years ago, I was at the National Portrait Gallery to see an exhibition of photographs that were nominated for the Photographic Portrait Prize. I can’t remember the image that actually won, but one photograph that still sticks out in my mind was of two lean, twenty-something brunettes in American Apparel-type clothing, entwined in a hammock, asleep. I think it was titled “New Parents Resting,” which basically says it all.

At the time, I had no inkling that I would soon be a mother, but the image did give me some pretty inaccurate ideas about what it was like to be a new parent. For instance: the napping. That pretty much never happens. Those kids were probably surrounded by both sets of parents, siblings and thirty of their closest friends (one of whom, it seems, had a pretty good eye and a half-decent camera) in order to steal a much needed half hour. Even if four devoted grandparents were in the midst of a rock paper scissors war to determine who got to hold that little bundle of joy next, at some point in the visit, the baby would have needed its mother, loudly.

That comes much sooner and much more often than you’d think.

So yeah, images. I guess the thing about images is that they tend to mean more than they actually convey. Although you can tell a lot about a person from their dress, carriage, environment, etc., you do not know if that person only bought an outfit for the camera, if they spend the bulk of their time trying not to touch their significant other unless someone is around to witness the lie, or even if they emerged from their cardboard box for a day to visit a long-lost great Aunt at her holiday home in Spain.

You can’t trick people for very long with words, however lively and well-crafted, but you can certainly trick people with an image. An image speaks louder than words because it only has one thing to say, and usually it’s none too subtle about the point it’s trying to make.

Ugh, I don’t know if this is right, but it seems right at the moment. I’m certainly not young enough or well-enough-connected in this city to have on-hand caregivers who want nothing more than to occupy Hartley while someone takes flattering portraits of me while I sleep in gym shorts and thigh-high athletic socks. Would that I were.

Luckily Bruce and I have, after ten months, managed to work out a systematic routine that allows us all to eat and live in relative comfort and hygiene. Hartley is still waking up several times a night, and that probably won’t change until he’s no longer breastfed. We were going to leave him with my sister-in-law last night, as a kind of experiment that would allow us to have eight or nine solid hours of uninterrupted sleep.

I’m glad we sussed that it was a bad idea, as this morning, about an hour after I fed Hartley to sleep for the fifth time, he woke up screaming. It was a scream that turned into the most despairing, hitching sobs I’ve ever heard him make. He would not latch on to comfort himself and he cried with such hopelessness that I was frightened he was in some sort of pain. After a while he did calm down and I realised he must have had a nightmare. I don’t think he’s ever had one before. Usually his cries indicate frustration at being awake, and an insistence that I help him get back to sleep.

Anyway, we’re all fine, but I’m exhausted and need to try falling asleep a bit earlier tonight. Usually I put it off because - subconsciously - I realise that the moment I do, Hartley will wake up crying and demanding that I put him to sleep again. It’s fairly irrational, because the longer I put this off, the less sleep I get. But sometimes you’ve just got to play Bejeweled.

You may want to give this one a miss

Maybe it is because I’m tired and have never had a life threatening illness, but I’m going to go ahead and make the comparison between cancer and babies. Yes I am, because I don’t have the wherewithal to come up with a better, more sensitive analogy, and also because I sort of think I’m right in this instance.

We took this trip to Paris thinking that it would be a nice change of scenery for Hartley (which it was) and thus a relaxing time for us (which it was not). And see, I always forget the golden rule of parenting: wherever you go, there they are – screaming to be taken out of their push chairs in rush hour traffic on a rammed bus, or punching you in the tit in the middle of the night, just for fun. Like cancer, right?

Okay, how about this: having a baby means you never get to rest. Let me stress this: HAVE A BABY AND YOU WILL NEVER AGAIN HAVE A MOMENT’S PEACE, NOT UNTIL HE IS EIGHTEEN YEARS OLD, AND EVEN THEN YOU WILL WONDER IF HE IS LIGHTING INCENSE BECAUSE OF SPIRITUALITY OR SOME OTHER REASON.

So you may think that a trip to another country would be just the thing, but you would be wrong. Mightily, stark-raving-madly WRONG. Because having a baby basically takes a stressful situation and ramps it up to DEFCON 1, such as when we decided it might be fun to walk to the Eiffel Tower from where we were staying, which is nowhere near the Eiffel Tower. And on our way back, in our fifth hour, as we hobbled a fair distance further because we couldn’t find the right bus stop, a long, plaintive sound suddenly emanated from Hartley that was the infant equivalent of Oh you’ve GOT to be shitting me, and that is when he had a complete meltdown - one that could not be overturned by raisins or sips from my water bottle - and so we had to carry him for another ten city blocks until our feet turned blue and fell off and we died.

And anyway, even if you’re not into suicidal levels of pedestrian sight-seeing, holidays are not really holidays if you’ve brought along a baby. Babies boil down all experience to the same few elements: feeding, playing, napping, nappy change, bedtime. You could be on a spaceship to Mars, but if that kid has done a number two, you are not going to be counting Saturn’s rings from the observation room at that moment but, rather, hoping like hell that you remembered to pack the powder-scented nappy sacks.

I can only imagine that cancer has the same effect on holiday – if it’s really terribly serious, and you are suffering day and night, it doesn’t make a lick of difference if you’ve got the penthouse suite on Paradise Island, you are still living in your own personal bubble of cancer hell. Though obviously having a baby is nothing like having cancer, and might even be the opposite. Both have their stresses, though, and that is why. That is why I am going to shut up my typing fingers and stop this ridiculous post. We’re back in England, and I’ve never felt more at home.

Hartley: Five Months Old

Dearest Hartley,

You are five months old today and I almost wrote six, not because I’m willing the time to go by more quickly but because I’m very tired. For the past two weeks you’ve kept me awake, scrabbling at my back or my arm or my breast with your sharp little nails that I trim and trim but which still manage to retain their sharpness, scrabbling and squawking because you are hungry – hungrier than I can keep up with, even when I’m wide awake and cognisant of where my nipple is in relation to your little mouth. I’m sorting this out for us, but at the moment my brain is (baby) mush, and this is why when someone asks me how old you are, I have to round up to the nearest month. And sometimes I can’t even get that right.

One day when you grow up, you will come to know what I am like, and then you’ll be shocked to discover that not only was I considering feeding you baby rice before you reached six months of age, but that this decision came to me easily and without a note of dread. This is because motherhood is set up in a way that is conducive to how I learn – you never have to do anything new until you’ve talked it through with at least ten other people, at least six weeks prior to having to do it, and by then you feel like you’ve been mixing expressed milk with a cream-of-wheat-like substance for your heretofore exclusively breastfed infant your entire life.* Though in any case, sleep is much more important than doing things by the book, and this is why you and I still share a bed.


Your learning curve is much steeper than mine in many ways, and if you thought about how much an infant has to figure out in that first year of life, you would never balk at returning to school to complete a PHD, because there at least you have a frame of reference. Your frame of reference was a relentless vortex of sound and sensation you had yet to decipher as your own wrenching cries (I’m still so sorry about that), and the particles from that existential detonation are still travelling outward, making new constellations for you to try and connect up, to try and find sounds for, to name.

But I truly believe that in the midst of all this scary learning, you and I are actually good influences on one another. You have instigated so many positive changes in me over these last few months. I am cynical about many things, for instance, but I could never be cynical about you. When I disentangle myself from you after your last somnambulistic feed and stealthily tiptoe off to the next room to tell your father that you look like an angel, I really do mean what I say – clichés are what they are, and far be it from me to dispute the celestial nature of your lovely features while you sleep the sleep of one who has never tasted a moment of bitterness.

You are still rooty tooty in that way you started off being when you were my little anaconda, except now you could feasibly dislodge the bolts from your cot with that insatiable mouth of yours, and when I come back into the room from washing my hands, I usually find you on your side, your head practically meeting your heels as you contort yourself in an attempt to grab hold of - and root on - a package of nappies, a pillow, a rolled up blanket or something else I would have never thought you capable of getting your lips around. Whereas the idea of such a mouth - wet with dribble and sometimes worse - would at one time have inspired the purchase of a contamination suit, I actually feel privileged that you’ve appointed me as your personal chew toy, and when I see you coming for the side of my face or my nose with the intent of latching on in your breathy, slobbery way, I don’t duck. You can slime me any day, darling; In fact, I’d feel hurt if you didn’t.


I say that I’ve influenced you, and I’m sure that’s true, but actually, I can’t think of a single thing you do now that didn’t somehow arise from your own strong will. Sometimes I look at you and marvel at how you’ve managed to not only come away with the absolute best qualities your father and I possess but, by some incredible alchemy, translate these into a fully developed little person who constantly exceeds both our wildest dreams and expectations about what you would be like. I don’t think a day goes by when I don’t hear your father exclaim, Aw, he’s so lovely! which, you should know, is a complement of the highest order from a manly man who does not easily gush.

Your personality isn’t so much emerging as it is intensifying, and you have very definite ideas of what you like (which you reward with a massive grin or a screech of delight) and what you don’t (a warning noise like a whine that quickly becomes a scream I can only liken to that of a heroin in some murder mystery movie, as when the shower curtain is pulled back to reveal the man with the sharp knife). We’ve learned very quickly that it isn’t prudent to let you sit in your sling-back chair in front of your favourite programme for any longer than it takes us to wolf down our dinner, and in fact, I can hear you demonstrating this in the next room as your father desperately tries to entertain you while I bash this out.

That’s another talent you’ve picked up – the ability to tell the difference between real engagement and the artificial kind that gives us the opportunity to take a wee break. Your patience is becoming more limited and I find I have to step up my game in order to keep you from unnerving the neighbourhood with your shouty shoutingness. I’ve been told that this means you’re exceptionally bright, but then again, that advice came from the owner of a toy shop during a recession, so I’m not sure how much of it I should trust. Still, I tend to believe every good thing I hear about you because secretly (not so secretly) I believe all of it.


I could point to how strong you are becoming, only wanting to stand or sit up at every opportunity, and how vocal (your new favourite sound is ‘em,’ as in EMMMMMMM!, as in you’re not happy about being left on the bed while I run to wash my hands for the fiftieth time that day, and sometimes this sound turns into an indignant ‘mum’ sound, like EMMMUMUM, which I know not to interpret favourably), and how you will grab at whatever is within reach and immediately set about stuffing it into your mouth, but it seems you’re only doing all the things that babies are supposed to be doing, so I’ll hold off on designing the trophies for these particular accomplishments.

But know this: your mother is always watching you, and when she isn’t driven to laughter or tears because of something you said or did that day, she is more than likely welling up with pride because, in her humble opinion, she truly believes that she has the most beautiful, amazing and gifted infant of anyone, and that is more than enough reason to celebrate.


Happy fifth month, my boo-faced boo. We’re doing marvellously, you and I.

*After having read that weaning foods don’t necessarily lead to better sleeps, we’ve decided to postpone this move for now. I’m a bit relieved, actually.

Windows of opportunity opening

This morning Bruce took Hartley to work. I’ve known this for a week – ample opportunity to stay up late and worry about how to fit in every last thing I’ve wanted to do alone for the past four months. I woke at 4.30 and never did get back to sleep, which only contributes to the surreal, dreamlike feeling that being alone gives me now that I’m tied to a whole other person 24 hours a day.

After we parted ways at the end of our street - Bruce heading off to East Finchley Station with our small boy strapped to his front - I turned in the direction of our favourite restaurant, which serves up just about anything for the indecisive, and not too badly for what it costs, to have a solitary breakfast of porridge. Once there, I had sufficient time and space to notice that the service was unbearably slow, the porridge oats mixed in with fruit that was obviously cut up with the same knife used to trim garnish for the savory dishes, and that everybody else had one or more children, none of whom held a candle to my beloved, at least in my eyes.

Then it was back home where, in a state of urgency, I made a hot cup of coffee and contemplated also opening a cold (non-alcoholic) bottle of beer before dismissing this as an indulgence even yours truly couldn’t stomach. I ate a chocolate cupcake standing at the kitchen counter. I ate another cupcake, faster.

And here I sit, watching the sands of time luge madly down the gullet of a modestly sized hour glass and wishing I’d just made a plan and stuck to it. I’ve managed to read half a short story and lie supine on the bed for as long as I could stand to relax, and now I feel the need to move again. I was meant to visit the lido, which is finally open for the season, but the weather has taken a turn for the grey and, although warm, does not inspire outdoor swimming.

I would take photos, but my favourite subjects are being fawned over by men and women I don’t know, and anyway, doing so would probably eat up all my time, as it takes me a dog’s age to get the shot I want and then choose just one (sometimes two) from a spate of about thirty. I would write a proper blog post, but feel that I’m disciplined enough with my daily dishwashing and laundry, nappy changes and long walks around Alexandra Palace. I could put on a record and lounge about the place moodily, but cannot decelerate quickly enough to enjoy the experience, and anyway, it’s too messy for moody lounging.

On Monday Bruce and I are going to see Synecdoche, New York (against our better judgment and that of the reviewers) and then have a quick dinner somewhere local, to celebrate our second wedding anniversary. There are so many little windows of childless opportunity opening up, their fisheyes briefly flashing the world of double-handed typing, hot drinks and messy lunches before wincing shut against the glare of present-day responsibility. I won’t stress out too much about wasting time as long as I know they’re still there.

Well, I’d better head out and find something to do with the last bit of free time I have left. I did know I’d probably come running to the internet to mark the occasion, but it’s time to take it offline now.

Behind the scenes

This afternoon my friend’s nine-month-old daughter may or may not have swallowed a thumbnail-sized sunglasses detail she may or may not have chewed off the arm of a pair of sunglasses. The point is, the mother was up like a shot, banging her kid’s head against the rug in a frenzied attempt to determine if she was choking, then hanging her upside-down whilst gagging her with a finger to try and bring up the offending ornament as she screamed like a baby that was probably going to shit out a foreign object sometime in the next 24 hours.

Then on the phone to a friend with five children of her own: I mean, what do I do – do I take her to the doctor, get her x-rayed, have them open her up, what? By then the child is breastfeeding calmly and Hartley has stopped crying because he’s back to being the centre of my universe. We’re all waiting for an answer because none of us have been through this before, though we’ve definitely reached an unspoken consensus that probably she is fine, and anyway, the friend’s children have never swallowed anything they’re not supposed to.

This past week has been difficult. There are many things about being a new parent that I simply cannot think about too much or I would spend the bulk of my time crying instead of inventing new games for him to play and trying to remember the words to picture books so that I don’t have to keep turning them away from him to read what they say.

The bond I formed with him in order to survive the experience is the very thing that now makes it impossible to even fathom being away from him for more than an hour at a time. Every first-time mother goes through it I guess, but I don’t trust the world or anyone in it at the moment, not with Hartley, and if I could spend the next eighteen years with him strapped to my front without being crippled by the weight of him, well. Don’t tempt me.

Next week Bruce and I are celebrating our second-year anniversary and will leave Hartley with someone else while we catch a film and go out for an early dinner. This woman has known Bruce for a very long time, is practically like a second mother to him and has two children of her own. She was the first person outside the family to meet Hartley, having driven us home from hospital after everyone else resigned themselves to the fact that we were probably never getting out. She will make a very good babysitter, and will not call us to come home early at the first sign of trouble.

No, the point is, everyone keeps trying to get me to feed Hartley a breadstick, a baby cookie, you know, whatever. Leave him for an evening, a night, a whole weekend – take a break! These are just suggestions, and what’s the harm in a bit of food? It’s symbolic, see. I not only feel obliged to intercept the offer – sometimes I feel like I’m the only one who would. And I simply cannot follow Hartley around for his entire life fending off the well-meaning gestures of others.

I don’t want a break, or a breadstick, or to reclaim my life. I just want to stop feeling so afraid.

To be continued

I wouldn’t use the term ‘schedule,’ though let’s just say that it’s become a trend for Hartley to fall asleep for the last 2 minutes of an outing, a nap which he will happily continue in his pram near the open back door so long as I can manage to get the entire operation inside without too much hassle.

Given the transient nature of baby trends, I am even more hesitant to decree this unexpected period of rest ‘me time,’ except that I need to start thinking seriously about writing – writing anything at all – before the urge is entirely discouraged out of me.

Lately I feel no impetus to turn every last detail of my life into a blog post. Partially this is due to the fact that I can’t seem to keep on top of processing the rapidly expanding details, nor locate a familiar frame of reference by which to pin them down. Partially I just can’t be bothered. My inner life is not so interesting anymore – at least not in the way you’d want to magnify, and Hartley’s inner life is mainly only interesting to me. Even so, I scramble for moments to myself to record what I can - moments that are quickly snatched away before an epiphany of any kind can resolve.

I read the headlines every day, and bits from the Guardian on weekends, but events only serve to illustrate how specifically focused my life has become and, as such, untranslatable. Motherhood is truly not of this world – we walk around duck ponds and grocery stores, form bonds of convenience and sing songs without a shred of dignity or cynicism. Conversations are always to be continued, and you continue them with about as many mothers as you come across until you are satisfied, except you are rarely ever satisfied.

See? It’s fairly nonsensical. You have to be there.

But that’s not to say I’m not having the time of my life, or that I’ve capped my pen and welded it shut for all eternity. There are plenty of people with children who write (you only have to type ‘baby’ and ‘blog’ into a search engine to see how many) and plenty of people with children who write (how often are works of fiction dedicated to children?), so I hold out hope that one day I too will fall into one of these camps.

So now that we got that straight. I have a grizzling infant to rescue.

On the fly

I’m typing this in my underthings, my clothing in a damp pile on the floor beside me, the two-for-five-quid tulips still wrapped in their grocery store plastic and dripping onto the hardwoods. I met Bruce from the bus and handed off Hartley, fast asleep in his pram, so that I could hurry away to M&S and then home for a bit of writing, and got caught up behind a large group of gangly teenaged boys wearing nothing but jumpers - smoke and dirty laughter and enigmatic snatches of improvised rap emanating off them - and boasting their indifference to the wall of rain that soaked those of us without umbrellas (just me and these boys, it turns out). Ergo, no time for decorum.

This afternoon Hartley and I made our way to Crouch End to meet up with the postnatal group, which has turned into a themed potluck lunch that someone agrees to host on a Friday, and which generates much emailing throughout the week about numbers and types of food and timings. It all sounds a bit mad and serious, and it is, at least until you get there, and then someone hands you a cup of coffee and you try to plunk your infant down on a play mat and two seconds later you’re joggling him about while he cries at the new surroundings and you’ve got your boob out and someone else is taking the coffee off you and handing you a biscuit instead and before you know it you’re all in the midst of feeding and distracting and calming but, more importantly, babbling about your babies and the week you’ve had. It’s strangely cathartic.

Apart from shamelessly exposing my breasts in mixed company, I’m learning more and more about my baby through the impressions of others, as our closeness sometimes obscures all but his most obvious qualities. Three main characteristics tend to crop up again and again: serious, intense, sensitive. I have tried my best to keep things light in my handling of him, and in my dealings with situations when he’s around, but it seems that nature has taken a stronger hold and, despite my best efforts, I am raising a child who shares my misgivings about the physical world and the people that inhabit it after all.

Morag suggested I try him on the baby swing, and after attempting to read the warning embossed on its side, Hartley proceeded to muddle over the purpose of this unlikely, swinging chair, first questioning its structural integrity and then simply frowning at the soft little toys that adorned its handle and which trembled gently just in his line of vision. He gave the vibrating sling seat and padded cloth jungle gym the same doubtful consideration and only seemed to relax once I’d taken him out of these and piled him, rather uncomfortably I would have thought, onto my knee. Nobody knows that Hartley has a wicked sense of humour, a great love of play and an abundance of affection for me and for Bruce and for his own toys, because he only displays these qualities at home. I suppose he’s just being honest.

Anyway, I meant to come home and write a good long post about something or other, but Bruce has already called from the bus and I could hear Hartley crying away in the background, so it won’t be long before they're here. I’m thinking I might have time for a two-minute lie down on my back in the middle of the floor, because a break in tradition is usually about as good as a holiday. Except I hear a key in the door.

Hartley: Three Months Old

Your children are not your children,
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but are not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

- Kahlil Gibran

The art of sneaking away with both hands free to type these missives is nearly equal to the task of writing them, as you’re much more savvy about naptime than you once were, and although my thoughts rest almost exclusively with you now (with the important exception of your father, of course), conjuring something intelligible from these with the spoils of motherhood still booming away in my breast is about as fathomable some days as building a church out of feathers and wind.



It occurred to me earlier this week that I could by now compile a dictionary of your sounds, the meaning of which, though they most certainly elude most others, speaks directly to my heart and makes me babble to you in tones that would have my nineteen-year-old self blushing with shame and burying her nose in a copy of Gravity’s Rainbow which, between you and I, she’s really only pretending to understand.

I didn’t know then that one day I’d become the linguist tasked with the important job of interpreting such obscure expressions as ‘owb’ and ‘aidoo’ which, as far as I can tell, are variations of ‘oh’, as in: Oh. I see you’ve got your face buried in my neck. Okay then. Lately I can’t seem to keep my face out of your neck, my lips off the soft skin of your belly and the slightly sticky soles of your feet, and even when you are asleep and I know that waking you would spell disaster, I can no more deprive your silky cheeks of kisses while you nap than I can keep myself from eating an entire bag of Sour Strawbs once they’ve been opened.



I think we must have reached the honeymoon phase of your infancy, because everything you do now – from those wide, gummy smiles that appear out of nowhere, even though you may have been shrieking with rage over the Springtime bumper on the Cbeebies channel only moments before, to the hysterical crying that could mean just about anything and that you do with such ridiculous charm that I can’t help but savor it a bit, even while I’m trying to make it stop – fills me with pure, unadulterated joy. You’ve come to associate me with such visceral integrity as well, and will often look up from a feed to consider my face and then offer me an unexpected peek at that lovely, shivering tongue of yours.



I have never felt so uninhibited, so given over to laughter and smiles as I have since I’ve known you, and you should know that this is a rare and wonderful thing you’ve inspired. Your lack of guile once frightened me, but I’m learning that although it renders you utterly vulnerable to the evils of humankind as I sometimes perceive them, it also reminds me of how beautiful the foundation of love and trust really is, and it fills me with awe when I think of how effortlessly these exist in you. I hope I will never do anything to bruise that inherent trust you have in me, or cast into doubt my love for you.



“Your children are not your children,” Kahlil Gibran famously wrote, and even though you are completely reliant on me, I know that this is true: that you do not belong to me in the most fundamental sense, even now. Your daddy and I are just the ones who are lucky enough to assist you in learning to be the lovely little person you already are. This is why, when you reward me with that enthusiastic grin of yours, I feel humbled, proud, and compelled to tell you Thank you, oh thank you! each and every time.



“You are the bows from which your children/ as living arrows are sent forth,” he continues, and although my trained eye must ultimately guide you towards “the mark upon the path of the infinite,” right now I am aiming that arrow straight back at myself so that I can feel the point go through me again and again. At least for a little while.



Happy third month, little boo. You’re awake again and I’m coming to see you.

Only this

Some prog rock meant to calm cot rage drones uselessly under the screams of two hysterical infants who lie beneath a strobing green play structure, Daliesque in proportion and sweetly butchering the Blue Danube at unhealthy decibels, over which Effy and I must shout at one another and, more pleadingly, at the babies, and I wonder what the neighbours must think but then realise that I stopped caring about that months ago.

Yes, months!

Today's accomplishments

One freshly bathed infant with clipped nails coming right up!

If nothing else, at least Bruce will know that he can leave town without fear of returning home to a talons-wielding dirt smudge.

The baby's pretty clean too.

Hartley: Two Months Old

I don't think it's any great coincidence that just as I'm finally gaining confidence as a mother, you're starting to become a happier, more settled baby.

A few weeks ago, after finishing our first squirmy, awkward feed-dance of the morning, and as I was changing your nappy, you came out with a sound I'd never heard before - a short, piercing but decidedly happy squawk. Then you smiled at me with your whole entire face, as though I was your long lost friend and not that insufferable woman who is always trying to make off with your bottomless, ever elusive snack beneath her top.

Since then, you have been utterly delighted to see me each morning and will happily spend five to ten minutes after your feed squawking and cooing at the wardrobe (I'm still not sure what it is you find so fascinating up there) and generally filling me in on your thoughts about this, which I pretend to understand while I plant a million kisses on your fat little cheeks and neck and belly and feet. Even though you lose this lucidity and transition back into that introverted, serious child you've always been, I know I have that window now, and that every day is an opportunity to widen it a little more.


Lately I've been bundling you into the carrier and taking you out for as many different errands and events as I can come up with, because even though you struggle to keep from losing your cool at home, out-of-doors and in mixed company you somehow transform into the easiest, most laid-back baby anyone has ever met. This week I took you to see your first movie - The Young Victoria - and though all the other babies startled and cried out and kicked up a fuss in their turn, you were as quiet as a mouse until the credits rolled, which quite frankly is mummy's least favourite part of a good film too.

For a grumpy baby, you are extremely portable, and while daddy is hard at work in town, you and I are frequenting cafes with friends, going on short and long walks in your carrier or your pram, visiting the shops and generally living the high life in London, which my maternity package and the kindness of your overseas grandparents have allowed us to do this year. Having you here has given me a reason to want to do all these things, and when we hit our stride, I can say in all honesty that you make even the dullest task seem fun and fulfilling.


You're growing so quickly now, a fact I am made all the more aware of by the zillions of photos we take of you that make this progression plain. You're not only filling out bodily, but in awareness and in character too. The stuttering anaconda in you is fading, and while I love the little man that you are becoming, I am also deeply saddened by the loss of that tiny baby you once were. A while back I was watching an illegal download of Benjamin Button, and at the 2 hour 14 minute mark a baby is born. That baby looked and sounded so much like you in your first week of life that I burst into tears and replayed that part over and over again so that I could re-experience your infancy. It's the biggest paradox of my life, to see you grow and watch you disappear all at the same time.


I think that when you have a child, you actually concede to loving and letting go of six or seven different children. I haven't the faintest clue what you'll be like at six months or a year, or five years or sixteen. I only know that you are beginning in the same way that I once began, and that my role now is to help you make these transformations, to keep marking them in our history book and to always love you more today than I did yesterday, which is how your father taught me to love.


Happy two months, darling.

Plot relocated

Please believe me when I say that the hardest part about having a baby isn't the fatigue, losing your autonomy, having no time for yourself, putting your relationships and marriage on the back burner or being able to focus on nothing else in a 24-hour period except your baby, day after day, although these things are incredibly hard.

No - the really hard part is having to hear your heart's joy scream bloody murder all day long in a flat that looks like it has been leveled by the trampling feet of the four horses of the apocalypse because you are trying to reprogram him out of a bad sleeping habit that you yourself encouraged him to adopt in the first place.

I will say in our defense that it was the midwives and health visitors who made us feel like we were doing a good thing by letting our infant dictate his own routine, though as a certain baby guru wisely wrote: What does a baby know about good sleep practice? He's just a baby!

Is it better to try and break bad habits long after they have been formed in the service of getting through those first few weeks together? We'll never know, but after hours of feeling like we were torturing our first born and taking turns at fleeing to the bedroom for a good cry ourselves, I can definitely say that it might have been worth taking a stab at some sort of routine from the outset.

It didn't occur to either of us that we were jumping into things a little too quickly until I found myself wanting a cigarette for the first time in over two years and Bruce was ringing up his sister in desperation. She said that what we were doing was valiant but that we should abandon our efforts for the time being, at least until after Hartley's jabs (which I'm taking him to get done today and again on Friday) and Bruce's stressful work period (he's having to oversee visits and meanwhile tie up loose ends before his week-long trip to Zambia next Tuesday). Once things are a bit more stable, she's going to come down to help us get the flat organised and then hold my hand while I begin the traumatic process of training him to sleep on his own.

My mother-in-law is coming to stay with us for a few days, I think just to give me a bit of a break and also to offer support, as sometimes the side-effects of inoculations is fever and I've never treated a baby for fever much less heard of the prescribed medication.

Hartley turns two months old on Wednesday, and rather than things calming down, it feels like we've all taken two giant steps back. I think that's just how it is, though, and it's something I'm going to have to get used to. There are lovely new things happening too, don't get me wrong, but they're a bit buried beneath stress at the moment.

New things

I can still remember how my sister's [various] house[s] smelled 20-some years ago - like breast milk and laundry detergent - and I wonder if mine smells similar to this now. I sure hope so.

The boys are fast asleep in the next room, and we are trying this new thing where I don't feed Hartley any sooner than three hours from his last feed. This means that for the first time in nearly one year, I've enjoyed a single unit of alcohol (a glass of red wine). Various sources claim that by the time I've metabolised this, my breast milk should be free and clear of any trace amounts, though I guess the worst that could happen is Hartley sleeps for longer than he should. In any case, Effy says that I am allowed one glass of wine per month. I ran past her the 2-hour, metabolising theory and she said ONE GLASS OF WINE PER MONTH so okay. One glass per month, I geddit.

Yesterday our postnatal instructor had to shoot off early and entrusted us with the securing of her mansion. Just pull the door to when you leave, she said, and I tried to look like I would definitely not go snooping through her four or five bedrooms once she'd left. I didn't, and then Effy invited two other stragglers to our afternoon lunch date, so now I have another couple of friends. I am trying not to overthink this, so will stop writing about it here-ish. In addition to lunch dates though, I'm adding a weekly trip to the cinema for an infant screening, plus swimming, to our growing repertoire of things we do whilst in this mother-son death grip of ours.

In the spirit of not feeding Hartley every time he grizzles, we embarked on another first, taking Robin's suggestion of a shared warm bath. That ate up approximately ten minutes of potential crying time, which in unfed infant years constitutes about two decades. That also means that Hartley has been asleep without me nearby for an entire lifetime, which means I must be relaxed by now.

Okay, Bruce is awake and hungry, so Here Lies This Post:

Post, I hardly knew ye (19:57 - 20:11)

Love is...

... sleeping on a wet patch of infant puke so that he doesn't have to.

Music should be heard and not seen

The babe and I have resolved my gentle agoraphobia and we’re out and about almost every day now, Hartley strapped to me in a front-facing carrier, fulfilling social obligations like tea with a friend, a check up at the health visitor’s or our meet-up with the postnatal group.

At some point it dawned on me that I am really no different from anyone else– i.e. not especially brilliant, but nor am I lacking fundamental qualities that would make me any less adept at handling new situations among strangers, baby or no (it only took me 32 years).

And so I am ploughing ahead with my resolve to join play groups and swimming lessons (for Hartley), and the pram-pushing group and infant-friendly film screenings at the local cinema (for me, mainly). I plan to approach these intimidating scenarios in the same manner that I’ve become accustomed to, which is with the confidence to at least show up and if something doesn’t work out, to not push myself to do it again. If I end up looking foolish somehow (which isn't likely, as we're all too busy focusing on ourselves to worry about what someone else is doing, unless we are very petty, which I suppose some of us can be at times), well, it's not the end of the world.

Who knew that it would take having a baby for me to finally grow up myself?

Bruce has taken him to the comic book store and once again I’m faced with the same dilemma as last time, which is that one hour isn’t quite enough time for a stress case like me to unwind properly. I usually end up wasting about twenty minutes contemplating various projects I could embark on before embarking on about four or five, poorly (like so), and then standing in place to scarf down a handful of Easter chocolates before putting in a load of laundry without actually starting the washing machine, tidying half the flat half-heartedly, putting the memory card from our camera into the computer without looking at the photos, making a cup of coffee I don’t really want and then watching ten minutes of an hour long programme while I force myself to drink that cup of coffee.

Next I plan to lie in bed and familiarise myself with the first sentence of a new baby book meant to help me decipher what went wrong with our son’s sleep, namely that he won’t do it unless he is on top of me or in bed pressed up against my belly. I will read that first sentence over and over again until Bruce comes home and then realise that what I really wanted was a long, hot bath. Ah well.

I wish these things could name themselves

Heaven knows he's miserable now

For the time being I have a snoring baby in a front-facing carrier, and although we’re indoors and still in our outdoors clothes, I thought I’d let him wake up on his own while I pottered about online.

This morning I fed him and changed him and got him ready for our very first postnatal class, which took place in a massive house about twenty minutes on foot from where we live. I thought I’d be freaked out at having to spend time at a posh woman’s house with posh mums, but it wasn’t like that at all. Everyone was very friendly and we all had so much to say that the class ran over by about a half hour.

I decided right away that even though she seemed a bit shy, I wanted to make friends with Morag because who wouldn’t want a friend named Morag? But after my positive first group experience, and topping this with an impromptu lunch with one of the other mums at a local cafe, I got to thinking: why stop there? I think I could probably befriend everyone in the class, so long as they had an hour to spare and a bus pass.

Gosh, when did I get so brave? It’s really out of necessity though. My new friend Effy said that by three months there’s no question about whether or not you should leave the house, as by then your baby needs so much stimulation and so little sleep that it will be impossible to entertain him at home all day on your own. So I guess it’s a good thing I’m finally starting to join in with this little community of first-time mothers.

All the things I used to be judge-y about and think were really lame are actually . . . well, probably really lame. But this is the world I belong to now, and if you don’t embrace it and get on with things, then you will have to be that cool, cynical person all by yourself in your lonely little flat with nobody to laugh about it with.

I am becoming very adept at these five minute posts. Sorry, but it’s quantity over quality until someone else is equipped to settle this screaming kid of mine. Bye!

A real boy

Bruce is currently out on his first independent excursion with our son, which means that for the first time in six weeks I have the place all to myself. They’re only going down to the comic shop, so in lieu of inviting scads of local teenagers on Facebook to come over and trash the place, I’ve opted for the simpler pleasures of writing and sipping a hot cup of coffee. I’m sure there are other, better activities I could be engaged in that require both hands and the absence of screaming (showering, cleaning, sleeping, eating a messy curry) but I’m a creature of habit, so.

The day before last, Bruce took some banked time off work and we went out to have Hartley’s hearing tested (passed!) and also to register his birth. Lately we’ve been taking him out for entire afternoons, and so long as he is in his front-facing baby carrier, we’re able to board busses, browse the shops along the high streets, sit down to lunch and return home with nary a peep out of him.

He picked the registrar’s office in Islington (the furthest he’s been from home, in other words) to spark a debate about our little agreement, however, and Bruce and I regarded our screaming bundle in mute astonishment as he exercised his little lungs in the chilly air and passersby scanned our faces for telltale signs of a deviant or neglectful parent.

I always imagined that when my kid lost his shit in public, my Super Mummy persona would emerge and I would intuitively jump into action, which I was mostly right about, except the actions mainly involved grinning and shrugging and digging around impotently in the change bag for some magical hush potion, none of which solved the problem. Luckily he managed to calm himself down by the time we reached the bus stop, but it will be a dark day in North London when it’s for real and I am alone with him on some form of packed public transport during rush hour. Because he can really belt it out when he puts his mind to it.

Look at me here, an adult alone and in possession of two or more sex toys, a television and a cupboard full of hot drinks and what am I doing? Writing about the baby. It really is an all-consuming role, though, this parenting thing, and some days I wake up and wonder if I will ever again be able to eat breakfast and take a shower in the same morning, or watch an entire episode of Big Love without turning to Bruce and giving him the Is that the baby? look or, hell, go out for an afternoon or evening on my own.

But by then he’s already squirming and grunting and indicating that I should feed him or pick him up or change him already for heaven’s sake and I don’t have long to ponder these things. Though I finally understand what it was my mother was trying to protect me from all those livelong teenaged years. How on earth do teenage mums and single parents do this? Don’t answer that, I’m just being silly. I’ve come down with the flu again, which will add another challenge to the week ahead, as though I needed one.

Bruce just called to say that he was minutes from home, so I guess that’s time. I’m not sure when I’ll be able to write here again, though I suppose half the fun of having a blog is finding the time to write in it, yes?

Hartley: One Month

I can’t believe that it’s been a whole month since the three of us began this terrifying, wonderful journey.

If you’d told me back in December that, within a few short days of meeting the little human whose gestation caused me months of sickness and pain, I would discover a new and intense kind of love that would have me jump out the emergency exit of a plane at 60,000 feet without a parachute if I thought that it would save him from harm, I might have been a bit dubious.

But here we are, high above the earth without the customary safety features, and I finally understand that nobody is born with a maternal instinct, or perhaps all women are, but it is not something you can teach a person or prepare for yourself because it will not kick in until it has something (someone) to kick in for. And I’m holding on for dear life, except this time it’s not my own – it’s his, and I would fashion him a parachute from my own skin if we suddenly went plummeting towards the earth and there was no other way to save him.

Quite often as he’s falling asleep, he will throw his arms out stiffly and bring them trembling back to his body with a whimper, as though he is falling from a great height. I try not to visualise a thousand perils, an infinity of ways the earth could take him from us. I try to harden my heart, because it is much too soft now, almost liquid, and while it takes the impression of every hiccup, every sigh, every discontented chuckle and near-smile, it also traps the debris of imagined catastrophe, of extradimensional grief.

Fear and joy are two sides of the same heart, though, and he has brought us so much joy. He is the inventor of ‘rooty tooty’ and the Anaconda song (sung to ‘I Want Candy’); his soiled nappies and pouty-lipped wailing the cause for celebration and laughter; his wonderment fodder for our own renewed perception of the world, which has never seemed so incandescent, so furiously moving, so mutable and transient.

Our arms have found new ways of holding, of handling and doing - our bodies the very means of transport, of shelter and sustenance. From ourselves this incredible thing has emerged, and into him we continue to pour our entire selves, because he is here and we love him and can do nothing else.

Parenthood does not get worse before it gets better – it’s worse the moment you take off, and then over time, somehow, it does, mercifully, get better.

It has been one month since I first held your warm, solid, shivering body against mine and saw your strange, beautiful face through a fog of fear and exhaustion, Hartley (my darling, my insatiable anaconda), and you’ve grown more beautiful each and every day since. I love you very much.