Down & Out In A London Kitchen

Before I had a baby, whenever people said that having a child makes you “humble”, I always dismissed it as utterly pathetic - because what I thought they meant was that you were so humbled by the miracle of life and the marvel of the child.

No: what they mean is that having a child teaches you humility. It teaches you that although you might think you’re a big shot or a tough nut or an independent, don’t-need-nobody type, that all goes out of the window once there’s a buggy in the hall. It teaches you that you are wrong about everything – wrong, wrong, wrong!

Your plans for being a super-strict routine queen with the baby sleeping in its own room collapse as you welcome junior into your bed on day three and can’t get rid of it until it turns ten. Your loud assertions to breastfeed exclusively for six months even though you know it will be “hard” crumble as nothing but a weak dribble of milk ever appears. Your vow to keep going out, up with the news and down with the kids vaporises as you discover your attention span, free time and energy drying up like a puddle in the sun. You learn you have to rely on the kindness of others, as you block gangways with your buggy, trash restaurants and silently beg others to be nice to you when you are tired and tearful, un-showered and broken. You learn that you are no different from anyone else.

My own personal humiliation journey has been about socialising. I am naturally anti-social, not sporty, not especially a fresh-air type. I don’t get bored easily and used to spend days on end at home just pottering about. This, I discovered, was not possible with a baby over about seven months old because both you, and it, will go insane with boredom. What I discovered was that an hour of childcare goes quickest when it’s spent with other people.

So we had to make friends, fast. And this is, basically, the thing I am worst at. I don’t get on that well with most people I meet – I am too gloomy, liable to say odd things and in general I talk too much. So I don’t really call people and arrange tea parties, I am not “always out”. And the other thing is that the people I get on best with are often similar types, so the process of us making friends is like trying to get two incredibly shy pandas to mate.

Everyone makes fun of how rigid I am as a parent. Whether it’s to my face or behind my back, I know that the thing about me, the thing that people snigger about, is how neurotic and to-the-second I am about timings, how strict I am about bedtime routines, about sitting in high chairs for meals, about not getting a toy back that has been thrown out of a buggy more than once, about not napping after 10.30am so that the lunchtime sleep goes well.

You know my sort, I’m sure. Maybe you’re the same.

But we are living back at home with my parents at the moment, while there is building work done to our house, and being around my mother has had a surprising effect.

I have always had a strong inner voice of doom. No holiday, party or weekend plan has ever been able to escape my critical logistical eye – and with a baby it has raged out of control. “We can’t do that,” I will say gravely when my husband suggests grabbing a morning coffee with the buggy. “It’ll be a nightmare.”

Some people don’t mind “nightmares”. Some people think they are, in fact, quite fun. War stories. Battle scars. Not me. I think “nightmares” are just that and I avoid them at all costs. My instinctive urge when invited to do anything is to say “no,” because I basically just want to stay at home and change Kitty’s nappy in peace.

When things are going well with your child – especially if you only have one – it is difficult not to feel a huge upsurge of smugness. They are sleeping like tops, eating like horses and smiling all day long. “What a pleasant child!” people shriek.

Yes, yes, you say to yourself, it’s all paid off. I AM the world’s greatest mother, I AM the best at trouble-shooting and problem-solving. I am firm yet fair, my routine is structured yet flexible. My child is a dreamboat and it’s all down to me, me, me!!! Your favourite thing is people asking you questions about your child. “I am just very strict,” you say, beatifically, beaming at your progeny. “We have a brilliant routine. S/he seems to respond really well to it.”

And then, 48 hours later, your world caves in as your kind-hearted baby turns into a demented, raging toddler. You lurch from one ineffective parenting technique to another. You wonder what Jo Frost would do in your situation. You question every single thing you’ve done up until now. You conclude, sitting on your stairs and weeping into your knees, (covered in fish pie and crayon), that this is all because you didn’t breast-feed for long enough.

There is little more emotive an issue for parents than their child’s eating. I always thought that I would be very cool if Kitty started refusing to eat, or became a picky eater. I never had to eat anything I didn’t want to when I was little and I am grateful to my mother for never making eating an issue, or mealtimes a battle. I also have a phobia about being forced to eat more than I want and so the last thing I thought I would ever do was coax, cajole or bully Kitty into eating.

And by and large, I’ve stuck to that. Mostly because you actually can’t force a pre-verbal toddler to eat something they don’t want. They will simply spit it out, or purse their lips, or bat the spoon away.

But when Kitty is going through a phase of really not wanting to eat anything, of turning her head after a mouthful of lunch and saying “Na!”, or even frantically bum-shuffling away from a proffered square of cake, it’s pretty hard to hold your nerve. The temptation to squeeze her fat cheeks together and stuff macaroni cheese into her mouth is strong.

I thought I was going into this baby thing with my eyes pretty open. I was eight years old when my little sister was born, so I was under no illusions about babies and toddlers being delightful Boden-clad little munchkins. I knew that they wailed and puked and screamed and wriggled and didn’t do anything even remotely interesting, like sitting up, for aaaaages.

So I knew all that. But what I failed to realise is quite what a drastic increase in housework a baby means. I don’t know why, but one extra person living in our house seems to have tripled the housework, rather than just increasing it by 50%. And girls of my generation simply haven’t been brought up to know how to keep a house tidy; we were supposed to run the country.

I am lucky: my husband, although he doesn’t actually snap on the Marigolds, isn’t actively untidy. I know women whose husbands leave a trail of dirty pants and socks around the house for them to pick up and pretend that they don’t understand how to switch the dishwasher on. My husband has his chores, (all bins and recycling, all shopping and cooking on the weekend), and he sticks to them faithfully. Once in a while I will even find him cross-legged in front of the open fridge, giving it a clean.

Before I had children I assumed that I would have a lot. And when I say a lot I mean a minimum of three.

I have three sisters, I am the third of four (like a fax), and I have always thought that “small” families (i.e. with only two children) must be terribly lonely and sad.

It was bad enough when my eldest sister, Harriet, left school and therefore more or less left home, leaving me with only two other sisters with whom to bicker and slob about. The thought when she left there would be no-one else left with me until I went to University was awful. In fact, I remember clearly a girl at school being in floods of tears one October day because her elder brother Robin had left home for university leaving her alone at home with her “bloody parents”.

When I was in my teens and twenties and having a miserable time for whatever reason, I would say to myself: “I had better enjoy myself while I can, because when I’m old or when I’ve got children I will look back on this time and be envious of myself. Similarly, I bet I will hate girls younger and prettier than me.”

And in fact, neither thing is true; I don’t want to be younger again because being a zitty teenager was hell and being a zitty twenty-something lurching from one disastrous relationship to another was worse.

And I really don’t envy girls younger and prettier than me. I really, seriously don’t.

There is no time in parenting more claustrophobic or suffocating than when a child is ill. And they're ill an awful lot. No-one ever told me that. No-one ever said "By the way, to be a parent is basically to be a nurse." Vomiting and diarrhoea is the worst, as it's not only claustrophobic but smelly and requires an awful lot of laundry. Well, I say an awful lot, I mean even more than the normal gargantuan lorry-loads.

I took Kitty to the library the other day, that was my first mistake. It's a cheerful and welcoming place, the childrens' section of the library, and Kitty loves it. But clean it is not. And discerning about the health of the children it lets through its doors even less not. I saw more than one green and peaky face but tried to suppress my hateful bourgeois preciousness about preserving Kitty's health. "She needs to get ill," I try to tell myself. "If not now, then at nursery, ten times worse." But when I saw a four year old standing in the corner by the Harry Potters, coughing on and on, greenly, phlegmily, foully, for a full five minutes, I wrestled Kitty into her buggy and made a bid for the High Street.