Why You Shouldn't Ask Me For Advice

When I first had S, I thought I was in the worst situation possible. A single mother, alone with a tiny, jaundiced, premature baby. Sounds pretty bleak, doesn't it.

In the nineteen months since, I've realised that actually I am very lucky. As my friends (and my sister!) have had their own babies around me, I've realised just how lucky I am, and have always been, with my little bundle. You should probably never ask me for advice, because the only advice I can give is based on experience - and is therefore not likely to be helpful! Here's why:

• If your baby is constipated, my advice is likely to be "meh, just leave it; it'll be fine in the end." S has never been a prolific poo-er. She was exclusively breastfed until almost 6 months, and during that time she usually only did a poo once a week. She once went 18 days without a poo. I kept checking with health visitors and GPs (and Facebook, of course) as to whether my child was normal, and the resounding response was - if she's not in discomfort with it, it's fine. 

• If your problem is that your changing bag is just too big and heavy and it's such a mission to go out anywhere... my advice is likely to be "ahh, just leave everything home and take yourself and baby out for a bit!" Because S was breastfed and didn't poo much, and I live very close to the city centre, I've never had to worry about taking masses of supplies out with me. If I needed anything from town, I always just shoved her in the sling and made a quick dash for the shops. Also, the fact she wore cloth nappies meant that any poorly-timed poos were well contained; her first proper poonami was a couple of months ago. My sister has not been so lucky with her son; when she comes out of the house she has to bring at least two changes of clothes. He poos after (usually during, actually) every feed, and it usually wrecks every piece of clothing he's wearing.

• If your baby is crying, my advice will probably be "just give him a cuddle." S has never been a great wailer. She cried when she was hungry and that was about it. Yep, she never even cried when her nappy was wet. Still doesn't. She's just getting to the stage where she'll pretend to cry if she thinks it'll get her something she wants, but on the whole, she doesn't scream unless there's a big problem. On those rare nights where she's not settled, I've always just put her in a sling and rocked her to sleep. When she was very small and I couldn't get her to settle after a night feed, I'd just lay her on my chest and we'd sleep like that.

• If your baby doesn't settle to sleep at night, I'm a great advocate of feeding to sleep, and co-sleeping. From a very young age, I fed S to sleep and she shared my bed. Once she started nursery, the only time she was breastfeeding was at nap time or bed time. I was still feeding her to sleep when she was 17 months old. Everyone told me I was mad to be relying on feeding to get her to sleep, and that I should move her out of my bed soon or I'd never have it to myself again. Well, balls to you all. She stopped breastfeeding one week when she had a bad cold and couldn't breathe through her nose, and has never asked for it since (much to my dismay). She started sleeping in the cot one night when I was too tired to stay awake and watch her, and now she sleeps there every night. She started sleeping through the night at 13 months, though I was still waking every few hours to check she was breathing. No fights. No controlled crying. No begging. No pleading. No pain. No fuss. 

• If you can't get your toddler to let you clean her teeth, I'm likely to just say "well, leave it a few days and try again." I had terrible trouble trying to get S to clean her teeth. Proper screaming with the mouth clamped shut business. Eventually I just gave up trying. One evening I couldn't be doing with the fight before bed time, so I just gave her a cuddle instead. The next couple of nights I forgot... and then one evening she was in the shower and made a grab for her tooth brush on the side. I figured it was worth a shot, so I put some toothpaste on the brush, and we went for it. And so began our evening ritual of cleaning S's teeth with absolutely no fuss or bother. At all. Nothing.

• If your toddler has trouble settling at night, I'm likely to suggest you just stick a dvd on and leave em to it. We get by on a combination of Despicable Me and Peppa Pig. I am fairly sure this makes me the worst mother in the world. At the very least, it rules me well and truly out of the running for mum of the year. But we're happy; it works for us. I put a dvd on; S lays down in her cot with her books and her Tigger, and she goes to sleep. For anyone who wants to tell me "oooh, you want to get her out of that habit before it's too late..." - see my point above about the cosleeping and breastfeeding. And then knob off. 

I'd like to take credit for these lazy parenting tips, and to say that S is such a dream because of my amazing parenting skills - but I'd be lying through my teeth. I'm just a bit lazy and cut as many corners as I can legitimately get away with. I have been blessed with possibly the easiest child in the world. She's so easy, she makes me look like I have a clue what I'm doing.

So yeah, don't ask me for advice; I don't have much experience of challenging parenting!

Sling Talk

Things people have said to me whilst wearing S in the sling:

• That's the best way to travel!

• She looks comfortable!

• He looks comfortable!

• You've got something on you...

• Is there something you want to get off your chest?

• Isn't she heavy like that?

• Nawwwww!

• You're not still carrying her, are you?

• I wish I could go about like that.

• I bet that's difficult isn't it?

• Doesn't your back hurt?

• Don't you have a buggy?

• There's a baby on you.

You get extra points if you come up with something amusing... or at least something I've not heard a million times before!

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Things NOT to Say to Me

Early Motherhood - The End of the Paternity Leave

This post is one of a series I have written about S's birth and first few weeks of life. The first part is here.

The next few weeks were very stressful and confusing for me. 

I have already posted about how the ex hated my midwife, and I was therefore keen to have her discharge us from hospital care. S was still jaundiced, and I was terrified they would take her back into hospital; I knew if they did this, I wouldn't be admitted with her, and would have to be separated from her. That first visit, the midwife did another heel-prick test on S for her jaundice levels and weighed her. She had lost a bit of weight and I nearly cried. She told me the best thing to do was to feed, feed, feed, and to prop up the head end of her Moses basket to avoid any vomiting. I was also supposed to express milk into a cup or syringe, and top her up after feeding. This was the most depressing thing, as I didn't have a pump and had to do it by hand; it took ages and hurt, and was often wasted as S turned her head away at the wrong moment. Premature and jaundiced babies are often too tired to suck enough to feed as much as they need to get rid of the jaundice and put on weight. S slept most of the time, and I was still waking her every 3 hours to feed.

My tiny girl wrapped in blankets

That first day, the ex busied himself unpacking what was left of the boxes in my flat, and putting things where he thought they should belong. He went out to get teabags, and came back with a microwave. He'd forgotten the teabags, so he went back out and came back with a vacuum cleaner, broom, dustpan and brush and mop and some random food: bread, jam, cheese. He wanted to provide for us. I avoid eating bread because it makes me ill. I already had a dustpan and brush. I don't even drink tea. When I took the mop out of its box, it was broken. When I pointed it out to him he shouted at me: "I can't do anything f***ing right can I, nothing's good enough!" All I'd meant was that perhaps he'd like to take it back to the shop and exchange it. At one point he told me he might not be able to get a sitter to be able to see me over the weekend, and gave me £20, sending me to the shops to buy some food for myself. I left S sleeping in her bouncy chair, and him organising things in a cupboard, and wandered into town. It was nice to be out in the air, but I felt like I was missing a limb without S. It also crossed my mind more than once that I might return home and find that the ex had taken her away. I half expected the house to be empty when I returned, but it wasn't so I sat on the sofa with S and fed her early.

Because of the damp upstairs, the council had brought over a dehumidifier the size of a cooker. It was in the bedroom, wired up to some special box because it was too powerful to run off the mains. The man who brought it showed the ex how to work it, but he never showed me. This meant I couldn't switch it off, and the noise and heat it generated were too much to sleep with. For the next week, S and I slept downstairs, me on the sofa and her in the Moses basket next to me. I was still setting my alarm for every 3 hours, and would wake up, switch the TV on and feed her, then settle her back into the basket, switch the TV off and go to sleep. Several times, I then woke up half an hour later in a panic - I couldn't remember putting S in her basket, had I fallen asleep holding her? Where was she? Oh God, you've suffocated the baby, where is she, where is she... oh wait, she's in the basket next to you. I would also regularly wake up in a panic, convinced I'd slept through an alarm and S had gone more than 3 hours without a feed. I was exhausted and it was driving me mad. All I could think about was making sure she was fed on time so that her jaundice went, and she put on weight, and nobody would take her away from me.

The following day the ex was unable to visit. My mother came round instead, with a friend. They brought gifts for S, clothes that would fit her which was good. I forget what we talked about. When they left, the friend gave me a hug and told me I'd done really well and S was beautiful. I didn't know how to respond to that; I wanted to shout at her, no I haven't done well! Look what I did, I went into labour early and now my baby is tiny and orange and they're going to take her away because I'm doing it all wrong!! I knew it was all my fault, that something I had done over the Easter weekend had resulted in my going into labour 5 weeks early. Throughout my pregnancy the ex had told me so many times that other women had been pregnant with his child and ended up having abortions, they'd murdered his babies, and that if anything happened to this baby he would never forgive me.

The midwife visited a couple more times, and then discharged us. I was so relieved at this; no more tension with the ex thinking I was telling the midwife bad things about him. More importantly, if the midwife had discharged us then I thought she must think I was doing an ok job, and wouldn't take my baby away. I was petrified those first few weeks that I would be somehow "found out" and they would take S back to the hospital, where she would be safe away from me.

My little orange baby!

The pushchair I had bought was quite large and cumbersome. I found that I wasn't comfortable bumping it up and down the stairs with my tiny baby in it. This meant that I could only go out of the house when accompanied by the ex. If he didn't visit, or came round and didn't fancy going out, I was stuck in the house. I wanted to buy a sling, but had no money until pay day. A dear friend must have realised I was going a bit mad being stuck in the house, and posted me a sling she had not been able to get on with for her baby. The minute it arrived, I read the instructions as to how to tie it, put it on, and put S in it. That day was like a transformation in me. I didn't just wear the sling to go out; I wore it all the time, happy that I could now keep S close to me. The ex insisted S would not be warm enough in the sling, and bought a snowsuit which she had to wear whenever we went out. 

The week after we came out of hospital, we went to the council offices to register S's birth. As was standard, S was wrapped in 3 or 4 blankets inside of the pram, with a rain cover over the top because of the weather. How she never overheated during those first few weeks, I will never know. She must have been boiling. When we arrived at the office, we had to leave the pram outside and go into a waiting room. The ex carried S. He held her in the waiting room, and refused to let me near her. When we went into the office to register her, he held her. At the time I felt strange, not being allowed to hold my child. Looking back at it, I  notice that I was not allowed to hold my child until I had signed the register, put his name on the birth certificate, and answered the registrar three times that yes, I was sure I wanted her to have his surname and him to be on the birth certificate. I couldn't figure out why she kept asking me, and telling me that it was my choice, and mine alone. I held S briefly while he signed the register, but then I had to give her back. We were given copies of the birth certificate, and we left. 

I was glad when S was back in the pushchair, because I was allowed to push that. I did it wrong, of course, and was constantly told I was being stupid about waiting to cross the road and not bumping up and down kirbs. His favourite trick was to suddenly take off down a steep kirb and cross the road diagonally, then turn around to smirk at me trying to get across the road and keep up with him without getting run over. He also regularly tutted at me for being too slow and cautious. On the days we took her out in the sling, again he stormed off ahead of us, and I had to try and keep up without having S bump about too much in the sling.

None of this turned out to matter though; within a week the ex had stormed out, and a few days after that he finished with me. I was soon to become a single mother.

The happy ending is on its way... 

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Nine Months of Joy

Tomorrow, S will be 9 months old. Nine whole months. To celebrate this milestone, Wordless Wednesday will be dedicated to her.

One of S's first babygros... and one of her new ones.

I was trying to figure out why S being 9 months old was such a big deal in my head. The only reason I can think of is this: when she was born, a lot of the clothes designed for "tiny baby" were still too big. Newborn clothes were a joke. She was three months old before she could wear her 0-3 months clothes. She didn't move into 3-6 months clothes until she was about 5 months, and she only moved into the 6-9 months clothes at 7 months because her cloth nappies made her bum too big for the smaller trousers.

Goodbye rain mac...

Tomorrow she will be 9 months old... and I've already got a stash of 9-12 months clothes out and ready for her to try on. We've had to abandon several onesies because they're not big enough to be comfortable any more.

Last week we finally had to admit defeat with her lovely yellow rain mac, which was actually 3-6 months, but  lasted her for months and months.

So 9 months is such a big deal because it's the first time she's been big enough to wear the "right" size clothes!

(and yes, I know this is a very short post - the things at the forefront of my mind at the moment are not things I can post about on a public blog)

What Does Attachment Parenting Mean to Me?

It occurred to me that I have mentioned attachment parenting (AP) in several posts lately, but I’ve never really explained what it is, or what it means to me.

AP has been in the media recently because of that controversial Time Magazine cover showing a woman breastfeeding her son, who was standing on a chair next to her. It probably gave a slightly wrong impression of AP, but one aspect of this type of parenting is “extended” breastfeeding. I saw something the other day where a woman said, “if you’re still breastfeeding at a year, everyone knows about it; if you’re still breastfeeding at two years, only your husband knows about it. If you’re still breastfeeding at three years, only you know about it.” A lot of women do continue to breastfeed their children until they are toddlers, and just tend to keep it a secret to avoid the sort of outrage generated by that Time Magazine cover. I think I’m lucky, in that when I was reading about parenting styles after having S, I stumbled upon a group whose members were largely AP, and felt happy to stay there and stop looking for anything else. To me the idea of “extended” breastfeeding isn’t so awful, and why should it be? Breastmilk is full of vitamins, essential fats and everything a child needs for development, after all.

But AP is not just about breastfeeding. The Sears’ bestselling Baby Book quotes the seven “Baby Bs”: birth bonding, belief in your baby’s signals, breastfeeding, baby wearing, bedding close to your baby, balance & boundaries, and beware of baby experts.

Birth Bonding

I was lucky when S was born; although I was fairly out of it and a bit clueless as to what was going on and what I should be doing, a NICU nurse came down to tube feed her on that first day, and told me to undress my baby and put her down my top, and just keep here there as much as I could. For the two weeks we were in hospital, whenever I could I put S down my t shirt. She slept a lot more peacefully curled up on my chest, and I slept through a lot of other babies’ screaming with her laying there. Ward staff would pop their heads in to check on us and, seeing the empty fishbowl, ask me “where is your baby?!” Although “kangaroo care “ as they call it, is something actively encouraged in NICU, nobody really mentions it on the ward – and none of the other NICU nurses really mentioned it to me. I feel very lucky that I met that particular nurse on that particular day.

In the first few weeks of S’s life, she was held a lot. Her father held her whenever he was here, and when he didn’t have her, I did. I didn’t like to put her down in her bouncy chair because she looked so small and lost in it. I did start to put her upstairs to bed in her Moses basket in the evenings, but I spent most of that time going upstairs to check she was ok.

Belief in Baby’s Signals

This is a big one for me, because so many people out there seem to be adamant that babies’ cries should be ignored, lest we create a generation of manipulative attention-seekers. I remember S’s father telling me, while we were still in the hospital, that I was creating a rod for my own back by picking her up when she cried.

This is about more than just crying though; it’s about learning what a baby’s signals mean: are they tired? Hungry? Do they need a clean nappy? All babies are born with “attachment-promoting behaviours” – they are designed to be cute and precious so that we want to pick them up and hold them and coo at them and notice when they have a wet nappy. Parents are generally able to intuit what their baby wants, but often we ignore their signs: “he can’t be hungry, I only fed him an hour ago.”

It took me a while to trust my instincts with S, and to realise that I really did know what was best for her, and I did know what I was doing. I still have times where she’s whining and clearly wants something, and I can’t figure out what it is – and then after a few minutes I think “hang on, you’ve not changed her nappy for a while you eejit.” On the whole though, she is very good at letting me know what she wants, and I’m getting better at reading her cues and signals.

Breastfeeding

When I was pregnant, I asked my mum whether I and my siblings were breastfed. She replied yes, for at least a year. S’s father’s response to this was “what? A year? Disgusting!” I suppose because I was the second of six children, and all of my younger siblings were breastfed, it just never occurred to me to formula feed. A friend advised me before S was born that I should use formula because then you can see exactly how much milk the baby is getting and make sure they get enough on each feed. At the time I didn’t fancy the idea, purely because I wasn’t sure about all the bottles and sterilising and things – I knew I would worry about germs. I’ve posted on here before about how I found breastfeeding hard in the first few weeks, but a friend pointed me in the direction of the group I mentioned above, and the ladies on there proved invaluable in their advice and wisdom. I read about the benefits of breastfeeding, and found that actually, I’m one of those people who is likely to be found banging on about how all babies should be breastfed, and formula companies not allowed to advertise at all, until the cows come home. I feel very strongly, not just that newborns should be breastfed, but that breastfeeding should continue for as long as possible. S is seven months old now, and people often seem surprised I’m still breastfeeding her and say “oh well done!” as if it’s some great achievement. Really, it’s not. Once I was over that initial hurdle, breastfeeding became the lazy option for me. A couple of people have asked me when I will be moving her onto formula, but I have literally no idea why I would do that. Why feed my child a product that’s been synthetically engineered to imitate something my body already produces? I have no plans to give up breastfeeding any time soon. For one thing, it burns a lot of calories, and I eat a lot of chocolate. A LOT of chocolate.

Baby Wearing

This one, I stumbled into. I live on the first floor, and I found I was unable to get the pushchair up and down the stairs without help. This meant I was housebound, unless S’s father came round, which he didn’t do every day. A friend sent me a wrap sling which she’d not been able to get on with for her little girl, and I fell in love with it. I put S into the sling, and off we went. All of a sudden I was free to wander off out as and when I pleased. Because S settled so well in the sling, I started wearing it around the house too, which meant I could do the washing up, cook some dinner, go upstairs to the toilet etc without having to leave her. I even started feeding her while she was in the sling. As she grew heavier, the way that sling tied across my stomach hurt my belly, so I invested in an Ergo sling. These days, we use the Ergo when we go out, but I still use the wrap sling at home sometimes, and we did use it the other day to wander down to the post box. It’s great for cuddly times. The Ergo is more structured, and can be worn in several different ways. It has straps like a back pack, and a pocket for my keys. S loves to be in the sling when we go out because she can see so much more – even when she’s facing my chest, she can look around and above her at the trees and people, and I chat to her constantly. She developed good head and neck control from an early age, and I think this has a lot to do with the fact she was always in the sling, looking up at me. She is quite the little chunk these days, and it does hurt my back to carry her around so much – but I still prefer the sling to the buggy, and miss that closeness if we’ve not used the sling for a few days.

Bedding Close to Baby

When we first came home from hospital, S slept in a Moses basket next to my bed. When she woke up I would sit up and feed her, then spend what felt like a lifetime trying to settle her back to sleep in her basket, and then go to sleep myself. I was fairly zombiefied by this point. One morning around 4am, I decided that since she was showing no signs of settling into her basket, I would just prop myself up with some pillows, and have her sleep on my chest like she used to in the hospital. She went to sleep in no time, and for a couple of weeks, every time she woke at 4am I would have her in bed with me. Then I decided to try feeding her laying down, and it was an instant success. After that, once she woke for the first time during the night, I would just bring her into bed with me and feed her laying next to me. It wasn’t long after that I decided there was no point in putting her in the Moses basket in the first place, and she’s slept in my bed ever since.

People tend to frown on this one, and think it’s terribly dangerous. If you follow basic safety precautions though, it’s really not. In fact there are studies to suggest having them that close to you can cut the risk of SIDS by a considerable amount. Mothers really do have a sixth sense as to their child’s position in bed next to them, and I’m not a particularly active sleeper any way. If I fall asleep laying on my side, that’s exactly how I wake up. If there was a man sharing my bed, I probably wouldn’t have S in it because I would worry about him rolling over on her – though to be honest, I’m more likely to remove the man than my daughter!

There is nothing better to see first thing in the morning than a great big, cheesy grin from someone to whom you are the entire world.

Balance and Boundaries

This is the one I have problems with. Because it’s just the two of us, and there’s not somebody here to take over rocking her when she’s having a bad time, I do tend to neglect myself from time to time. Over the last month or so S’s sleeping has been pretty bad, which has meant mine has been too, and I’ve not had the break I usually get in the evenings. Things like cleaning the kitchen and tidying the living room have fallen by the wayside as I’ve had to prioritise the list of things I would have liked to get done in a day. In all honesty though, I do think this has been an exercise in letting go for me. I don’t need to get downstairs and watch that TV show, the washing up is not important in the grand scheme of things, the world will not end if I don’t update my blog tonight. I decided that as long as I’ve had some dinner, the rest can wait, and once I’d adopted that mindset it made things a lot easier to deal with. It is difficult to maintain any real balance when you are the only one doing the balancing though!

Beware of Baby Experts

When you’re a new mum, everyone has advice for you. Everyone knows an old foolproof trick their mother used to get baby to sleep, or the best way to do this or that. People want to be helpful, and don’t take too kindly to being told “thanks, but I’m going to do this my way.” I’ve found that people also tend to think that because I’m a first time mum, and they’ve raised however many kids themselves, I can’t possibly know what I’m doing, and I should be doing what they did. It’s difficult to say “no, I know best” without sounding as if I’m judging them for what they’re doing, or insulting them in some way.

There are endless books and experts out there who will tell you exactly how to get baby to sleep, when to feed, how to train them to do this and that. It’s difficult to turn your back on them all, and you might not want to. I did though. I don’t want to force S into a schedule, I don’t want to train her to self-soothe, I don’t want to use controlled crying or leave her to cry it out.

When someone has raised ten kids, or is considered sufficiently expert on the subject that they have published several books on how to look after babies, and you’re just a woman who’s been handed this bundle and told to raise it into a well-adjusted adult, it’s easy to think they know best and you’d better do what they say. Turns out I’m quite stubborn though, and I read lots. I might not have the practical experience, but I know a lot of the theory and I have my instincts and for the most part, I’ve found that my instincts are backed up by quite a lot of scientific fact. I’ve decided I’m going to follow my instincts as to what is right for S, and the experts can go and sell their books elsewhere.

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Diary Entries From Early Motherhood

Wednesday 4^th July (12 weeks, 2 days)

It seems like these days every time S wakes from a nap she has learned something new. She’s cooing and gurgling a lot more these days and reacts to my presence more, which makes life more rewarding for me. She was weighed the other day and is now on the 25^th centile line for a full-term baby. I know her father would get a massive kick out of knowing this; that sort of thing always interests him, but I daren’t contact him to tell him. S is awake more during the day now, which is fun but also difficult. We play together, but I find it mentally exhausting to not have so much time to myself.

Monday 9^th July (13 weeks)

Today S is 3 months old. I can’t believe how quickly time has gone by. I’ve been a mother for three whole months. On the whole, I do feel like I’ve come a long way since S’s father left, but I still feel like I’ve failed her somehow. This is not at all what I imagined when I was pregnant. I’m not sure how I ever thought things would work, but this situation never crossed my mind. I am tempted on a daily basis to ignore all advice and common sense and take S to see her father. I know that would be a bad move; I know the people who have advised me are right. I know it’s best to do this now, before S is even aware of what is going on, so that she never has to know what it is I need to keep her away from, before she can grow attached to someone who would no doubt be all sweetness and light and dote on his perfect little girl until the next one came along or his head was otherwise turned. I know I have to stay away and be strong, but it’s difficult. I know the things that are being said about me by certain factions who know only one side of the story, and it bothers me more than it should. I feel like I want to get up and shout at them, tell them my side of it, ask them what they would have me do to keep my daughter safe other than keep her away. Perhaps they have less regard for the way their own children are raised; I know from some of the things I have seen this may well be true, but I find it hard to believe they can condone his behaviour in any way. I don’t understand how anyone can.

Thursday 17^th July (14 weeks, 3 days)

We went to the health visitor again last week for S’s 3-month check up and it ended up being quite a boost to my confidence. She was impressed with how S can hold her head up, and how much eye contact she makes with me when she’s in the sling. S was in a good mood and smiled and cooed to the health visitor, which made me giddy with a pride I’ve never experienced before. I feel like I might actually be good at this motherhood lark, despite snide comments by my mother or unkind words from S’s father. He has been in contact again, and I sent him a picture of her. I have asked him to go to counselling, even gave him a website and a phone number. So far he has done nothing though, and I can’t put S at risk by letting him see her until he takes steps to sort himself out. She seems to be doing pretty well without his input though!

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Our Week: 20-27 October

Monday 22 Oct

Up early after a less than peaceful night’s sleep. Went for a walk to my old office to drop something off for a friend, and to pick up a toy from another friend. That was basically our day. Walked the long way home in vain attempt to get S to have her morning nap. Failed miserably so came home and dealt with a grumpy baby who didn’t want to eat her lunch. Afternoon nap did not go well either, so in the end I took her upstairs and had a nap with her.

Tuesday 23 Oct

Up early so went into town for supplies before a visit from a nursery nurse, who came to fix all of our sleeping problems. Back into town after S’s afternoon nap to pick up the things we forgot in the morning.

Wednesday 24 Oct

Up early and into town to pick up what we forgot to buy twice on Tuesday. Our Home Start lady came and played games with S while I made some phone calls and sorted paperwork. After lunch we went to see my brother and his wife, who gave S a big black bag full of toys, as well as one of those zebra thingies for when she is a little older. No danger of getting S to bed on time so put her in her bouncy chair in a sleeping bag… she slept like a log til I went to bed.

Thursday 25 Oct

Up and off to the out of town supermarket to exchange something I’d bought at the weekend. Really it was just an excuse to get out of the house. S fell asleep while we were walking, so I took a detour around the park on the way home to prolong the napping. Came home and spent the afternoon doing not a fat lot. Evening spent rocking her back and forth in the pushchair intermittently begging her to sleep. Didn’t work.

Friday 26 Oct

A nice little trip to town with the baby sling followed by a quiet afternoon and another evening like Thursday. This seems to be becoming the norm and I am not best pleased about it.

Saturday 27 Oct

Long walk with my sister, A. Workout in the park that hurt both of us, then a walk back again. Cooked stew and dumplings from scratch and was pleased with myself. S slept through Star Wars all afternoon. In hindsight I should not have allowed this to happen, as bedtime was a joke. She actually laughed at me. There has been a lot of crying and a lot of running up and down the stairs, after I decided nothing but bad habits could come of having her permanently spending the evenings in the living room with me.

Our Week, 8-13 October

Monday 08 Oct

After a rather unsettled (and somewhat screamy) night’s sleep, we got up and walked across town to pick up some baby clothes. We were also supposed to walk to an out of town superstore in another direction to pick up an order, but I couldn’t be bothered. We came home instead, and spent a fair amount of time playing. And then a nap, and then more playing. Bed time appears to have become a two-stage thing, where S falls asleep and I sneak out, only to find her awake and crying 15 minutes later. This happened again, but fingers crossed it’s not a permanent change!

Tuesday 09 Oct

Walked in the pouring rain to the big out of town Next to pick up an order. Turned up at 9:45 to find they didn’t open til 10. Got drenched. Came home, got changed, and went to see the health visitor. My one has been off sick for months so I saw yet another lady I’d not seen before. It’s a different one every time these days, and far from an ideal situation.

Wednesday 10 Oct

Our Home Start lady came and brought cakes for me and two teething toys for S. In the afternoon my sister Z came round with some rice krispie cakes she’d made and I ate until I felt sick. We didn’t leave the house all day.

Thursday 11 Oct

Up and out early to run some errands around town. Home by 11am to attempt housework, but S had other ideas. Her poor sleeping pattern over the last few days has been getting gradually worse, and today she had no naps at all, and then couldn’t sleep at bed time. Ended up bringing her downstairs and pushing her back and forth in the pushchair until she fell asleep, then camping on the sofa.

Friday 12 Oct

Another day where we didn’t leave the house. Had plans to go out for a walk with a friend but after another poor night’s sleep I cancelled in favour of trying to get some rest. S actually managed a morning nap, and was in a fairly agreeable mood, meaning I managed to get a fair few things done. Unfortunately her afternoon nap, during which I was planning to sleep, was interrupted by a loud knock on the door, and so I spent the afternoon trying to distract S from grizzling; no mean feat. Despite this, I still managed to do some decorating, cleaning and washing – so not a complete loss.

Saturday 13 Oct

A slightly better night followed by a lazy morning. When it became clear S did not intend on having a morning nap, I took her out in the sling instead. She finally fell asleep after half an hour of wandering around the shops, so I stayed out for as long as I could in order to keep her asleep. Certainly feeling her weight gain in my back these days! When we came home she was in an agreeable mood, and even had a long afternoon nap, so I managed to get a lot done – baking, stewing and pureeing foods, cleaning the kitchen, washing up, more decorating, posting a gazillion items on Ebay. She is now in bed, but I’ve been up to her twice already. Fingers crossed she stays asleep now, and I get to have a lazy Saturday evening after a somewhat stressful week!

A Change in Priorities

When I was pregnant, a friend whose baby had not long been born warned me: don’t worry about the birth; the thing you need to try to prepare for is afterwards. I thought she was ridiculous: I had no worries at all regarding my abilities as a mother, and was sure everything would be fine once we’d got the scary business of the birth out of the way.

Turns out my friend was more right than something that is really very right.

Since having S, everything has changed. My priorities are totally different. And I think all of these changes have been for the better.

The first, most immediate change was simply that I could no longer just pop out somewhere: wherever I went, S had to come too. From that very first day in the hospital, it felt wrong to be away from her, even if just for a shower in the next room. When she was in NICU and I had to leave her there overnight while I slept on the ward, I felt like I’d left a limb behind somewhere. The day after we came out of hospital, S’s father gave me some money to go out and buy some food, telling me to just pop out and leave S here with him. It was the shortest, most horrible shopping trip I have ever been on. It just felt wrong to be wandering around without S; the last time I’d walked around town was 2 weeks previously, and I’d been carrying her in my belly. Now I had no bump and no baby, and I rushed around the shop as quickly as I could in order to get back, convinced that something bad would happen while I was away. When I came home, she was still fast asleep and completely unaware I’d even left the room. Since then, I can probably count the number of times I’ve left her anywhere on my fingers.

There was the time I left her with my mother while I went into a salon: she cried the whole time and my mother didn’t come to get me.

I left my sister Z pushing her around town in the pushchair while I had my hair cut a couple of months ago, and spent what is normally an enjoyable experience hoping it would be over soon so I could get back to my baby.

Since then, I think the most I’ve left her for is playing in the living room while I go upstairs to the toilet, or stand outside on the balcony chatting to my neighbour. My friend tells me I have First Baby Syndrome; others tell me it’s not healthy and that I need some “me” time, that I should leave her with a sitter and go out with my friends. In all honesty though, I don’t want “me” time. In the evenings when she goes to bed, more often than not I come downstairs and after ten minutes I miss her. A couple of hours in the evening to read and study is plenty for me. I’m not interested in going out drinking or for a meal. Occasionally I wish I could go to the cinema of an evening, but I know that if I went I wouldn’t enjoy the film because I would be thinking about S the whole time.

I used to laugh at the cliché you always see on TV shows, where the parents go out and leave their child with a babysitter and a massive list of instructions, then spend their entire evening on the phone checking everything is ok – now I am worse than that.

When I fell pregnant I had not been in my job for long, and I only worked 4 days a week. I would often take on overtime working in another team on my day off, and sometimes on weekends too. I wanted to do well in the quarterly development meetings, to go on training courses and progress as much as possible. Although I knew I would be off work for a while when I had S, I figured I would go back and just leave her at a nursery or with her father or a family member. Now the idea of leaving her in a nursery, even the best nursery in the world, for that length of time, on a regular basis, terrifies me. While I was walking through town yesterday I overheard a lady with a pushchair telling a friend, “well my job will still be there if I want to go back, but I didn’t have a child so that I could leave it with someone else…” I have several friends who are returning to work after having a baby, and several of them have said to me that if they could find a way to afford being a stay at home mum, they would do it. On the other hand, though, I have another friend who suffered with Post-Natal Depression and knew that she had to get back out to work or she would be in trouble. She seems to enjoy her job and her children seem, if anything, brighter and happier than a lot I’ve met.

As for me, I’m still undecided as to whether I will go back to work. But if I do, it won’t be on the same hours as before; it’s likely to be considerably fewer.

Becoming a mum has made me more confident in myself, with the realisation that actually, I’m doing this on my own, S is doing well, I’m doing a good job. But it has also made me endlessly paranoid and worried I’m doing it all wrong. The other day while D, my Home Start lady was here, S was lying on her play mat and I noticed a mark on the side of her face. I was horrified: what could have happened to cause a massive bruise like that? I knew that if  D saw anything in my home that gave her cause for concern she was obliged to report it to the charity, and to my health visitor (everything is confidential unless it’s something like a massive bruise on a baby’s face; then they are obviously obliged to report it). I sat there on the mat saying, “oh gosh, look at that, is that a bruise? Oh no where can that have come from, what’s happened, oh no…” Then S moved, and it turned out it was just a shadow from the way she was laying. D looked and said: babies will always get little bumps from time to time. She told me that when her son was little he was completely fearless but very accident prone, and eventually the staff at A&E told her if they saw him again that year they would have to call social services. That reassured me for a while… until I found a couple of scratches on her leg yesterday afternoon!

I have definitely become a lot more health conscious, and my diet has improved massively. For a few weeks after coming home from hospital, I was living off crisps, microwave meals and chocolate. I was only taking my supplements as and when I remembered, which was not on a regular basis, and I generally felt like crap. All the while, in the back of my mind, I knew that if I improved my diet I would feel better; years of experience of eating junk and feeling awful have taught me how much difference the old 5 a day can make. Then one day I realised that as S grew and started to take in what went on around her, she was likely to begin to think that all food came either from a crisp packet, or the white box that goes ping in the corner of the kitchen. That day I went shopping and had a salad for lunch instead. Since then, I still eat a lot of chocolate (like you wouldn’t believe!) and my eating habits are definitely not as healthy as they could be, but I try to always eat as much fruit and vege as I can. I also feel that I need to be healthy, not just to set a good example to S, but so that I can be as healthy as possible to be a good mother to her. After all, if I die of heart disease at the age of 50, where does that leave my daughter? When I look back at my childhood, one thing that stands out is that my mum and all her friends were always on a diet. They we either starting a diet or breaking their diet or talking about the next diet. My auntie had a fridge magnet that said, “I’ll start my diet tomorrow… tomorrow… tomorrow…” One time my mum did a sponsored weight loss for charity. In the eighties everyone was on about diets and weight loss; nobody thought anything of it. But I don’t want S to look back on her childhood and see the same thing

I saw a documentary on TV about foods that are marketed as healthy but are actually just as bad as many others, and when I saw a brand of drink that I and a friend both enjoyed featured on the show, I texted her: “oh wow, that drink actually has more calories than a can of Coke!” I was really surprised. She responded that she was completely uninterested in the calorie content or healthiness of any foods. This really surprised me; this friend has a toddler, and I had just assumed that she would have the same “I need to be healthy for my child” feeling I had. I thought everyone had it. It’s not like I have a blind panic of “must exercise, must lose weight” or anything like that, but the thought that I need to keep myself healthy is always there, in the back of my head. In the past I have been somewhat reckless with my health. My diet has always been questionable and I was never one to read the instructions on a pack of medication. Now I read the instructions, the list of possible side effects, check whether it’s compatible with breastfeeding, and more often than not put it back in the cupboard and make do without it. As my health visitor pointed out to me very early on, S is entirely reliant on me, so while she is my first priority, I need to be second on that list and ensure I am fit and healthy enough to do a good job of looking after her.

This is a weird one, but I feel like a grown up now I’m a mother. I’m 31 years old, I moved out of my mother’s house when I was 20 and have spent a number of years living alone, paying my own bills and fending for myself. I’ve had jobs where I was responsible for the financial affairs of an entire company, or where I managed several other people’s workloads. And I spent last summer playing house with my ex and his six children. But that’s exactly what it was: playing house. I still feel a lot like I’m playing house now; every time I do a load of washing it feels like a complete novelty to me. Having S has made me actually grow up and behave like an adult though. I can’t just not wash up (well I can, but only for one day); I can’t just not get out of bed if I don’t fancy it. I have to get up, prepare food, change and wash nappies, clean things, make sure bills are paid. Before, if I ran out of money part way through the month I would just make do with living off whatever was left in the kitchen or go hungry. Now I have to be careful with my money and make sure it never runs out, that there is always credit on the gas meter.

Every time something else for the flat is sorted out (painting a wall, putting curtains up or a floor down) I feel like I’m one step closer to being a proper, actual grown up, with a home and a floor and curtains and a loo brush and bins that have to be taken out. The fact that S has to have two lots of supplements every day adds to this: they have to be measured out in a sterile syringe, and given to her at the same time every day. She can’t do that herself; I am responsible for it. It’s not just me any more, messing about and maybe tidying the living room every other week. I am entirely responsible for another human being, who has nobody else to rely on and I take that responsibility very seriously. Oh good grief, I’ve grown up.

The way I feel about my body has changed. Before I got pregnant, I was constantly worried about how my body looked, whether I looked fat, whether this outfit made my belly look too big. I exercised a lot in order to improve the way I looked in my clothes. I used all manor of lotions and potions on my skin and spent a fortune on hair care products. When I got pregnant and my bump started to get bigger, there was massive relief that now my belly was supposed to be big, so I could wear tighter tops and let it stick out. After having S, I just wore whatever was hanging around; I’d moved house shortly before giving birth, and it was a long while before I sorted through all my clothes so I didn’t have much to wear, and I didn’t much care about how I looked. So what if my belly was sticking out, I’d just given birth. Now, six months down the line, I think I probably have a healthier relationship with my body. My belly does stick out, but so do most people’s, and really nobody’s ever looking are they; they’re too busy worrying about their own lumps and bumps. I like the way my legs look these days, but I’m more impressed by how well they can carry S and I around and up and down stairs all day without collapsing. I would like to lose a little more weight, but I doubt that will happen before I stop breastfeeding, and I’m not going to stop just for that reason. And these days I’m more likely to just use the baby shampoo that’s on the side of the bath than to rush to Boots to buy the expensive stuff I used before. Who really cares whether my hair smells of a rainforest? I’m just glad on the days it doesn’t smell of baby sick! I do occasionally have days where I’ll wear make up, but that’s mainly because I still have a reasonably bad (for a 31 year old) case of acne that probably won’t clear up until I stop breastfeeding. I’m too lazy to put makeup on every day though; it’s only for really special occasions, or days when the bags under my eyes are just that little bit too dark.

It’s a very strange experience, to suddenly be responsible for another being. Because S’s father is not in the picture, I am acutely aware that I am all she has. If I don’t do something, it won’t get done. When I first got pregnant my boss told me: “I think having a baby might just sort you out.” What he meant was: you can’t sit about all day navel gazing and pondering the futility of it all, if you have to get up and change a nappy and sing several rounds of Row, Row Row Your Boat. I hate to say it, but he was 100% right, just as my friend was when she told me everything would change after S was born.

Five Things We (Probably) Do Differently

Sometimes I am struck by how much of a hippie I've become since having S. I am a lot more aware of all sorts of things, and have changed my ways a lot from before I was pregnant. The things I do today are very different from how I planned to do things while pregnant! Here are five things we do differently, both to how I had planned/imagine motherhood, and probably to a lot of other people.

1 S wears cloth nappies. I’d toyed with the idea when I was pregnant, but it all sort of fell by the wayside what with the whole moving house/early birth thing. When I started to settle into motherhood, I started thinking about it again and an amazingly generous friend gave me her old full set of cloth nappies, complete with liners and buckets, when I expressed an interest on Facebook. 

A lot of people don’t understand why I would give myself the supposed extra work of using cloth nappies, but there are two main reasons why cloth nappies are infinitely preferable to disposables: 1. the amount of chemicals in a disposable nappy is ridiculous considering how long your darling baby’s bum spends in close proximity to them. Besides the idea of baby’s bum being pushed up against so many chemicals, they smell awful once they’re wet. Cloth nappies just smell of wee when the baby does a wee. 2. No more schlepping home from Tesco with a big bag of nappies hanging off my arm. This is a bigger bonus than you would think. Also I just resent paying that much for them. There are “hidden” costs involved with washing the cloth nappies, but my electricity meter tends to show that I use about £3 or £4 extra a week in laundering them, and I’m sure I’d spend more than that on disposables. Also you know the massive, right-up-the-back, full-change-of-clothes poonamis of doom you get sometimes? So far the cloth nappies have managed to contain those completely. No change of clothes required. 
She does wear disposables overnight, because when a cloth nappy gets wet they can feel it on their skin straight away, so it would wake her up. And if we go out for any longer than a quick wander around the shops, she’ll usually wear a disposable then for the same reason. Incidentally, I’m told that having a baby in cloth nappies, where she can feel the wetness against her skin when she’s done a wee, makes for quicker, easier potty training – idea being that with disposables they do their job too well, and the baby never realises they’re wet.

2 S sleeps in my bed, next to me. She still wakes at least twice every night to feed, and when she does I feed her lying down, and we both go back to sleep without much disruption. Depending on who you speak to, this is either a really good way of not going mad from lack of sleep when breastfeeding (breastfed babies apparently don’t tend to sleep through until they are established on solids, because breast milk is used so efficiently by the stomach it empties fairly quickly and the baby wakes up hungry after a few hours), or a ridiculous way of ensuring the baby will surely die from being rolled over on in the night. I’m not a particularly active sleeper any way, but trust me when I tell you that mothers just have a sixth sense where their children are concerned. Unless a woman is drunk, medicated, or otherwise likely to sleep very deeply, she will not crush her child in the night. Men, on the other hand, do not have this sixth sense, and if there was a man sleeping in my bed S probably would not because the paranoia would mean no sleep. 
When babies are very small they don’t breathe very regularly, which can lead to apnoea and even death in some cases. As S was premature, she was at higher risk for SIDS, and I worry a lot (as you may have noticed). Being close to me when sleeping means that her heartbeat and breathing will naturally fall in line with mine and it’s actually safer in that respect than having the baby sleep farther away from you. And when it comes to being woken in the night, I'd rather be woken by S poking me in the ribs than screaming from across the room. When she wakes in the night and doesn't want to feed she will lay in bed and play with my fingers while I doze until she goes back to sleep. And when I wake up in the morning, the first thing I see is her massive, cheesy grin. 
We do have a cot; it’s in S’s bedroom, currently being used to store blankets, clothes and general homeless junk. People keep telling me I’m going to have to put her in the cot eventually; perhaps when she starts crawling I will worry so much about her injuring herself trying to sneak out of bed that I will put her in the cot. Or I might just take my bed off its frame, and pad the floor around it with spare bedding. Either way, I don’t anticipate S’s bedroom being used for her to sleep in for a good couple of years. 
In other shocking news, I do not believe that S sleeping in my bed will lead to her being a manipulative, spoiled or somehow damaged toddler.

3 I take what some would consider to be a ridiculous amount of supplements each day. I counted up and over the course of a 24-hour period I swallow 12 pills. You can all line up to tell me they’re useless or don’t do what the manufacturer claims, or whatever else you want to say. The fact is that my daughter is growing and developing well despite her early start, and my depression is (for the most part) being kept at bay. Also my finger nails are nice and lady like and strong, which is wonderful if you’re into that sort of thing. It is very likely that I will soon no longer be in a position to afford the supplements I take, and that scares the bejesus out of me. I would like to keep taking all of them until I stop breastfeeding, but the omega oils especially I would like to keep taking indefinitely. I firmly believe they did more for my recovery from my breakdown than the prescribed medication ever did, and I do notice a marked difference when I’ve not taken them. Unfortunately I don’t think the NHS is in a position just yet where you can get a prescription for something as outlandish as fish oils, despite the mounting scientific and anecdotal evidence of its efficacy in mental health issues. Possibly because if you (or the NHS) bought fish oils instead of Prozac, Eli Lilly might get a bit annoyed.

4 I use a sling more often than a push chair. It started when I came out of hospital and realised the pram I’d bought was too big for me to be able to get up and down the stairs to the flat on my own. A friend gave me a sling so that I could get out and about without assistance (and to this day I am thankful for this; I’m sure she saved my sanity with that gesture). S was still under 6 pounds in weight at this point, and so I found myself carrying her in the sling a lot of the time; it calmed her, helped her sleep more soundly, and meant I could get things done. When she started to get a little heavier, the sling started to hurt my belly if I wore it for too long, so I bought a more robust, heavy duty one. We use that one when we go out, but around the house, or if I’m trying to get her to sleep in the evenings, we use the older sling, which is more cuddly. 
Apparently being in a sling means a baby’s heartbeat and breathing will adjust to be in line with whoever is carrying them, and my opinion is that all that extra cuddle time being close to me is good for S. People tell me it’s not good for her to be in the sling so much, but I think she’s just fine; she had excellent control of her head and neck form a very young age, and also makes good eye contact with me when she’s in it. It used to be a failsafe way to make her go to sleep, so I would time my outings with her nap times. These days though, it takes longer to get her to sleep in it, as she can see more than when she was younger, and likes to stay awake and look around. She also likes to suck and chew on the sides of it. I certainly get a lot more comments and a lot more people chat to her, when she’s in the sling and at eye level, than if she’s hidden away in the pushchair. I chat to her more as well, with a running commentary on what we’re doing, what she’s looking at, who we’re speaking to, what we’re buying in the shop, where we’re going next. She seems to enjoy the chatting and quite often joins in. Plus - if you're feeling a bit rubbish there's nothing like having a baby strapped to your chest and cuddling you to make you feel better. Having S in the sling has a remarkably calming effect on me; I end up wandering about town with this peaceful smile on my face like a Hindu cow!

5 Prepare to gasp and do your shock-horror face people; I feed S to sleep a lot of the time. Especially in the evenings, to me it just makes sense that if she needs a feed right before she goes to sleep, and she’s going to sleep in my bed, I may as well just lay down next to her and feed her until she drops off. Sometimes she stays asleep; other times she wakes up when she’s finished feeding, and I have to find another way to get her to sleep. I am aware this is frowned upon by a lot of people, but to be quite honest I don’t care. I’m on my own doing this job, which means that I really need my quiet evenings alone in order to remain sane. It’s probably quite selfish, but I want S to get to sleep as quickly as possible in the evenings so that I have time to do my various household chores and relax a little before I head to bed. Feeding her is the best way to get her to go to sleep. Longer term, if I ever want to have a babysitter look after her or, you know, stop breastfeeding her, I am going to have to teach her to get to sleep on her own on a regular basis. For now though, that can wait.

So there we have it. There are several more things we do that are completely different to how I thought I would be as a mother, alone or otherwise. I do think that being a single mother has meant that I've been free to make decisions and do as I pleased; for example, if I had a partner S would probably sleep in a cot, and I would probably feel more pressure in other aspects of our lives. If previous posts are anything to go by though, all these things I think I'm doing differently to everyone else are usually not so different - just we all tend to read the parenting books and assume that's how everyone does it, and we're on our own in doing it a little differently.

On The Absence of a Man

One of the main issues I have with being on my own with S is that she only has me to look after her.

For the most part, that is a definite plus in our lives: we have half the bed each (well, to be fair I think she takes up more than half a lot of the time), we don’t have to share each other’s time with anyone else, and we’ve developed a very strong bond.

My friend says I have First Baby Syndrome: I use the sling more often than the push chair; I carry S everywhere with me; I rarely leave her with anyone. In fact, I’ve probably left her less than a dozen times, each for no more than an hour. Depending on who you speak to, this is either a really good thing and means we’ll have a firm bond that will last S long into adulthood, or it’s really quite bad and S will be some weird mummy’s girl forever tied to my apron strings. 

When faced with the choice between Gina Ford and Dr Sears’ Attachment Parenting, I’ll opt for Sears every time. Being on my own means I’m probably making life very hard for myself by going down this route. S is never left to cry if I can help it, and I get quite irate if someone I leave her with lets her sit and cry. She is breastfed on demand, and I have no interest in trying to find ways of tricking her into sleeping through the night before she is ready. As a health visitor pointed out to me not so long ago, if you decide you’re going to exclusively breastfeed, on demand, for the first six months, you kind of just have to accept that your life is not your own for that time. There are several people with whom I would happily leave S for extended periods of time, but at the moment there is no point exploring that avenue, because I need to be nearby to feed her every few hours; more when it is hot out, or she is teething or feeling otherwise unwell. I am perfectly happy with this. If S turns out a weirdo because of it, well then all the Gina Ford subscribers can have their perfectly-trained toddlers pelt me with copies of her books.

The only problem comes at times when it would be useful to have a second pair of hands. For example, if I’ve not had my dinner before S goes to bed (most nights), and she’s having trouble settling to sleep (every night at the moment), it can get fairly frustrating to spend an hour or more trying to get her to sleep when my stomach is growling and I’m tired and fed up. She is teething at the moment, and has had some fairly miserable, grizzly days when I’ve had no choice but to feed her Calpol and Nurofen every couple of hours and spend large portions of time with her sitting on my lap, chewing my hand through a muslin and crying whenever I try to put her down and sneak off to the toilet. I actually ended up putting a Bumbo chair in the bathroom in the end, so that I could just take her to the toilet with me. (incidentally, I hear that’s a good thing for helping them to toilet train early, but still, I’d rather pee in peace sometimes, ya know?) 

Also there are times when I could do with just popping to the shop to get some milk, or to post a letter, but I don’t bother going because it is too much bother to get S into the sling, and she usually falls asleep in it any way, which makes for trouble at bed time, which is something I have to then deal with on my own. 

Taking S out in the pushchair is also an ordeal, being as we are, on the first floor. It would be handy to have someone to help carry the pushchair up and down the stairs. Someone to carry the shopping, someone to help with the housework, someone to play with S when I want to spend more than 5 minutes in the bath in the morning, someone to answer the door when I am breastfeeding (that’s a sure-fire way to get rid of unwanted callers, let me tell you), someone to whom I can say, “wow, did you see what she just did, that was awesome!” 

I have been sitting here racking my brains to think of other examples of when it would be useful to have a partner, and can come up with none. Obviously it would be nice for me to have some adult company and hugs and kisses and suchlike. But realistically, when S is awake my attention is on her. History attests to the fact that I have, at best, shoddy taste in men. I would not consider having any potential new beau around while S is awake. My evenings are fairly full, what with housework, decorating, two Open University modules, a blog, and an unhealthy addiction to several TV series via Netflix. If I were to acquire myself a young man, realistically they could only spend one or two evenings a week (from 8 til 10pm at most) here. And since S shares my bed, there is no space for a man in it.

Obviously, S doesn’t know any different, so it’s not like she feels that she’s missing out. When her father first cleared off, I had major concerns about her missing out on having a daddy and feeling like she only had half a family. But actually, when you look around you these days, it’s not like when I was a kid and everyone lived at home with mummy, daddy, a dog, one or two siblings and a white picket fence. In fact, by the time I was a teenager probably a lot of my peers’ parents had divorced. The modern family is no longer a heterosexual, married couple with 2.4 children; in fact, one of those is quite rare these days. Many families are made up of children from past relationships, step-siblings, half-siblings, extended family either living together or spending a lot of time together, and neighbours or friends who are no relation at all spending more time with the child than one or both parents. The options I was faced with when S and I came home from hospital meant that either I maintained a strong bond and a good routine with her, or she spent time with her father. There was no middle ground to be had. Since then other details have come to light which mean that, even if he were to attempt to locate that middle ground, I would be having none of it.

From a financial point of view, I am probably better off being on my own with S. I know a lot of women who have had to go back to work after having a baby a lot sooner than they would have liked; many perhaps would have liked to stop work altogether and focus on their child, but they cannot afford to do so. For me, being a single mother, I will be skint whether I go to work and pay for childcare, or stay home and live off benefits for a couple of years until S is in pre-school. In that way, I probably have more of a choice than most women. 

I have no qualms about living off the state for a few years, until S is in school. I have paid my taxes all my life specifically for this reason, and while I am actively raising my child I feel I am still contributing to society by not producing a delinquent for the system to deal with. I am also studying for a degree, and looking at the possibility of taking on freelance work if I decide not to go back to my job. I may still opt to go back to my job, and if that happens I will be spending a lot of time making sure wherever she goes while I am at work is offering her a better environment than staying at home with me. It has to be worth her while for me to consider leaving her.

It looks like it’s taken me less than 1500 words to convince myself that S and I are fine on our own, and do not need a man about the house, her father or otherwise.