The 9 Things I’ve Learnt About Babies Now Mine Have Turned Two

My youngest son turned two today, officially ending my family’s baby years. As there are to be no new bassinets in my home for a couple of decades at least, I thought I’d memorialise the moment with some of the things I’ve learnt about having babies. For those of you still in the trenches, I hope this provides some solidarity and reassurance. For anyone considering it, hoping for it, trying for it, I hope it provides an accurate picture of the goals and dreams ahead. For those avoiding it, please use as a further reminder of the rectitude of your decision. All love to you all Kx

1. Babies are like a lucky dip

Nature nurture, nature nurture. While it’s clear that parents can wreak catastrophic amounts of trauma on their kids, and even the tiniest lapse in judgement can make you feel you’re sending your progeny down the path towards lifelong mental health struggle, in the main, who your children are or become is largely out of your control. This is both a relief (TF it’s not my responsibility) and overwhelming, because you cannot choose which direction they go. The minute you realise the whole thing is ultimately a gamble, you may find yourself in an existential crisis. 

We know that birth and providing for a baby’s early needs have a big impact on their attachment style and future personality. But so much of those fledgling variables are just out of our hands. You can’t choose your pregnancy, your birth, how your baby feeds, or whether or not they come out struggling or premature or with a health condition or the host of other circumstances which will doubtless shape elements of their future demeanour. One of the cruellest messages we internalise as mothers is that we are somehow to blame for these variables. We just aren’t.

Technically you can choose how you respond to the many heart-stopping challenges outside of the perfect, sleepy newborn model. Yes, you could stay calm in a room with a screaming baby for seven hours. If you were an AI replicant, for example. But you’re probably not going to. The kind of stress unwell or unhappy or hungry newborns can put you under is like someone applying a camping grill directly to your brain. Fried on your own physical exhaustion, lack of sleep and aching for a baby that’s struggling to feed or settle or find their tiny footing in this big, bad world, you are unlikely to be your best self. This is not the time to read any literature about the potential effect of parental stress on your child. I feel we should all get the tattoo ‘it’s not your fault’ on our palms during labour so we are reminded of that fact as we slap it towards our foreheads.

Equally, even in this kind of clusterfuck, your parenting will cut differently depending on your kid. Both of my babies had horrendous reflux. Arguably, Ripley, the second had it worse, as he dipped under the 1st centile by five months. He did cry, but it was nothing in comparison to his big brother. Both of them were sick 30 or 40 times a day, and I knew the pain of acid on their chests, like I know my own pain. But my eldest was, and is, a squeaky wheel. That bouncing four kilo first-born came into the world fists up and no matter the love, attention, strokes, baby massage and sweetness lavished on him, he was always going to be the kid glowering in the corner at monkey music.  You can only do what you can do, and that’s already probably superhuman in scope.

Lots and lots of babies follow the trajectories in the books. I have had this experience second time around so can attest to the fact that it’s not a conspiracy after all. But there is such a large minority who will not do what the manual says. They will literally shit on the instructions. The real conspiracy is the message so many of us internalise that this is our doing. We deserve no credit for calm, happy bairns, just as we deserve no blame for Rosemary’s babies. The whole, ‘the baby is so chilled because the mum is so laidback’ bullshit is laughable. That mum wouldn’t be quite so horizontal shut in a room with Damian, I promise you.  

The only thing we can tell ourselves is that it will pass. The volcano of discontentment will fizzle to something probably more socially acceptable. Babies exist on a discombobulatingly broad spectrum. Yes, there will be babies with health problems and additional needs, but even amongst 100% healthy babies, their behaviours can be so shockingly, wildly different from each other that you can only draw one conclusion: it’s not you, it’s them. Letting go of any regret over the things you couldn’t control, including that afternoon when you screamed back at your tiny baby’s face, has been one of my biggest learnings.

2. Other women will be both your biggest protectors and critics

Early motherhood, especially the first-time round is like the worst period of adolescence on the school playground, in that nearly every woman will be going through a severe phase of insecurity and acting out accordingly. Feeling on the back foot, many will project the systems which they are relying on to validate their decisions on to you. Thus the aggressive messages I got from mothers using attachment parenting philosophy when I recorded my sleep training experience on social media. Sample material: “You’re going to be responsible for so many clinically depressed adults in 18 years time.”/ “Isn’t it enough that you’re poisoning your own children with your selfishness?" Fortunately I was too high on 8 hours sleep to engage with these delightful POVs, but there’s no doubt the judgement can be savage AF. But also…truly confident parents don’t do this. That kind of tunnel vision and righteousness is a hallmark of a parent who is desperately grasping to a methodology to reassure herself that she is doing it right—because she feels hopelessly out of her depth. The more certain you are that your way is the only way, the less certain you probably are underneath. Newsflash: none of us know if we’re doing it right because there is no right way. Parenting philosophies change with the wind and every single child and parent and situation is different. So as long as you’re not feeding them White Russians in that bottle, and you’re keeping them as safe as possible, you don’t deserve any other person’s censure. See it for what it is – a mask on fear. Yes, you might also be judged by fathers and child free men, but the reduced pressure on them means the vitriol is unlikely to be as intense. When it comes down to it, there are infinite ways to be a good parent. Fuck anyone else who says that isn’t so.

Next up, find someone who is invested in fucking off any of this judgement and make friends with them instead. I managed to find one woman who I met as our newborns were sick on each other and she remains my rock. She has seen everything, learnt how to keep a conversation going over Grey’s screams and not even complained when he defrosted her freezer stocked with the precious breastmilk she was probably never going to feed to her baby. She’s also served me rosé and Honest burgers before 10am while rubbing milk sick into her carpet with her slippers (‘Joey’s house!’) It sounds hyperbolic, but I don’t know where I would have been if I hadn’t met her.

Brace yourself against the first kind of woman, but never close the gates so tight you miss the second. This learning continues to be a work in progress.

3. There is no good work-family balance… it’s all bespoke versions of shit

There is no way to balance two full time jobs which you care about. No-one has it figured out, the equation will never balance, so it is a compromise for everyone. Even the wildly, wildly wealthy won’t be nailing an A* in both spheres at once, because you cannot physically be in two different places at once. Any sense of achievement in either of your jobs will doubtless, at times, evaporate. As Michelle Williams said yesterday in the Guardian, “to be able to work and meet the needs of both a toddler and an infant is pretty confounding. When you add small children into the mix, you feel like you’re kind of no good at anything. I don’t think there’s really anything to solve, other than getting comfortable with that sensation.”

You are going to feel guilt at some point about childcare: shake it off as quickly as you can. We all feel it, you get used to it. The most important thing is that you organise the very best set up for your own circumstances and don’t try and replicate what you think is ‘right’ or what your sister or friend or someone on Instagram (like me, for example) does. Don’t leave it to chance, don’t put your head in the sand. And definitely don’t compare yourself to anyone else – whoever she is, she absolutely has moments of crushing panic, disenchantment, stress and heartache trying to manage both too.

4. You can prepare for some aspects of motherhood

It’s often said that you walk through the door of motherhood without being able to carry anything through it. I personally don’t think this is entirely true, especially on the more logistical side of it, especially when it comes to the finances and structure which will help you move into this new phase of your life. When we consider the amount of cultural importance we put on pension planning for example, it always shocks me that there is no mat leave type scheme to encourage us to create a foundation in the year, or even years leading up to birth. (As children are created literally for the good of society, I actually believe this is the state’s responsibility, but as well as a modern liberal, I am also a realist and I don’t see that coming down the pipeline any time soon).

On government, I cannot understand why there isn’t any kind of drive for new mothers to educate themselves on the financial schemes available to them? It could be part of the ante natal experience or at the very least, part of the NCT shebang. Why do so few women know that as a freelance worker you have a right to the full statutory maternity leave in a lump sum payment? Or that you can get £2k per child in tax free childcare? I had no idea about the cost of childcare – the going rate for a childminder in London, or the price of a day nursery, for example. Why does this information have to be inveigled out of other mums with older kids at the playground? It sounds cynical go say that state opacity might have something to do with keeping the cash that is by rights owed to us. But it also is one of the only conclusions I can come to.

These conversations have nothing to do with the more unpredictable emotional rollercoaster as your identity shifts – it's all admin and logistics. By not focusing on the importance of this structure, mothers are left behind for longer in the job market and cast financially adrift. This should be a major priority, but because it’s not the actual care of the baby you hear very little about it - even though the vast majority of us (at least 3/4) work. Motherhood is about so much more than just mothering. Investing in some kind of preparation for this new chapter doesn’t make you neurotic, more a person well versed in what real self-care actually means.

5. You won’t become ‘motherly’ overnight

Speaking of the paradigm shift into motherhood, that did not come quickly for me. It took me at least two years to settle into my new reality and pretty often I still enjoy pretending that I don’t have responsibility for my two other hearts outside my body. Give yourself the space and time to get there and don’t buy into this whole, this is the best day of my life business. I hated the bubble, hated 85% of breastfeeding, had a rough time with colic with both of them. I found those early months claustrophobic and was so desperate to just go for a walk on my own. But now I really do love being a mum nearly all the time and I even love other people’s children. I literally volunteer to look after them. While I wasn’t a natural at the early part, I’ve found my groove.  You cant rush this process, it’s going to be different for every single one of us and if you find your mat leave is over and you’re still not there, don’t worry, it’s coming. You might just prefer them when they can tell you why tf they’re crying. As an example.

6. Lots of things won’t change

Yes, obviously things aren’t going to be exactly the same. But it infuriates me when people say ‘everything is going to change’ because that isn’t necessarily so. You get to choose how this all plays out and for some of you, that might mean a lot of continuity. As my babies have always slept well, my life after dark basically went back to how it was before they came into the world from around five months, though perhaps with a little more moderation when it came to el vino. I’ve carried on travelling, with and without them. I’ve written books and built my business with my babies earthside. I’ve kept a fairly consistent routine at my Pilates studio. Obviously, all of this was much, much easier before. But it’s not all stopped because I procreated. You get to prioritise your compromises, create your own family culture and make your own model of motherhood, so don’t ever feel you need to conform to a normative template.

7. You’re probably going to lose your connection to reality at some point

OMG this is me all the time. I remember going into the hospital for my debut birth thinking, ‘what will be will be’ and ‘fed is best’. Fast forward a month and I’m setting an alarm for 3.20am to pump my tits while applying eye-watering pressure to my udders, while organising my days via a circuit of pensive, desperate breastfeeding support groups because I couldn’t countenance not exclusively offering breastmilk. What the f happened, where did the rational me go? Who knows, but wherever that place is, I have been back several times since. There is some kind of hormonal bonkersness that comes with giving birth and you’ll probably look back at points of their babyhood and think Jesus, what happened there? I’ve come to appreciate that this is par for the course.

8. You will become a cliché

Connected to the point above. At some point you will find yourself in Gail’s with three other mums discussing the relative merits of nasal aspirators. I really fought this, but hey, found myself there all the same. There are days when I look at myself in the mirror and see the poster girl for ‘basic stroller mom’. There are moments when I find myself singing Cocomelon songs in a publishing house lift / theatre interval/ dress fitting. However much of a dissident you might be to the motherhood mentality, you’ll probably cave somewhere.

I also never imagined myself living out housewifely clichés, but I’m not sure who I thought was going to be dealing with the Sisyphean task of family laundry. I hate the everyday nature of choring in my new life (pre babies it was more end of week clean up). I hate picking up my fiancé’s shoes and pants as I stumble over discarded toys. I hate it that the top three things on my to-do list involve household appliances. While there is much you can make your own while caring for young children, there are a bunch of other things you’re going to have to suck up unless you can afford a housekeeper. Finally, I try to avoid the ‘resentful-angry mum cliché’, but incomprehensibly find myself incapable of entirely side stepping that too. Wonder why.

9. You probably won’t regret it when push comes to shove 

But you might sometimes. And that’s so fricking normal, it should be one of the clichés. I absolutely miss elements of my pre-baby existence and lament what might have been if my ship had taken a different course, especially when I see child free friends living their best lives. It doesn’t mean you don’t love or deserve your babies, it is just the human condition. Overall, my number one learning has been to give myself a bloody break and reduce my expectations of what it all is supposed to look like. Stop second guessing yourself, stop questioning your shortcomings and wondering why things seem to flow easier for other mums, because they probably don’t. Keep your chin up, bottle the good and send the less great memories to the same place as your memories of active labour. Aka oblivion.

One day they won’t be babies anymore and it will be simultaneously a relief and a regret. And you will step forward holding their little hand to the next stage to confront all the new hurdles and joys together, with all your battle scars to protect you both ❤️