Last weekend, while I was rushing around an expensive hipster boutique trying to select a very, very last minute gift for a partyand trying not to break any overpriced china in the process, I bumped into a friend.
This unexpected bumping came as quite a shock - partly because I was preoccupied with trying to choose between a painfully elegant cheeseboard and a painfully elegant tea towel (for the record, I chose the cheeseboard) and partly because I was trying to pretend I wasn't blistering in shoes one size too small for my post-pregnancy plonkers.
My friend appeared equally shocked to see me, but not because I was holding a cheeseboard (although I'm guessing it wasn't quite what he had in mind when he left the house for his lackadaisical weekend coffee-and-browse.) Rather, he was shocked to see me because I was a mother, and I was out of the house.
Before you load up the outrage cannon and sharpen the spears, let me clarify that my friend was not being sexist. He was not suggesting I throw the cheeseboard up in the air in shame and scurry home, nor was he suggesting I should exchange my bridal shower frock for an apron and spatula post haste.
No, my poor friend was simply acting under the influence of clueless, non-parent syndrome: a common and curious affliction which runs rampant through our circle of friends.
The syndrome is characterized by a complete lack of understanding about the realities of parenting, coupled with a willingness to help out and offer support. The combination of the two leads to a series of misjudged but well intentioned acts and behaviours which leave everyone a little frustrated.
Their affliction is not their fault -
they are a wonderful bunch of not-quite-thirty professionals, but they still have their feet firmly planted on the safe side of the parenting bridge and have no way of knowing what parenting is all about.
Under the shadow of the clueless syndrome, they have been duped into thinking that parenting is a nightmare that swoops in low, consumes you whole and saps your will to do anything but parent for the remainder of your natural life.
They mistakenly believe my husband and I have been chained to our house, where we must change nappies and
sing lullabies and apply teething gel until such time as the universe
implodes or the baby grows up and finishes school and gets her own
apartment.
The poor gaggle stare at us wiping baby kiss spittle from our chins as though we are a
smeary window into their unavoidable futures, then quickly peddle their
fixie bicycles to the pub to quell their sweat with a cold pear cider
and trio of dips.
They inexplicably assume we
can't go out to dinner anymore, can't leave the house after dark in case we
turn into pumpkins, and can't drink even the smallest quantity of
alcohol lest we miraculously spirit the spirits on the baby.
And, of course, they assume that as a mother I cannot possibly just leave the house without the baby
to do something by myself and for myself for a few hours - especially
not to do something as frivolous and absurdly normal as umming and
aahing over a cheeseboard in a shop on a Saturday morning.
There
seems to be no point arguing with the syndrome or trying to free my
friends from its blinding clutches; their time will come, and they will
see the light with the same joy that a mum sees the bottom of the
laundry basket.
In the meantime, I'll continue to sip vodka and
cranberry drinks and take the baby to restaurants and buy cheeseboards
willy nilly - and enjoy the fireworks while I wait for them to join me
on the dark side.
M x
You can follow Mumdanity on Facebook and Google+ and Twitter * Mumsnet Bloggers Network 'Blog of the Day' October 29 2013 *
Hurrah! You did it! You are twenty weeks pregnant!
Congratulations on reaching this important milestone on your first ride on the pregnancy roller coaster. You have just ricocheted out of the loopy
and bendy bits of the ride and embarked upon the long, steep climb before the
sheer vertical drop.
Having suffered through the early stages of pregnancy, you are now qualified to experience the joys of the midway juncture: finding out whether your watermelon is a blue or a pink one, fighting with the elderly to get the priority seat on the packed morning commuter train, agonising over what nursery accessories to order on eBay.
You are also about to unceremoniously pop, much like a piece of microwave popcorn. You might also start to swell, puff, huff, stretch, sweat and take on a new skin tone - think reds, pinks and splotches - and be forced to stop shaving your legs and clipping your toenails. Choice.
As your belly continues to increase, so too will the level of unsolicited pregnancy advice you receive. From your friends, from your mother, from your colleagues, and from complete strangers (and yes, you will want to strangle them, and yes, that is normal). A pastiche of meddlers will tell you to wear compression stockings, avoid bean sprouts, take a babymoon, give up on fashion and buy mumu dresses, and cut out dried fruit before your gestational diabetes test. Nod, shrug, tell them to shut up and sod off, stick the proverbial where the sun don't shine, then waddle off on your own and eat some cake.
Before the unsolicited onslaught begins, I would like to offer five little snippets of advice of my own, then step aside and encourage you to choose your own adventure (although I fear you may already know how the ending will play out!)
Regardless of whether you choose to be the captain of a tight ship with an even tighter birth plan, or a pirate with a platoon of chocolate biscuits and a tattered treasure map, I will support both your method and your madness.
Cake Considering it's already on the table, let's start with cake. During the second half of your pregnancy there will be lots of cake. Or
biscuits, or sour cream, or hot dogs, or blocks of cheese, or
hamburgers, or sour gummy worms, or bagels, or a whole family sized bag
of random cravings.
When
you are staring down the barrel of yet another block of dark chocolate
with sea salt, and you feel conflicted (hello little voices) please
don't be too hard on yourself. Much
like shells gain crabs and cream carpets gain red wine, pregnant women
gain weight.
Try as you might, you will not stay thin, you will not be
happy with how you look, and you will never be content with the amount
of weight you did (or perhaps, unusually, did not) put on during
your ten month stint as a pregnant lady. So provided you keep a modicum
of perspective and self-control, give in to some of the cravings and eat
yourself to a little bit of happiness. Undies To accommodate the growing baby, and the growing consumption of cake, your body will be forced to expand. Sometimes this expansion will be proportional, and sometimes it will preference particular sections of your anatomy. Regardless of expansion type, you will expand around the middle, leaving your beloved reg grundies rather too tight for comfort.
To avoid standing in the checkout queue at the supermarket with a pair of cheap cotton undies wedged between your bum cheeks, or spending most of your work day mentally trying to stop your underwear sliding down your leg, please go out this weekend and invest in a new and larger set of underwear.
Tantrums Pregnant tantrums happen. They are much like regular tantrums, but with added fuel and excess sugar. Despite being a professional woman with thirty-odd years of life experience and lessons safely in the makeup bag, the odds are high that you will succumb to the pregnant tantrum. Your tantrum could be about anything, and it could strike at any moment. The only thing for certain is that your tantrum will be entirely irrational and illogical, but only in hindsight. The tantrum will rattle your partner - and possibly the neighbours, sorry about that - before suddenly dissipating into the atmosphere and leaving you demanding more cake. Accept it. Eat some cake. Eat the rest of the cake. Move on. Sex So this is the state of play - you are twenty weeks pregnant, you have a reasonable bump on your front which makes things a bit weird in the bedroom, and you are so shattered from making a cup of tea and doing the laundry that you would like to curl up with your pregnancy pillow and just watch reruns of Dawsons Creek until the baby shows up. Sure, sounds reasonable enough, but I assure you - now is the time to have sex. You have not yet endured labour, you have not yet acquired a sleepless baby and you have not (quite) become Violet Beauregarde and been rolled to the juicing room. There is an acutely limited window of opportunity right in front of you, which will slam shut and not be pried open again for quite some time.
You have been warned. Solitude Over the coming weeks, which will pass in a blur yet take an entire lifetime all at once, you will move from being a bit pregnant to being totally, painfully, awkwardly, unmistakeably, completely, pregnant.
When you finish work on a Friday night, you will want to go home and hibernate instead of going to the pub. You will laugh at those people who invite you out to dinner at 9pm, and curse at the (same) people who invite you out to dinner at restaurants that have stairs or serve seafood or have noisy concrete walls.
You will start to derive a strange joy from washing and folding bassinet linen and stockpiling impossibly tiny socks. No doubt, you will be ropeable when your husband goes to
the cricket for the weekend and leaves you on the couch with a
promising kick boxer in your stomach, ice packs on your swollen feet and
an unopened flat pack cot.
You will mostly enjoy flumping in solitude, and napping before dinner, and wearing nothing but pajamas from Friday night until Monday morning. Sometimes though, you will get lonely, and feel like the pregnant lady that time and your friends forgot. When this happens, just pick up the phone and call me. Any time of day, any time of night - I'm always here, and I'll probably be awake breastfeeding anyway.
