Summer Break (etc.)

Some cool stuff to leave you with while I BRB

Welcome to Baby Brain, a space where I – Charlotte, hi! – write about family life with three small children – Poppet (m, 5 years), Pickle (m, 4 years) and Peach (f, 1 year.) Those are not their real names. These are real stories from our days.

Summer is fast approaching here in the UK, and although I am as in denial about the 7 week break as I am about how much skin I lost to sunburn last week (it was a lot), reality is a cruel mistress and, one day soon, will slap me in the face with the cold wet fish that is caring for my own children.

This is fine.

It’s fine I said.

It’s fine, except…

1/ Everywhere is too busy in the holidays. Absolutely heaving. All sweaty big kids in the toddler area and teenagers making out on the swings at the park.

2/ The only way to survive a long break is to get outside, which is harder than it sounds when your children refuse to keep their clothes on, shrugging in a bored manner when asked “where did all of your clothes go and – unrelated – where on earth did you get those biscuits?”

3/ My kids have broken volume buttons, and like to say everything VERY LOUDLY and ALL AT THE SAME TIME which can get SOMEWHAT OVERSTIMULATING

And then 4/ there are my attempts to still be a human outside of being their mother, which include writing this newsletter and, well, something’s gotta give.

I’m pausing my Substack until September.

But first, some great things I wanted to share.

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1/

An excerpt from a

Clare Stephens

article that brought to mind memories of climbing into Poppet’s cot when he was tiny. Of curling around him, and of cramping up, and of worrying that the whole thing was about to bottom out, but doing it anyway because he needed me to.

And because I liked doing it, too.

It’s a Sunday night, and I’m lying in the dark. The room is quiet, except for the soft breathing of the tiny, warm person beside me, fast asleep with her thumb in her mouth. I’ve curled my body around hers in her cot, which I’m sure would give the manufacturers a heart attack, but it’s become a ritual of mine. Sometimes if she can’t sleep, I climb in with her and cuddle her until her eyes get heavy. Sometimes once she’s already asleep, I gently open her bedroom door and tip toe over to her, carefully scaling the side of her cot so as not to wake her. I want to breathe in a smell that I remember from my childhood - the smell of my pillow in the morning, when I’d probably been drooling. That’s what her sheet smells like. Sweet and milky.

I slip my finger into her hand and she grasps it instinctively, without stirring. She’s wrapped in her sleep sack, her pyjamas underneath, and I think about her silly feet. They’re flat and square and look like they’re filled with air, with little folds at her ankle. She’s just learnt to walk, and I know she’s about to get leaner, stronger. Her distinctive baby chubbiness, her puffy arms and legs, the dents where the joints in her fingers are, they’ll all disappear. And I can feel the weight of that, which probably explains why I’m sobbing. Heaving. Wiping silent tears from my face while lying beside her, wishing that I could freeze time. For the first time in my life, I’m grieving the present. I don’t want it to end. It’s too painful. I love this version of my baby too much.

(Shared with kind permission – read the rest, here)

Fun aside: I once fell to sleep in Poppet’s cot when Pickle was a newborn. My husband didn’t know where I’d gone, and I’ve never seen him as frantic as he was when he finally found me. (Pickle was a fractious baby, he settled for no-one but me.)

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2/

These images of parenthood, taken by Kirsten Lewis for her upcoming book, Unsupervised:

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3/

This spoken poetry, about the first 6-8 weeks postpartum (yes, it made me cry):

amywilliamswrites_

A post shared by @amywilliamswrites_

(And written up, if you don’t get the chance to click through ↓)

Six To Eight Weeks
Amy Williams

I’m hobbling around using a pram like a crutch
Not sure what’s going on; I wasn’t told this much
The machine that she grew in is groaning, sprung leaks –
Why is this still going on after six to eight weeks?
See, six to eight weeks is the timeframe you find,
If you’ve just given birth and you want peace of mind
Internet, baby books, health visitors assure
“Six to eight weeks, you’ll be normal once more!”
But it’s ten weeks, and I’m using a pram like a crutch
Throbbing underneath where they stitched after I was cut
An ache in my spine, every step feels abnormal,
“But what do you expect? You asked for that epidural!”
Six to eight weeks to heal from nine months of stretching,
Head in the toilet, throat burning and retching
Six to eight weeks – we get 56 days to bounce back
From the 280 it takes for their bodies to be made
280 days of organs moving to make room,
Abdomen sore as it swells and balloons,
280 days of shifting rib cage and hips,
So why am I embarrassed that I can’t sit after just 56?
Crying on the toilet, putting off going for a piss
Crying when I imagine the sorry state of my bits
I’m crying as I try to latch her onto my sore tits
For nine months they told me everything – they didn’t tell me this
Midwives told me about monitoring my contractions and
Antenatal classes told me everything that would happen
On the day that baby came! I was given all the bits of birth
As I clutch her pram like a crutch, I wonder, was I not worth
Being told that no two bodies so of course, no two births can be the same
So why all the same measures? Why all the same time frames?
Why am I pushed into a race of millions of mothers?
Told “get back in work or the gym or the bedroom before one another!”
And in this race of millions you’re nothing but alone
So is it any wonder when I tell the GP, “no”?
“No I don’t have worries. No, I don’t feel ill,
No I don’t think I need help, yeah I’ll go back on the pill”
And I’m not alone, I’m not this cautionary lesson
I’m one in ten experiencing postpartum depression
There’s about one in 25 with post-traumatic stress disorder
But there’s no resources and so it is a bit too late to warn them
So why aren’t we acting early, before people become statistics?
Give out advice on postpartum? Maybe teabags, biscuits?
Scrap trainers for slippers, fuck this race back to health
Slow down, get to know your new self
Let’s ply them with information about pyjamas, rest and tea
Give their body grace; don’t treat it like a machine
Cause it’s human, struggling, using a pram like a crutch
Hoping somebody’s gonna notice
Yeah, this is a bit too much.

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4/

And this book:

which included these quotes*:

‘It’s been a pretty jarring experience, getting pregnant and realising just how little the world gives a shit.’

&

‘Why is baby stuff all cutesy animals and soft light fabrics when motherhood is blood and gore and chaos?’

&

‘… because I didn’t matter anymore. That’s what the last week had taught me. I am a mother now and mothers don’t matter. I’m no longer a human because I created a human. Rather than reward for this, there is only punishment.’

&

‘All of it’s a horror story and yet I’ve heard it all before from other mothers. I’ve just not wanted to listen because it wasn’t happening to me, and I was too jealous. They’ve tried to tell me that birth is terrible, that services are broken, that husbands are useless, that babies don’t sleep and society still expects you to function like they do. I know breastfeeding is incredibly difficult. I know that everyone hates mothers – the space they take up, the way they sag, their prams in our way, their children ruining the nice dinner you’re paying for. I know that childcare is cripplingly expensive and oversubscribed. I know post-natal depression is incredibly common. I know all of this. They keep trying to tell us. But I haven’t listened.’

Just brilliant.

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Have a fab break, try not to forget about me, and I’ll see you when the weather is cooler.

Until next time ❤️👋🏻

*These quotes all make motherhood sound awful. It’s not! It’s amazing! But also it’s hard, and society does have a habit of treating mothers (very) badly, and I love seeing that acknowledged – if only as a conversation starter. We can’t expect anything to change if we’re not open about our experiences, you know?

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