Why Hello, Miss Judgeypants. Meet my Tantruming Two Year Old.

I see you there, lady, looking at me with sceptical eyes. All child-free and smartly dressed. You’ve just come out of your hotel room refreshed and rested and well-coifed (I’ve been desperate to use the word ‘coifed’. What a word.). It’s ten am and I bet you haven’t long since got up. Maybe you woke up early, at nine am, and you and your equally smart boyfriend had ‘early morning’ hotel sex. Then you had a nice shower and got ready at your leisure. You’ve even straightened your hair.

And yes, I heard you. You carefully walked around my two year old who is kindly having a huge temper tantrum at the top of the stairs, and then- loudly enough to make sure I heard it- muttered:

“People shouldn’t bring children to hotels if they can’t control them.” 

Cheers for that babe. Funnily enough, someone from your family (I saw you come in yesterday)  commented only an hour ago how beautifully behaved this very two year old was, at breakfast. She said how nicely she sat and ate her breakfast and how she thought it was adorable that she was saying ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ to the waitress. But you’re not aware of that, of course. You’re judging my daughter based on the fact that she is currently stood at the top if a set of stairs in a hotel screaming blue murder, arching her back so I can’t carry her and turning such a bright red that one would assume she requires an exorcist.

The thing is, there’s two bits of your statement that are somewhat peeving.

The first is that children should have to pass some kind of ‘behaviour test’ before they should be permitted into hotels, or maybe even any public place. Or perhaps parents should have to take a ‘parenting test’? That despite my husband and I working hard all year, we should not consider taking our family away for a weekend in case it inconveniences people like you. But you know, I’ll forgive you that. You’re young, you’re child-free, you don’t know. You don’t realise that we have spent the entire weekend having to find twenty seven bloody toilets because one of our daughters need a wee, like, NOW. You don’t realise that whilst you were sleeping, we were being ‘DOGPIIILLLLEEEED’ at six thirty this morning, and that at eight thirty last night we were sat drinking wine and whispering to each other in the bathroom. You also don’t realise that it’s all totally worth it, on account of being able to get away from our house for a weekend, make a mess when someone else is being paid to clean it up, eat breakfast where we don’t have to do the dishes, and be away enjoying the company of our kids and showing them somewhere else other than the bloody park or the soft play centre. But I’ll forgive you that.

But the part of your statement that… well , it makes me feel a little bit stabby- is your implication  that I can’t control my child, and the insinuation that perhaps someone else could have done it better. Perhaps you? I’ll tell you now: this particular child, my two year old, is very well behaved. Most of the time. She is super polite, very kind, very affectionate, and generally very agreeable.

But occasionally, just occasionally, she is completely unreasonable.

Perhaps, as you are implying, this is due to my ‘lack of control’. So prey tell, my judgey little friend, what should I have done differently? If you were her parent, how would you have prevented/ stopped her little outbursts?

I am all ears…

Tantrum number One (Monday)

Where: Home

Duration: 15 minutes.

Cause: I wouldn’t let her eat dog food.

Further info: Said child was given her breakfast, but decided she did not want to eat it. Instead preferred the look of the dog meat. That the dog was already eating. I offered her an alternative breakfast. I insisted, firmly and fairly, that she could not eat the dog food and should eat her own food as it was almost time to leave for pre-school. Much drama ensued.

End: I bundled her, still screaming, into her car seat. Some time on the way she found an old raisin and ate that, and seemingly forgot about the desired dog food.

Tantrum Two (Tuesday)

Where: The middle of the city centre.

Duration: 5 minutes.

Cause: I wouldn’t let her eat a crisp off the floor.

Further info: It wasn’t her crisp.

End: I bottled it, and promised to buy her crisps if she would please stop screaming.

Tantrum Three (Thursday)

Where: Home

Duration: At least 30 minutes. I lost all sense of time.

Cause: She wanted to wear her pineapple top.

Further Info: She doesn’t own a pineapple top. No-one does.

End: Honestly, I can’t remember. Maybe she passed out. Maybe I did.

Tantrum Four (Thursday again)

Where: Home, but about six hours later.

Duration: Another twenty minutes.

Cause: She remembered about the pineapple top.

Further info: We still have no pineapple top.

End: I laid down on the floor and pretended to be asleep. Or dead. She wandered off to find Daddy.

Sunday (Today Miss Judgey Pants)

Where: The hotel

Duration: So far, five minutes. It could continue for some time yet.

Cause: We don’t have her doll’s house with us.

Further info: We brought plenty of toys for the kids to play with, toys that they chose. The four foot doll’s house was not one of them. Once she said she needed the doll’s house, I distracted her, tried to play with other toys, even got her sister involved trying to change her mind, all to no avail.

End: We went swimming. She likes swimming.

Perhaps, Miss Judgeypants, you think that she’s a naughty child, as made evident form aforementioned tantrums. Perhaps you’ll argue that if she was better behaved then they wouldn’t have happened in the first place. But I don’t think so. I think she’s two. I think she has no understanding of why she can’t eat dog food. If the dog is eating then why shouldn’t she? Same goes for the grubby floor crisps. For some reason she has in her head that she owns a pineapple top and she couldn’t comprehend why on earth I was stopping her from wearing it. And she always has her toys near her usually, why wouldn’t her doll’s house be here? She doesn’t understand that we’re five hours away from her doll’s house and contrary to belief, my changing bag does not actually contain the entire contents of our house. Though my husband would argue otherwise.

I don’t think it makes me a bad mother that I could neither predict nor stop her little meltdowns. I’ve tried various different techniques. I followed Super Nanny’s advice, I tried ignoring them, telling her off, making threats, and when all else fails: bribery. Sometimes, she just goes. And all I can really do is try to reason with her and wait for the storm to pass. It neither proves nor disproves my ability as a parent. It certainly doesn’t make my daughter an asshole. Well, any more of an asshole that any other two year old.

One day, Miss Judgeypants, maybe you’ll have a two year old and they’ll have an almighty breakdown about the colour of their socks or the noise the microwave makes. Maybe you’ll remember me. Maybe you’ll feel a little bit guilty over trying to make me feel bad about my daughter.

If by some weird coincidence I’m there when you’re wrestling your own child, I won’t be smug. I’ll smile at you and welcome you to the club.

 

Thanks for reading! If you haven’t already, come and join us on my lovely Facebook page. We’re very friendly and rarely bite.

Being a Parent Made me Crap at Dieting

So in the build up to having my youngest daughter, I spent two months in hospital, which you can read about here if you haven’t already. Done it? Welcome back. I don’t like to go on about it (ahem)…. As a result, by the time she eventually came into  the world, I had seriously put on some timber. Two and a half stone of timber I may add. And that’s after the baby arrived.

“Don’t panic!” I told myself. “I’m young! I’m active! I’m educated on healthy eating! I can lose that weight in nooooo time.”

Idiot.

The first stone came off easy enough. Once I wasn’t sat in a hospital bed eating out the entire stock of the hospital M&S Food, and instead spending my days chasing after three sprogs, and breastfeeding, I didn’t really need to do a huge amount to lose it. But six months on, and no further weight has shifted.

It looks like I fit into these trousers. Not so. The fat is just smooshed up to make a flubber shelf. Its all glamour.

A friend of mine is a spokesperson for Juice Plus, and clean eating, so being the salesperson’s dream that I am, I signed up. I’m not really into meal replacement shakes (if you are then great, I’m not judging in the slightest) so I opted for the capsules alongside following their eating plan which effectively consists of ‘clean eating’; I.e: no refined sugars, no processed foods, lots of vegetables, meat, and natural or brown carbohydrates. It’s a food ethos I really believe in and I couldn’t recommend it enough. The capsules have also really helped my skin and hair and whatever your thoughts on them are, I love them. You’re also supposed to exercise every day, as we all should anyway.

Unfortunately, believing in the diet and knowing it’s brilliant does not mean I’m very good at following it.

Take yesterday. I woke up and my husband and I completed the Insanity workout. Afterwards we had a brunch of poached eggs and spinach on rye bread. We then went out for a walk with the girls, and came back to cook a healthy roast chicken, with very little added fats and lots of vegetables. We finished with fruit and yoghurt.

Then the kids went to bed, and we ate an entire tub of Ben and Jerry’s, a bottle of wine, and a KEBAB.

So goes every day. I start well, but by mid morning I’m sneaking a biscuit or two (or twelve). I’m totally ignoring the ‘one coffee a day’ guideline and am matching my caffeine intake to my oxygen intake. I finish off the kids crisps, I’m putting butter on my rice cakes and if I meet a friend for coffee I find myself accidentally adding a teeny weeny biscuit when I get to the till. Or a skinny blueberry muffin. Or a slice of triple chocolate cake with extra frosting and cream with chocolate sprinkles. And then, at the end of day, when the kids have gone to bed, I somehow find myself replacing my glass of water with a bowl of fruit and one square of extra dark chocolate with a bottle of wine, a bar of Dairy Milk (no, not the little ones) and a tub of ice-cream. And my intention of doing a home workout dvd every day… The thought is there. Unfortunately the action isn’t.

Still not enough.

But I’ve worked out why it is.

Since having my first child six years ago, I don’t go out anymore. I very rarely go out for nice meals. I don’t smoke. I spend my money on baby grows and drama lessons and school shoes.  As it should be. When I get an hour where the kids are entertaining themselves or asleep, I either catch up on work or housework. Two of my kids still wake up at night, so if I don’t drink copious amounts of coffee I suspect I may actually die. If I get the chance to spend a morning catching up with a friend I really love being able to sit down and chat sometimes rather than us both chasing after our two year olds as they try to find how many ways they can kill themselves on a nature walk (“DON’T JUMP IN THE POND! DON’T EAT THE MUD! PLEEEEAAAASE DON’T THROW ROCKS AT THE DUCKS!”). And at the end of the evening, when my husband is finally home and the children are in bed asleep, and we have two hours before we have to go bed, I’m knackered. I don’t want to go out to an aerobics class. I know I should be doing Insanity or Davina McCall’s latest DVD. I know I shouldn’t be eating two hours before bed time. I also know I shouldn’t be drinking on a school night. But the thought of binge-watching Elementary and eating Ben and Jerry’s until I feel sick with a glass of wine is just. too. damn. tempting.

If Ben or Jerry are reading, yes I DO do endorsements….

So I’m making the decision to stay a little bit fatter than I would choose. I’m deciding to keep my ever-so-slightly-bigger love handles and have arms that I have to make sure aren’t pressed to my side in pictures because they look enormous. I will eat healthily because I don’t want to be ill, and because I don’t want to get fatter, and I will do as much exercise as I can. But for now, my six-pack is being kept warm for winter and the gap between my thighs is currently awaiting completion. And I’m OK with it. I’ve housed three small humans, and I gained that extra lard making sure one of them could stay in two months longer than she wanted to. The coffee stops me from falling asleep at the wheel on the way to school and the time spent working instead of doing Jazzercise is the ballet classes I can afford to send them to. And the wine and ice-cream… Well that’s just for me.

I’ll get skinny again some other time. Maybe….. Did someone say cake?

I’m on Facebook you know. its a life altering Facebook page full of entertaining*, educational** and inspiring*** posts. And incontinence jokes. Lots of incontinence jokes. Follow me to change your life forever.****

*childish

**silly

***sarcastic

****be mildly amused

So Much Hate…

My last post, about the eight weeks I spent in the NHS, was quite a serious one, and I was supposed to follow it up with an article that went back to my usual ridiculous humour. I was supposed to be publishing an article on childbirth, and it promised to be a hoot. It has vagina jokes! It has vomit! It has me getting high!! It was going to be a gloriously sarcastic piece that I would find hilarious even if no-one else did. I was supposed to publish it on Saturday morning.

But then Saturday morning happened, and somehow I couldn’t find the ability to press ‘publish’.

I, like many others, woke up on Saturday morning to read about what had happened on Friday night. To read that over 400 people were dead or injured through no fault of their own other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time. I woke up to read that once again, we were a country in mourning. I woke up to read that we, as a European nation, were under attack again.

After pouring through news articles and moment by moment reports, I then scrolled through my social media feeds, which were almost exclusively dedicated to the very news I had been reading. I saw my friend’s sadness and shock. I saw their fear and worry. I saw their promises of solidarity to Paris and I saw their Facebook profiles with filters of the French flag. And then I saw it. Amongst those that were desperate to help and desperate to show their support to the victims, I saw it.

I saw the hate.

I saw the people who were declaring war and promising to ‘get them all out’. People belittling and mocking a whole group of individuals and reducing their beliefs to nothing but filth. I saw hundreds of people who were no longer being quiet in their racism, they were screaming it. People banning all Muslims from their businesses because of their relation to Islamic state, and people comparing Muslims to the dangerous breeds of dog. I actually read someone use the logic that like Pitbulls, only a small minority bite but we should be wary of the whole ‘breed’.

My husband showed me a post that had appeared on his Newsfeed. There was an image of a Qur’an being burned, with the quote ‘Let’s see who has the Balls to share this!’ No, I won’t be sharing that image. But it isn’t because I ‘don’t have the balls’. It’s because I’m not a complete prick.

Now don’t get me wrong, I get it. I get that you’re frightened and worried and you want to be able to blame someone. I get that you want the be able to easily identify who you should be afraid of. I get that all the people who you are told to hate are all from the same segregation of people, and that the only representation you can see are the ‘bad ones’. I get it, I really do.

But how can you hate 3.5 billion people for the work of a few thousand?

When I think about the people you hate, I think about the smart and bright young man who used to work Saturdays in our local corner shop in Reading, who once helped me clean up after my two year old daughter was sick. Who leant her his jumper because we still needed to walk home and she was drenched through, and continued to be respectful to people who muttered that he was “probably a suicide bomber”. I think about the doctor who operated on my friend when she was in a car accident and saved her life even though people would claim he was one of those who would want to end it. I think about the hundreds of men and women who used to work hard for my husband and who were always so kind and polite to my family when we visited him in work. And most of all, I think about the little girl who played with mine at toddler group every week and her mum. The little girl, who played dolls with my little girl and gave her big hugs and sang Frozen songs with her. Who was so unbelievably beautiful, with shiny jet black hair and massive Disney eyes and an adorable laugh. I think about her Mum who wore a head dress but chatted to me about Masterchef and toddler tantrums and her husband’s awful dress sense like any other Mum. I think about how she had the same worries as I did: about when she should go back to work and whether her elder daughter was being good in school.

I don’t understand how someone can hate them. I don’t get how someone could look at that beautiful little girl who jumped in the ball-pit with my own little girl and shrieked with laughter and hate her.

When I think about those people, I don’t think about how much I’m supposed hate them. I think about how alone so many Muslims must feel though they’re surrounded by people. I think about how their people are being attacked almost constantly but no-one seems to care for them. I think about their families, their friends, or just their fellow Muslims, who are being slaughtered in their hundreds and rather than mourning for them, people blame them. As if it’s all their fault for daring to be born into a culture and follow a religion. For being held responsible for the work of less than 0.03% of them (yes, really).

I think how glad I am that I don’t get held responsible for every white woman that abuses her kids, and that I don’t need to worry about our car being set alight because several women in their twenties have killed their children. I’m thankful that my husband doesn’t get vilified for every white man that rapes a teenager. That all American teenagers aren’t held responsible for every nutter that charges into their local high school and open fires and that my family’s local church isn’t seen as a representative of the Klu Klux Klan.

But of course, “it’s not the same thing”, is it?

On Friday night, Paris was attacked by terrorists. What happened that night was horrific, and once again innocent people have lost their futures for a war they never started. For those attacks I blame The Islamic State. I blame the horrendous people behind those attacks and a messed-up Ideology that they’re doing it for some greater good, some God that would want them to hurt people for him. But I don’t blame Muslims. I don’t blame the young lad at my local shop, the doctor who saved my friend or the little girl who was friends with my toddler. Hating people will not stop terrorism. Blaming a whole religion will not stop IS. Please, don’t respond to this horror by hating people who don’t want this war any more than you do.

“Darkness can not drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate can not drive out hate, only love can do that”  (Martin Luther King).

Why I Hope My Doctor is Off Having a Cup of Tea (as seen on The Huffington Post. Yup, ACTUAL Huffpost!)

I recently wrote an article on the eight weeks I spent in the NHS, in the build up to having my tiny little Iris. It was the scariest time ever, and unfortunately I’m not very good at being funny when I talk about it! I was over the moon to find out that The Huffington Post wanted to publish it!

I’m so overwhelmed by the reaction I’ve received off the back of it from the amazing people in the NHS and their patients. Please, take a read, and share if you want, and as always I would love to know your thoughts on it!

Here it is….

The other day, I was in a hospital waiting room waiting for an ultrasound appointment. There was a couple next to me, and they were not happy. Apparently, as the whole waiting room were finding out: their doctor was running late. After sighing repeatedly, getting up to ask the receptionist about 14 times how long they would be and talking very loudly about how ‘f***ing useless [the medical staff] all are’, the man turned to me, as if somehow we were kindred spirits, and said “forty f***ing’ minutes late! You know full well they’re all just in there having a cup of tea or faffing about with paperwork. You can’t possibly be running forty minutes late at ten thirty in the morning.”

He looked at me and waited for me to agree with him and join in the ruthless slander on the NHS. I shrugged “Well, I certainly hope so” I said, before turning back to the seven year old copy of Heat I had found (did you know that Katie and Peter have split up?).

Realising that he had not found his new BFF, the man went back to moaning loudly to his disinterested girlfriend, and didn’t press me on whether I had just said what he thought I’d said. But I did say it, and I did hope it. I did hope that his doctor was off surfing Facebook or ‘faffing about’ with paperwork.

I’ll explain.

When I was 27 weeks pregnant with the youngest baby H, I was at a family party when I started bleeding. A lot. After screaming for my husband, both he and my Mum rushed me to hospital. I rang on the way, bordering on hysterical, and was told by a kind and efficient midwife to come straight to the delivery ward where they would be waiting for me. They were, and as I walked through the doors, a doctor and several midwives were there waiting, and rushed me in to triage without wasting a second. As I lay on the bed, crying and waiting to hear that we had lost our precious unborn baby, I was introduced to our doctor, Elizabeth, who immediately tried to find our daughter’s heartbeat. Within minutes someone had located a scanner and she was able to show us that she was still alive in there. In a ridiculous blur of activity, I was checked over, attached to a monitor and told a flurry of information that I didn’t hear a word of. All I did hear is that there was a large possibility that they were going to need to deliver that night. When a sudden extra gush of blood came, I was rushed in another room where I was then attached to a drip, and a number of other medical things that to this day I can’t remember what they all were. Within half an hour of stepping foot through the doors, on a Saturday night,I was introduced to a stream of medical professionals: an anaesthetist, someone from NICU, and more doctors and nurses. I couldn’t really take any of it in, but I knew our situation was dangerous and they were doing everything they could to keep me and my tiny baby safe. That same night I was given steroids for the baby’s lungs, magnesium to protect her brain, and was monitored non stop for 24 hours.

Long story short, they didn’t need to deliver that night. The bleeding stopped and it emerged that the baby was ok. We weren’t totally out of the woods, but for now we were going to be OK. I was kept in for five days, three of which I was on 24 hour monitoring, with a midwife in our room at nearly all times and checks being done hourly. After six days, I was allowed to leave. A bit shaken up, but OK. We were told that no-one could be sure whether it would happen again. I would need to go for extra scans for the rest of my pregnancy to monitor the baby and I, but potentially that could be the end of it until we delivered.

It wasn’t. Two weeks later I bled again, luckily much lighter, but it still called for another three day admission. I was let out, only to be back in two days later, and so it continued. In total I was admitted and let out again seven times.

During our multiple stays in there, we were treated by a steady stream of doctors, midwives and care assistants. When my husband wasn’t there when I was taken in on our third bleed, one of the midwives didn’t go for her tea break and held my hand whilst a doctor checked me over. I was allocated a consultant, a very cool German, Boris Johnson-esque man who was straight talking but made me laugh. He explained that the reason they weren’t delivering was because our baby was safe, and showed no signs of being affected by all of it, so for now she was safer inside me than out. Every time I was admitted, he would come and see me several times to see how I was doing. No matter how many people needed him, and how busy he was, he would come and see me.

On the fifth (perhaps, who knows at this point) admission, the bleed that had led me to be in there again had been heavy, and I was starting to lose faith. I started telling myself that no matter they were saying, our baby was not going to be OK. No one could bleed this much and still be ok. I felt like shit, and I was on the verge of totally falling apart. One of the doctors in my consultant’s team, Eli, came in just doing the normal rounds that they did every day. I don’t know whether she just is like this to everyone, or whether she could see I wasn’t handling it so well anymore. But instead of the usual two minute run through of what was going on, the same polite smile and then leave, she stayed for ages and told me things were going to be OK. She explained why the baby really was safer inside, and what was going to happen. She stayed and answered a thousand questions and didn’t leave until I was done. She didn’t tell me that she had a million more important things to do and that I was wasting her time.

When it was decided that I would eventually deliver, at 35 weeks, My midwife spent her break finding me ice because I kept saying how much I needed it. Eli, the same doctor as before, supervised the whole thing and came in throughout my labour to check if I was doing OK because she knew I wasn’t. When my waters had to be broken and it was uncertain whether I would start to bleed again and need an emergency section, a team of specialists were outside our hospital room to jump into action just in case.

Here’s the thing: none of those people ‘had the time’. When I came in, bleeding and terrified at 27 weeks, no doctors or midwives would have been scheduled on purely to keep my baby alive. As a result of preventing me from bleeding to death, another patient was probably kept waiting for Elizabeth. Somebody’s scheduled C-Section was probably held up whilst it was determined whether my 27 week old foetus needed to be delivered. No midwives would have been timetabled to stay at my bedside constantly to make sure things didn’t go downhill. When I was not holding it together, Eli probably didn’t have the time to sit and answer a thousand of my irrational questions. Someone was probably rude to her as a result of being kept waiting because of me. Someone was kept waiting because my consultant was making the decision that delivering my baby was the safest way of making sure she survived.

Since talking to other people about my time in NHS, I have been inundated with stories of the same nature. My friend went for a scan on her twins to be told one had passed away. Her sonographer stayed with her for 45 minutes while she cried and waited to be told by a doctor what was going to happen. Her appointment would have been scheduled to be 15 minutes long. A client of mine, who had lost a baby previously, told me how her community midwife cancelled everything when she went in to labour early when her husband was overseas with the military and had no-one there with her. When another friend was told she had cancer, her GP didn’t tell her that her ten minutes was up and she needed to stop crying and leave his office so that his next patient wasn’t kept waiting.

I am certainly no expert on the NHS, and I have no valid information when it comes to budget cuts. I know the increasing number of cuts are bad, and I know patients are missing out because of it. I know Jeremy Hunt is trying to blame much of the failings on all those ‘lazy, greedy doctors’. Whilst I know the latter to be mostly bollocks, I don’t know enough about the goings on in UK hospitals to have any real opinion on any of that side of it. But what I do know, is that when me and my tiny offspring needed them, they were there for us. Yes, there were times I was kept waiting. There were times I was told someone would be there in the morning and I didn’t see them until the evening. But when we needed them, they were there. And as a result, my baby is here now and I will never stop being thankful for them.

So now, whenever I’m kept waiting, I hope to god that its because my doctor is off playing solitaire or washing his Mercedes. I hope that they’re running late because they’re surfing Facebook and drinking coffee.

The alternative- and lets face it, the truth- is that someone needs them at that moment and they can’t get away. The chances are they’re having to deal with something that they can’t get away from and they can’t just walk out of because they’re running late. They don’t have the option to deal with it next week because they have better things to do right now. People’s lives don’t wait.

How much more convenient is it to think, as my dear friend from the waiting room said, that those ‘lazy, useless doctors’ are wasting his time ‘faffing about’.

I hope they are.

If those doctors and nurses, midwives and healthcare assistants are off wasting time doing paperwork and chatting, it means that they aren’t helping another person who’s life is falling apart, and that perhaps somewhere, someone like me is absolutely terrified and facing the possibility that they’re about to lose their perfect little baby.

Chatting Up Mums…(and why it could be the best thing you’ve ever done)

It’s a weird kind of time for me. I’m currently in the process of moving to our fifth location inside four years. For the duration of our marriage, my husband’s work has led to us repeatedly moving around. This time, I’m told, should be the last move for a while. but I’m not as scared as I used to be, and this move doesn’t fill me with the same trepidation as in the past.

For most people, you reach adulthood with a nice little collection of friends that you’ve collected over time. You don’t ever recall actively getting those friends, but accumulated a random bunch of people that in some way or another have something in common with you. This may be the same school, children of the same age or a mutual love of Noel Edmunds (note to self: no-one shares that with you). At least, this was how my life was by the time I reached my twenties. There was no point in any of the relationships with any of my friends that I could remember asking ‘will you be my friend?’ in the manner of a five year old on holiday to another five year old. I couldn’t recall at what point our friendship status had been confirmed, only that at some point they had not been in my life but that now they were. Because like most people, some of my chums had been gained through school; others through various work places; and some- because I couldn’t be bothered with the hassle of leaving my home town for university- from Uni. When I had my first daughter, I made a few more friends through various baby centres. But effectively, my circe of lunatic peers had been gathered organically. And I was very happy with that arrangement.

When I was pregnant with my second daughter, we moved for the first time. It was only a fairly tame move: about an hour away from where I had always been, and I loved the location. It was the small town with a tiny village school and big rural scenery that I had always wanted for my family. It was perfect. Except for one thing: I didn’t know anyone. My husband worked long hours, and I was about to be on my own with a newborn and our then three year old for the duration of the day. Every. Bloody. Day. When Sprog Two was eventually born, I suddenly felt very daunted by the realisation that I now had two children, five days a week with them, and no family or friends in close proximity. I was buggered.

Initially I really was. Every day would be a slow blur of getting up, staying in my pyjamas, washing and feeding the children, watching CBeebies, and doing some form of activity that filled the criteria of doing ‘something for the kids’: sticking many old leaves on paper or making buns that were at least 20% snot. When the eldest was in pre-school, that’s when things really got dull. I would spend hours watching Jeremy Kyle and Bargain Hunt and buying pointless things online (what do you mean the baby doesn’t need another hat that makes her look like wildlife? Screw you!). I would start projects that I was never going to finish (remind me to show you my range of half upcycled second hand furniture one day. Believe me, they were better before) and sit there thinking about depressed I was. What was worse, was that rather than all of this making me happier when my husband was home, I was angry at him for daring to abandon me. He would get home from to be presented with one of the children and then questioned on why he was ten minutes late.

Something needed to change. I needed to get a life.

My health visitor suggested I went to a local group that she ran. She didn’t tell me much about the group, other than the time and where it was. I turned up to find that it was a breastfeeding class. Women sitting in a circle and breastfeeding whilst discussing their nipples and the colour of baby’s poos. I was in hell. I’m sure you all know breastfeeding groups that are not at all like this, and are full of cool groovy mums that have no interest in discussing their discoloured nipples. But unfortunately, that was exactly the situation I had found myself in. I made a feeble excuse after fifteen minutes and left resigned to the fact I would never have friends again. I would eventually only know the company of children and hence would start talking in that weird ‘talking to young children’ voice like you’ve been possessed, and having sex fantasies of Mr Tumble.

That very same afternoon, I decided to take my sorry ass and my daughters to a cafe. I convince myself that my children and I love cafes. In reality, I spend an hour asking them to sit down and behave while they open twenty sugar sachets and smoosh cheese sandwiches in the chairs. There was another woman on her own across the room from me, with a little boy. She smiled at me as I pleaded with the three year old to stop ripping up napkins into tiny pieces and putting the bits into my tea.  I smiled back at her after I noticed that her two year old had put all of the cutlery he could find in her handbag. Worried about coming across as a bit weird, but more worried about drowning myself in the bath, alone and friendless, I invited her to come and sit with me. And she did! We got chatting: she told me that she had always worked full time and how none of her friends had kids so she didn’t know what to do with herself. I talked about my own move and how I was getting really bored. I told her about the breastfeeding class, and heard how she had been tricked in to going there too. She then told me about a different toddler group one that was full of normal people who wouldn’t dare to talk about their nipples. I liked the sound of it and agreed to go the following day. We exchanged numbers. It was official: I had pulled my first fellow mum.

I did go to that toddler group, and met another similarly bedraggled mum like me, who had gorgeous eight week old twin girls and a four year old boy, and admitted she was knackered and sometimes missed being at work so that she could go to the toilet without interruptions. I liked her a lot.

With my newfound confidence, I took another big step at the nursery playground. There was a group of mums who I had always seen talking to one another at the end of the day, but I had always stayed away. But today, I was going to be brave. I was going to take on multiple mums at once. I walked straight up and told them who’s mum I was, that I was new in town and asked them if there was any good places to take kids. They not only suggested a local play centre, two of them invited me with them to it the following day! I was getting good at this. Within a few weeks I was being invited to their houses for coffee, where I found that they too often wondered if their children were clinically insane and found the park mind-numbingly dull. They too worried about whether over-watching CBeebies was taking away their brain cells and wondered whether in a years time if they would be incapable of formulating a full sentence that didn’t rhyme.

Over those first few months, I played the field a little more, and most of the time it totally paid off. It turns out, there are loads of us. There are loads of other mums who are slowly going mad from the lack of adult company. I adore my kids, I really do, and I don’t want you for one second to think I appreciate their company. I love spending time with them, and lots of it. But sometimes, only spending time with them would be enough to drive you to gin (well more gin).

From nervous introductions and tentative playdates came genuine, meaningful conversations and hilarious coffee mornings. Polite texts soon became picture messages of my dog dressed up in ballet shoes with the caption ‘IS IT TOO EARLY FOR GIN?”. When my baby daughter had to have an operation my new friends were on hand to help with my eldest and bring me shopping. when she didn’t sleep for two weeks from teething, none of them judged me for going to school in yesterday’s clothes with sick in my hair. They assured me I did not like a swamp monster and was in fact hugely attractive.

Three years on, and all of the women I chatted up remain my close friends. One of my conquests was a fellow photographer who was on a photography forum with me, and mentioned on there that she lived close by. I could see from her picture that she also had a daughter, so I sent her a message and said that if she ever fancied going for a coffee with her daughter to chat about camera lenses and toddler tantrums then let me know. She did, and now she is one of my very best friends who sends me messages like this:

Putting yourself out there with people is terrifying, particularly when you’re the new girl, but I would urge you to DO IT. There will of course be people who won’t be in the slightest bit interested in your friendship, but screw them! They’ll never know what they were missing. But like me, you may well find some awesome people who are feeling just as daunted and just as lonely, and may well change your life.

PS. After posting this entry, I received a recommendation to check out the website Mummy Social, and oh my god it’s AWESOME!! It’s a new ‘dating site’ for mums, where you can sign up to find other parents in your area. Please check it out, you may find your new chums for life.

PPS…. if you like any of my blog entries, please click on the ‘share’ buttons below. It means others may actually read it, and you may win a new car!*

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