I shall talk about my child

I'm conscious, when being out with people who do not have children, to try not to be "baby this and baby that" in my conversation (that, after all, is what this blog is for), and I am aware that people without children often moan about people who do talk about their kids.

But I've been giving this some thought and I've decided to stop being so accommodating in my topics of conversation. After all, having a child is the biggest thing in my life. It impacts on all that I do and how I participate in the world. These people who moan about parents talking about their kids - do they moan about pet owners the same way? After all I've had two conversations about other people's pets this week. What if I spoke about a holiday, or a new car, or buying a house? This, I suspect, would be considered 'normal' conversation. If I were buying a houe and having difficulties, ground down by estate agents and surveyors and gazumping and gazundering, I would be pretty peeved to meet a friend for a drink and not be asked about it and sympathised with and and made to laugh about it and given advice and generally engaging with it. Well guess what? A child is much more important than that.

So I've decided - I shall stop making the effort to keep it in and I shall talk about my baby. And those who don't like it will just have to tolerate it the way you might listen to me talk about a failed romance while internally rolling your eyes and thinking I'm a sap, or a work situation where you think I'm unreasonable, or a novel I like that you think is crap.

Except of course when I'm with other parents - after all, we're the ones who most need a good chat about wine, or travel, or culture, or anything other than babies.

The question mark is key

A very dear friend bought me this card. It makes me laugh daily.

It's all about me!

A friend rang last week to ask when she could see me. I went through a list of dates in my head. Some days every week the baby will be at nursery and me at work, and all of those days my friend will be at work anyway. Evenings are difficult because of bedtime and being bothered to go into town afterwards which leaves weekends so let's compare diaries and see what we can come up with.

That's when the friend explained. She loves seeing the baby of course (and she has been a wonderful quasi aunty the past year), but she meant when could she see me.

So accustomed am I to people wanting to see the baby, and so thrilled I am by the obvious pleasure she gives people, that it simply hadn't occurred to me that someone might want to just see me, alone, for fun, not to talk conception or fertility or babies or parenting and not to coo or cuddle or play, but because I am their friend and they want to spend time with me.

It knocked me for six. In a good way.

The Christmas card list

When my daughter was born, just over a week before Christmas last year, much to the amusement of family and friends it was vitally important to me to write Christmas cards and include her on them. I had our cards in my hospital bag and my parents were dispatched, the day she was born, to get me multiple copies of a picture of the baby to include in the cards and many stamps to bring back the next day. Each evening when my husband left our bedside he did so with envelopes to post.

It's not just that I wanted to share our good news, though that too, but I wanted to write our daughter's name again and again and in doing so confirm her existence. We, the three of us, wish you a merry Christmas.

This year we've become that vomit inducing family who puts a picture of our child on the front of our cards. It's a sticker of her on a swing and not a printed picture and certainly not a posed family shot but still, I make myself want to throw up. Somebody shoot me.

It's second nature to me now to write my daughter's name in cards. It's no longer new. My hormones no longer rule my actions, or not all the time anyway. But that we can do so, and sign her name, and send best wishes from us all, still feels incredibly important. It's why I think those friends we've not seen or spoken to since the last card remain on the Christmas card list and us on theirs. Not because they need to receive our card, but because we need to send them. Because the act of writing, the act of signing a name and sending it out there into the world, it proves you exist, that you're part of something, that you're still here.

My mum is not my best friend

My mum and I have a firm belief that wonderful as the mother-daughter bond is, we are not best friends, and that mothers and daughters should not describe themselves as best friends.

In part this is because our relationship is much more than that of friends, so to describe it as a friendship diminishes our relationship. But I think it's more than that. I think it's because with friends you have a responsibility not to judge them where as with your children you have a responsibility to judge them.

After all, if a friend is badly behaved then providing you are not the victim your job is to provide hankies and chocolate and fun and analysis and chat and distraction and advice, but only when asked, and if whatever they have done is so bad that you can't do this then you can walk away. However with your children you can never walk away and you have a responsibility not just not to ignore bad behaviour, but to take active steps to make it better, to show disapproval and to set boundaries, all under the blanket of unconditional love.

For although one always hopes a friendship is long term, but often they are not. Some are ephemeral, lasting the duration of a conference or a course or even an evening out. Some last for years but you grow apart, either metaphorically or geographically. Others peak and wane in intensity depending on where you are in life. But the parent-child relationship should not do this. If I am to fulfil my role in our relationship, I will be a constant, not always approving but always there.

What's more, if a friend disappears from your life, you may be sad but you do not define yourself to others, or to yourself, as someone who was once a friend of that person. But once you are a mother (or for that case a sister), you are always a mother, regardless of what events may happen. Even if you left you would remain a mother - it is fact as much as feeling.

So whilst my relationship with my mum has many elements of best friendship about it, I'm proud to say she is not my best friend, she is my mum. And nor do I seek to become my daughter's best friend. Rather I seek to be the best mum I can be. My friendship I will save for those who do not need mothering by me.

Not smug, relieved

Sometimes when I am walking down the road with the buggy (and baby), even if it is grey and wet and in a less than nice part of Tottenham, and even if I am tired and grumpy and harumphing with every step, out of nowhere comes the realisation that I found my man, we had a baby and this is exactly what I always wanted. 

And though when I was single well-meaning friends told me I'd meet him one day, and though when we were trying to conceive well-meaning friends told me it would happen eventually, for some people it doesn't, and I always felt these well-meaning friends would probably turn out to be wrong. 

So on those days when I realise I got what I wanted I can't help but grin inanely as I wander, and whoop internally (and sometimes, to the consternation of passers-by, externally) and breathe sighs of relief. And it's not because I am what Bridget Jones would call a 'smug married', because I am not smug, I promise, nor do I believe that being married is important (though my marriage is important to me), but rather I can't believe my luck that it did happen. I am so so thrilled and relieved. 

My new superpower

It's funny what becoming a parent does to friendships. In some ways it has made my friendships much much deeper. The friends who are at the same stage in their life and who I can hang out with during the week when time does funny things such as making days last a very long time whilst simultaneously rushing by, those friends are saving my sanity by empathising and understanding and sharing their own tales of tiredness and snappiness and paranoia and joy. And the friends who clearly take joy in our baby, loving her because we are their friends and she is our child, we hugely appreciate them too.

Then there are the friends who continue to invite us to parties, and who understand that coming to our house is easiest for us at the moment, and who are nice if we have to cancel arrangements, they are great too. And even those who ignore the seismic event that happened in our life when our baby was born, we value those friends too as a reminder of how life was. In fact all our friends are great, and appreciated, it's why they are our friends. 

But in other ways having a baby diminishes friendships, finishes what falling in love with your partner started. Because though I would be sad to lose a friendship, in some cases very very very sad, actually all that really matters to me right now is the safety and wellbeing of my own little family. Which means that though I now have a major vulnerability, I also have a key new strength, a superpower that in many ways makes me untouchable, because as long as my husband and daughter love me and allow themselves to be loved by me, nothing else matters. 

My name is Mummy, hear me roar!

Having a baby has given me a new means of gauging whether or not I like someone. They can be as mean to me as they wish, their look can be stony, their remarks can be cutting and their actions annoying, but if they look at my baby and tell me she's beautiful, if they make a face that causes her to smile, or pick her up and let her nuzzle her milky snotty spitty dribble into their collar, then I will like them. 

It's slightly annoying at times.  I've spent seven years harbouring a grudge against someone and just had to let it slide the moment they complimented how alert and lovely my little girl is. It's affirming at other times though - the person who has twice refused a cuddle, failed to enquire after her health even when prompted and not once told me what wonderful eyes or hair or smile she has or even given us the backhanded compliment of praising her personality, well I never liked them anyway. The difference now is that beforehand they had a chance of making our relationship better and now nothing they ever do will make me like them.