Highs & Lows

First birthdays, the wrong smell and overwhelming everyday events

Welcome to Baby Brain, a space where I - Charlotte, hi! - write about my life as a mother of three small children - Poppet (m, 5 years), Pickle (m, 3 years) and Peach (f, 1 year.) Those are not their real names. These are real stories from our days.

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Peach turned one last week, and I am not OK.

*Says it louder for the husband at the back* I AM NOT OK.

("I just think it's so great that she's one," he says, "don't you think it's great that she's one?" No, obviously not, I reply, why do you keep asking me that and why can't you see that I'm crying?)

The first birthday is, in my experience, the hardest. Marking the end of babyhood, the first birthday is a time of celebration marred by gut wrenching sadness, a birthday that feels as confusing (“HOW IS SHE ONE?”) as it is exciting (“OH MY GOODNESS YOU’RE ONE!”) as it is upsetting (“MY BABY ISN’T A BABY ANYMORE SHE’S ONE!”), and one that has reduced me to tears several times, not least when listening to this song the day before the day, which I will tell you did not help. As I’ve found myself watching my walking, babbling, delight of a child point things out to me and cross her arms in frustration and throw herself into cuddles and scream in indignation when she doesn’t get her own way - watching her do all of this I find myself thinking ‘she was only a tiny thing before. I can still feel how it felt to hold her in my arms just after she was born and now I’ve blinked and she’s a toddler.’

I have spent literally no more than ten hours, total, away from that girl since the moment of her conception. Somehow, it has not been enough.

Despite my low mood, we have spent the week celebrating Peach in all her glory, and it’s been lovely. Her actual birthday was spent with friends at a playgroup, where she got to wear the coveted (and, I fear, never before washed) ‘birthday hat’ that has graced the heads of both her brothers, grinning as everyone sang happy birthday/tried to steal said hat to adorn their own non-birthday’ed heads. We followed this with the excited opening of presents, much popping of the cheap balloons I wasted oxygen blowing up, and the tiniest taste of brownie birthday cake, which resulted in her staying up until past MY bedtime, absolutely off her face on (what was honestly a minuscule amount of) sugar while I cried into my Chinese takeaway/watched Only Murders In The Building with my husband. We went this weekend to an aquarium as her main celebration, followed by a pizza party with grandparents that also included birthday candles and birthday cookies and more gifts. It has been wonderful, she has been spoiled, I am still very sad.

It has been a high and a low, you might say, which brings me to my next point.

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Sat on the bed at my in-laws this weekend, I mused on how best I could add value to my Substack for those kind enough to have upgraded to paid. I have been wanting to share posts exclusively for such subs - am uncomfortable with the idea of getting something for nothing - but have been struggling with what those posts would look like. Staring into the middle distance, forlorn over the fact my babies insist on turning into fully functional human beings that will one day no longer need me (rude) it hit me - I’ll share highs & lows, and I’ll ask you to share your highs & lows, and we’ll all just have a big sharing circle together.

I used to do this when I ran baby classes. It is an extremely cathartic exercise.

With that in mind, hello and welcome to the inaugural edition of Highs & Lows, a regular post that will be honest and a bit scrappy and quite a bit more off the cuff than my usual essays - a slight change of pace that I hope that you don’t mind, and that I hope will make you feel less alone in your own journey through the shitstorm joy that is raising humans. A space for raw motherhood, if you will. Raw humanity on a page on the internet that you and I can use as a springboard for getting things off of our chests. It’s healthy to share, after all. Let’s dive on in.