Core Memories & Car Seats

The Long Days Diaries # 1

Welcome to Baby Brain, a space where I - Charlotte, hi! - write about my life as a mother of three small children - Poppet (m, 4 years), Pickle (m, 3 years) and Peach (f, 7 months.) Those are not their real names. These are real stories from our days.

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I was browsing the ‘gram recently when an influencer popped up with a peculiar video. “I couldn’t sleep last night,” it started, “because I was so freaked out by this photo of a painting that one of my followers sent me yesterday. It looks exactly like my kids.” Going on to share ‘Children Sitting On The Stairs’ by Olga Boznańska, the influencer in question (her name is Hannah, I don’t know why I’m being coy) stated that she would now be dedicating some time to investigating the origins of the painting, to find out whether these children were somehow related to her own. Her comment section - filled with people telling her she was bonkers - blew up. “These children look nothing like your children,” people cried, “stop making everything all about YOU” they screamed, as I sat back in my seat and thought ‘hooooly shit, it’s time travel.’ They really do look remarkably similar to Hannah’s children, long and short of it, which is a freaky sort of feeling I can relate to, having discovered a historical artefact in my own image online just a few years ago:

Either one of Italy’s famous lactating fountains (image source), or actual footage of me recovering from mastitis last week, after Peach overstimulated my supply to help her runny nose and then left me for dead when she didn’t need the extra antibodies anymore. Or just me on a random Tuesday, you know, oversupply sleeps for no woman.

It’s uncanny.

Despite her promise to share updates, Hannah has not returned with confirmation of whether her children were the ones on the stairs 100+ years ago, which is disappointing, because I feel quite invested. Live and let live, however, I wish the whole family - whatever period of time they end up settling in - well. (A sentence that reminds me of the show Dark, which I highly recommend. Not so much the second season, but isn’t that always the way?)

Having spent many an hour of my mothering journey having such random thoughts, I decided to start this Substack. Now, unable to keep up with how quickly time moves around me vs. how quickly I can get words on the screen, I am starting The Long Days Diaries, an occasional feature that will share slightly more disjointed snippets, thoughts, musings and rambles from the forefront of my role as “mummy”. I hope you’ll enjoy ❤️

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Let's begin with…

Three things people have said to my daughter that would be weird to say to an adult

1/ Look at your chunky toes! I LOVE chunky toes. Those thighs too, enormous, delightful. Oh I could SQUEEZE you

2/ You’re a good chewer aren’t you?

3/ Oh wow, you have so many teeth! (She has four, she uses them mostly for grinding…*)

1989, Charlotte’s version

*…Which I can’t complain about, I suppose, since I clearly did it too ↑.

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Speaking of time travel…

I had Poppet toward the end of 2019, birthing him into a debatably normal world in which weekly weighings at a clinic packed to the rafters with other mums and babies were encouraged to such a level that I worried I’d get a black mark against my name if I didn’t attend. Poppet was an enormous baby with a big old head and not at all a concern weight wise, which is good, because within 6 months we were in a pandemic, the health visitors stopped answering their phones, weigh in clinics were cancelled indefinitely and all of the services we were told under strict instructions we must use lest our babies perish without them were removed without a trace.

It was awful.

The first time Poppet was sent for a Covid test by his nursery, he was 14 months old. “He’s coughed a bit but seems otherwise healthy,” they told me, “it’s policy that he get tested before he’s allowed back in.” Pregnant with Pickle and already on edge, I collected my perfectly healthy son, swallowed the loss of sixty English pounds/ my day of rest, and found him a slot at a test centre within 30 miles or less. Observing the huge white tent from my seat in the car: “well, if we don’t have it now we will by the time we’ve been through there,” I said to my husband, before popping Poppet into his pram and walking us toward what felt like a teeming cesspit of viral plague.