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.
Every so often, I bring new life into our home. Two cats, a dog, three babies have all survived and yet, and YET, I cannot seem to keep a plant alive. My husband has the same problem, last year losing the Valentine’s day succulent I’d given him down the back of his desk, no idea it had happened until I - cleaning the home office like the WENCH that I am - discovered upturned soil in the carpet, and a cracked vase by the bin. Devastated doesn’t begin to cover it, although if there was a plant that served as a metaphor more heartbreaking than this one it was the actual love plant I left to perish on my own side of the study, placing it there one hot summer’s day before going downstairs, and failing to return again until six months later (motherhood isn’t a desk job.) Wandering in one afternoon, I found it reaching for the windows, vines outstretched, but also tipped to one side and very much dead. RIP, little flowered one, I had such high hopes.
This month has been difficult. Sat with my friends at playgroup on Wednesday, I said as much. “I feel unappreciated,” I told them, “trapped.” Having spent the past few weeks dealing with (*takes a deep breath in*) teething, rashes, spiked temperatures, toilet training, allergy testing, separation anxiety, mastitis, sleepless nights and the sound of a video called ‘Sharks In The Water’ - not a bad tune, actually, don’t know why I’m moaning about it - on repeat, it’s easy to see how I’d sunk so low (*and exhale*). My mum friends could relate. “No matter how hard my day is his is always worse,” one divulged. “It just feels so unfair that they can still lead their lives while ours are so drastically changed,” said another, “I feel like I have to ask permission to do anything. Meanwhile, he swans off without a care.” We all nodded and then, “I worry about my pelvic floor,” someone added, loud enough that - I guarantee it - the entire room clenched simultaneously. The bitching discussion continued throughout tea and biscuits, culminating not in a glass of wine and a ‘SHIT SHOP’ review left for the local Hygge Tygge,¹ but in the suggestion to either communicate with my husband or, in a remark that went completely off piste, “buy yourself a gift and charge it to his card, you deserve a little treat.”*