When Stevie had her first baby her life changed. She loves being a mum, but between the isolation and being vomited on she really wishes she had someone to talk to. Turning to the internet, Stevie begins the anonymous First-Time Mum blog and blasts the rose-tinted glasses of parenthood right off her readers.
Soon Stevie begins to realise that being a 'perfect mum' isn't everything. But when the secret blog goes viral, Stevie must make some tough choices over who she wants to be...
Extract:
I’ve had about 300 hits in the last month and I’m convinced it’s men after porn and, because I say boobs and nipples so much, the metadata wrongly brings them to First-Time Mum. I hope the reality of the mastitis and bloody, oozing nipple cracks I detail are their just desserts. First-Time Mum is not here for anyone’s sexual gratification, thank you very much. She’s here to say everything I’m too much of a scaredy-cat to say in real life.
But I suppose it’s the one thing I expected for my mum life before Cherry’s arrival that has actually come true: I had this vision of myself keeping a little blog going, journalising our adventures and milestones, ‘keeping my mind occupied’ in the time before going back to work. I saw it as flapjack recipes and pics of handprint collages, and baby and I in sunnies on our first beach holiday (which has still yet to happen). But what it turned out to be was an SOS. A catalogue of my shortcomings. A way to say ‘this is hard’ without saying it to a flesh-and-blood person who might judge me or dislike me or tell everyone I’m a bad parent.
And today it’s the space for the things I can’t say to Ted.
He’s still out – he texted to say he was going to swing by the supermarket and get me in some things for next week. And that’s a token effort and all, but I know really he wants to prolong his break out of the house. He has so much more freedom than me that sometimes it feels like I really am the mad prisoner behind the glass and I have to watch him swan off into the great unknown every time he goes to work. To a land where he can pee in private and take lunch just when he pleases and eat food he hasn’t microwaved himself. And the idea of that sweet freedom makes my domestic incarceration so much more of a bitter pill to swallow.
He’ll have drinks in Hong Kong. Dinners. Cocktail parties. He’ll bring back a cuddly toy for Cherry and think balance has been restored. But what kind of balanced relationship can you have when one person is free to hop continents and the other can barely manage a stress-free trip to Sainsbury’s?
Ted and I used to think the same about everything: food – you can’t have too much butter; travel – the path untrodden is all well and good but where can I get a decent glass of red around here?; domesticity – if you make a mess, you clear it up. Genitalia has nothing to do with it. So how has everything slipped so drastically since we’ve moved from a two to a three?
I was ready to take on more of the household chores, of course I was. He’s earning the money to pay the bills so it’s fair enough I push the hoover around more than usual. But all of a sudden I realise I’m doing all the washing. All the cooking. I’m remembering his family’s birthdays and organising trips up to Leicester to see them.
And he doesn’t even seem to notice. It’s like it’s background noise to him these days. Home life is the brief pause between working weeks and international flights.
When no one else is listening, there’s always the internet. I disabled my comments section after a string of spammers, but I also didn’t want to log on one day and see a paragraph of badly spelled abuse about what a lazy, ungrateful harpy I was and how I should feel lucky to have a roof over my head and a husband and a healthy baby, especially when I’m such a bitch. I don’t need a troll to tell me that: I am lucky. Ted might feel like he’s on another planet at the moment, but in so many ways he is a great partner and dad – dependable, a provider, calm and steady. We’re OK for money and, bar her reflux, Cherry is fighting fit. I lost a pregnancy early on, about six months before we conceived Cherry, so I know what an incredible feat of biology and luck and magic dust it is when the stars align and you get that squirmy bundle to take home from the hospital. I wouldn’t have my life without her. Rather, I’d like to keep her, but with more sleep and time and sanity, please?
My phone vibrates on the sofa cushion and Cherry’s head wriggles for a moment, letting just a little cool air in on the sweat patch she’s leaving on my trousers. Another bout of luck that my miracle hasn’t woken up.
It’s an invitation to join a WhatsApp group: ‘Mums I’d Like to Befriend’, from Will.
Will: Coffee at mine on Monday? I can’t bring myself to say ‘play date’ but you know what I mean. 10.30? I’m off Roger’s Lane, no.5 The Annexe.
Nelle pings back before I can think of a snappy reply.
Nelle: Can’t wait! What can I bring?
Will: Tarpaulins. Hoses. Hazmat suit. Anything that will help clean up after a craft session with my girls.
Stevie: Hahahaha! I’ll bring my Marigolds and sheep dip. X
I might not be heard by my husband these days, but I have found two sets of ears who totally get me.
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