Juggle...juggle...juggle...

Ok, so I have to type this quietly.  The baby has been grizzly today and has slept for approximately twenty minutes every three hours, which meant that I had a shower at eleven, a cup of coffee at one o’clock and lunch at half two.

Why is it that before, I was a perfectly functioning working woman, who could get up at 6am and be at work by 8am, having got myself ready, done the dishes and put a wash on… but now, it takes until 4pm just to get done what I’d normally have done before going to work?

He’s so little, so cute, so demanding.  This is what people talk about: the perpetual guilt of motherhood.  We want to lavish our children with attention and love, but there’s also a yearning for them to have a nap, just a wee one so that we can have a moment of peace, a hiatus of tranquillity. I met a friend yesterday for coffee, not at a well-known establishment where one might sprinkle cinnamon on one’s latte, but at a soft play centre.  That’s where I go now at least once a week.
She’s a working mum who commutes from Scotland to London to work two days a week.  She told me that she’d been changing her little boy on his changing station, turned round to get his socks and he rolled off, knocking out his only two teeth.  She was distraught, as one would expect. But also frazzled, wearing odd socks and finished our conversation by telling me that she was finding it hard to live either life fully: not her working life, or her home life.  Life is just a hard juggle, and we can’t help but feel judged.  Her son did not show any outward sign of discomfort, but rather spent all his time chasing after a little girl who had cunningly acquired a pink police car to ride around in.  My friend had her son’s two perfect little teeth in her handbag, kept as a reminder of her momentary lapse of concentration. She’ll probably carry her guilt around for much longer.

Perhaps all mums feel the same lack: we cannot be all things to all little men.

Despite the mania of life, its difficulties, the exhaustion, there are moments when, like the first throes of love, my heart skips a beat.  The baby spills milk down his chin because he can’t help but smile broadly at me, his eyes twinkling.  My toddler, who’s two, scoops up bubbles from his bath, splashes them onto the tiles and shouts, “It’s a turtle” and I marvel at his imagination.  And I sit down, perhaps for the first time that day, hair tousled by the humid bathroom air (and the bubbles inevitably foisted upon me by aforementioned toddler), covered in spit up, and feel an incredible satisfaction that the children are clean, well fed and, finally, asleep.