“If you are reading this, I have just become a mother.” That was the first sentence I ever wrote for this column series, three-and-a-half years ago, the starting pistol on a clutch of copy filed in advance before my son arrived suddenly, explosively, five weeks early. I was supposed to have a break for a few weeks while those pieces ran, but I found I couldn’t: I was making notes before I left the hospital.
Looking back, I can see that there are a few things I got wrong in those few years. I never pretended to be an expert, and tried to be upfront about the fact that I was very much learning on the job. So here is a potted list of things I regret: I was wrong to be so dismissive of baby-led weaning. I had anxiety from a difficult birth and my son being hospitalised, and I was neurotic about choking. My son was preterm and wasn’t ready to be handling big bits of food at six months, but I didn’t realise that at the time (still, I maintain that people are weird and culty about it). Also, I was wrong to make a joke about “tummy time” not mattering: tummy time matters, especially for kids with certain disabilities. And I was wrong, possibly, or at least inconsiderate, to write about how having a baby had made Christmas feel so special. A woman who had just had a miscarriage sent me a message saying it had made her cry, and I think, were I to write that column again, I would try to better acknowledge the pain of those with infertility and baby loss – the subject of my column the following Christmas.
Still, there is a lot I stand by. I still think two weeks of statutory paternity leave is pathetic and embarrassing. I still don’t think dads can have it all, either. I still don’t think there is a quick fix to baby sleep. I still think breastfeeding promotion policy in this country is a disaster, which sidelines maternal mental health and doesn’t even work in the process. And I still passionately hate Bill Thompson, from Postman Pat – the snarky little sod with an attitude problem whose voice continues to grate on me even as my son giggles with delight at his antics (although his favourite character is Michael).
If there’s one lesson I’ve learned in the last three years of being a mother – and of writing about it – it’s that all of my readers were right: those first days, weeks and months really do pass so quickly, and though they can be hard, a part of you will long for them. Had I not written it down, I am sure there is so much I would have forgotten. In that sense, it’s been a gift. I’ll never get to hold my son as a baby again, or to hear the little truffle pig grunts as he sought me out for milk, but the writing of an experience helps to hold it in time, can even transport you back. Readers, too: I have been so moved by how many of you said you were in the trenches with me, or those, older, who said my writing helped conjure that time for them.
It’s a funny thing, being a columnist. I picture my readers all the time, mainly because I hear from so many of you (your messages, emails and comments below the line have been the best part of this job), but it didn’t occur to me that you might picture me. The reality three-and-a-half years ago wasn’t pretty: I was newly postpartum, reeling, sleep-deprived. Often I wrote while “the bairn” screamed in the other room, cared for by my husband, or my mother – both of them are the hidden labour behind this column. For some reason, I had been arrogant enough to think writing with a newborn would be easy.
Of all the things I have got wrong as a writer, that was probably the main one. There was this look I used to get in the run-up, when I told friends and family who were already parents that I was planning to document it all, in real time, and report on others’ experiences, too. It was a kind of wordless, smiling nod, the sort you also often get when you say that you want a water birth with no pain relief, or that you and your partner are solid and that a baby won’t change that. It’s often followed by a hesitant sentence before the person trails off. Just you wait, the knackered goblin in their head is hissing, but they’re too nice to say anything, and so they don’t.
So that was my first error. In a way, I’m glad I made it, because otherwise I would not have written, and despite the fact that any time a female writer produces anything at all about motherhood she’s accused of thinking she’s the first woman in the world to have ever had a baby, when you look at the history of humanity we are still very much in the early days of women writing about this. We forget that for many centuries we weren’t even taught to write. Our knowledge was passed between us, and passed down, through the words that we spoke to one another, and to our daughters. I started this column because very little of the writing that existed then – brilliant as it is – seemed to speak to parents of my generation and younger, who face unique challenges. Now, there is far more, and it feels as though with every year that passes our voices are being taken more seriously.
Choosing columns from this series to stitch together into a book was an emotional process. The thread that runs through them all is the feeling that, when it comes to parenting, having a feeling of community and solidarity are paramount. So it’s my story, but you have all been a part of it, too, from the many, many readers who have sent encouragement and advice, to the grandfather who said that he dances with his baby granddaughter now because he won’t live to see her wedding. Even the dad who said you don’t need to do anything with your kids until their teens, whereupon you can simply take them white-water rafting, taught me something. So many of you have been a part of this journey. Thank you for coming on it with me.
Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett is a Guardian columnist
The Republic of Parenthood: On Bringing Up Babies by Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett, illustrated by Pia Bramley, will be published on 7 August
