When you’re up to your eyeballs in nappies and midnight feeds, it’s hard to appreciate the advice of strangers to cherish every moment. Oh, how i wish I’d listened…

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When you have a baby, you get lots of attention. It can come as a shock, especially if, like me, you’re sociable but really cherish your own space.

First, there’s the friends-and-family rush. Everyone arrives with gifts two seconds after the cord’s cut. They stay for ages, coo over the baby, offer advice (some useful, some WTAF?) and, on a good day, bring gin. This group’s most common piece of advice is: ‘Get plenty of rest.’ Ha. Sure…

Then there’s the wave of pre-natal types - the fellow birth-class members who’ve morphed into uber-mamas and are gagging to ‘hook up’ when all you want to do is stare at a) your baby b) the TV c) into space.

For me, these meetings - flagged as ways to catch-up - were actually exhausting rounds of one-upmumship, where women you had bugger-all in common with (other than whelping in the same postcode) vied to have the best routines, the best buggies, or even, the worst trashed fannies.

Admiring glances

But the most unexpected post-baby attention comes from strangers. Everywhere you go, women with older kids will stop dead to admire your wee bundle. ‘Cherish this time - it goes quickly,’ they’ll say. But, if you’re anything like me, you won’t really hear it.

To be fair, when you’re in Boots, wearing a sanitary pad the size of a chaise longue and the umpteenth mum-of-teens looks longingly at your baby and tells you to ‘savour every second’ you don’t compute. Your brain’s still processing the physical and emotional shock of new-motherhood, learning what your baby’s various cries mean, and trying to find the baby room in every store. Savouring every second seems quite hard.

Joining the sisterhood

Today, I kick myself for ignoring this wistful sisterhood, of which I’m now a member – my daughter Molly is 16 and Tilly is 13. When I see new mums, I recall the sleepless nights and shitty nappies and still long for those halcyon days of soft skin, smelling faintly of milk and the weight of the solid, hiccupping and snoring bundles I carried everywhere in my arms.

Don’t get me wrong - I adore my grown-up ‘babies’. I worship the very carpets they tread make-up into. They’re kind, tolerant, funny and smart. But they’re also emotionally on a par with Vesuvius and can be monumentally selfish. The worst thing, though, is they don’t need me anymore. Aside from supplying food, eye-wateringly expensive trainers, lifts, laundry/cleaning services, I’ve generally become surplus to their requirements.

I’ve even been crying whilst choosing old photos of them for an upcoming Facebook birthday post. The one where my husband Steve is holding the girls’ little starfish hands, leading them through Disneyland dressed as Eeyore. The girls, not him. Or at a farm, clutching petrified guinea pigs, full of the joys of having no idea one day they’ll have spots and exams to sit. And of them asleep in our arms, safe and dreaming only of kittens.

The circle of life

I’m not alone in experiencing this post post-baby blues. My friends are the same. So are our partners. And the guy who came to fix our window, who also has a 15-year-old. We talk sadly of our increasingly unrequired status and we’re cross with ourselves for not cherishing the early years with our babies enough.

One says: ‘It sounds dramatic, but I’ve lost something I’ll never get back.’ Another: ‘I miss them just listening to me. And hugs.’

Shit. Do hugs end, too? I still get the odd one.

And from Window Guy: ‘It kills me when I see a photo of me and my daughter, smiling, just having a pizza or something. Now she’s embarrassed to be seen with me.’

But, we need to suck it up. It is, as Elton sings, The Circle of Life, and now I realise how my parents felt when I disappeared every chance I had, to be with my mates, my make-up or my secrets.

Were they still alive, I’d hug them and tell them: ‘I did need you.’

My advice for those experiencing the post post-baby blues? It’s normal to feel that sense of loss. The trick is to find things to fill that gap. Focus on the positives and embrace the new, exciting phases ahead. There’s the thrill of school exams coming to an end, the valedictory moments, emotional goodbyes on the last day of school and playing the grown-up in a beautiful prom dress.

And if these experiences don’t fill the void, or fall victim to the pandemic, well… I think it’s time I got a puppy.

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