Bye Bye Baby

Since successfully weaning myself off Venlafaxine a couple of months ago, I’ve been suffering with something of a crisis of identity. So single-minded was I when I was taking the stuff, so focused on running, losing weight, living healthily, that I lost myself a little. Admittedly, it was the perfect antidote to the preceding five years, in which I was enveloped in a kind of motherly baby-haze of pregnancy, plumpness, breastfeeding and the nurturing of others. But the strange result of my year of tunnel-vision is that I find myself catapulted suddenly back physically and mentally to a time before babies; before even the need for babies.

Being the youngest in the family, the Very Small Boy will, in some ways, always remain my baby. But as the summer has progressed, he has all of a sudden become rather grown-up. We decided to toilet train him at the beginning of the Small Girl’s summer holidays, and ditching the nappies felt to all of us like a symbolic step; leaving behind us the last vestige of babyhood. And as much as I loved The Baby Years, I suspect I am better suited to dealing with children: real people who eat real food and are able to walk downstairs by themselves, and with whom you can (in most cases anyway) reason with.

Boys baffle me in many ways: whilst I understand the Small Girl in an innate way (princesses; pretty dresses; a tendency to over-accessorise – I just get it), the Very Small Boy’s propensity to climb and jump, throw things against walls and generally fling himself violently on the floor – this is behaviour which just leaves me feeling puzzled. Of course, his bewildering boyishness is also incredibly endearing and often when I see him dashing about playing football in the front garden with The Big Boys from next door, I can’t resist the impulse to run out and gather him up (much to his embarrassment) and smother him with kisses.

So I am trying, at the moment, while I decide who I am (sensible almost-nearing-forty mother of two? semi-glamorous vaguely youthful mum? teetotal hippyish fitness fanatic?), to relax and enjoy these two small people with whom I suddenly find myself living.

The Very Small Boy is even sleeping longer now, finally - often not waking until almost half past six… I was woken yesterday morning at the usual time of 6.24am by the familiar sound of his bedroom door crashing open, followed by his Very Small footsteps thudding down the corridor, before the sound of our own bedroom door being flung violently open.

“What’s the craic, poop-head??” demanded the Very Small Boy cheerfully, before clambering over us, into the middle of the bed and under the covers for his morning cuddle.