“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.
