Before Baby Walks: for sale!

I have received some copies of my book from the printers and can sell them on - prices in pounds sterling including postage and packing are £5.00 within the UK and £5.50 in the rest of Europe. I could in theory send to the USA but there's no point. Prices for other continents available on application.

I have what I can only describe as a very limited number of copies (5), but I can almost certainly deliver them faster than lulu can. People in the USA are better off ordering from Lulu. I make more money that way, too :)

The poems included in the collection are these.

So how's it going, being a Mummy?

Someone asked me that last night, as we were waiting to go in to a concert, and I answered something vague and tired about it being fine.

What I really wanted to answer, but didn't have the words for at the time (see also: vague and tired) was "The job itself is great, rewarding beyond my wildest dreams. The drop in social status was a shock."

Because it was. I had a higher perceived social status (as far as most strangers who ask randomly "so what do you do?" go anyway) when I was unemployed and looking for paying work. That was when I did just about nothing useful at all, except a little housework and a lot of searching recruitment websites. Now that I work all day every day, pretty much, and part of the night, I answer "I'm a mum," and people just... glaze over.

My own sister feels bad when I take my turn paying for cups of coffee when we're out, because she hates to see me spending Rob's money like that. She honestly believes that the entire household income belongs to Rob. She's also worried about the vulnerable position this puts me in, since I don't have any money of my own and Rob could abandon us or something.

My friends who are working mothers don't understand why I'm so tired at the end of the day. Well, the one who babysat Linnea yesterday evening does - after nine hours of pretty much continuous activity, we left Linnea with a neighbour and she had another three hours of activity in her before falling asleep. But generally, most toddlers we know personally are significantly less active than Linnea, sleep a good deal more (up to 14 hours a day!) and spend the most active part of their day, three days a week or so, in a nursery. Their parents say that they are much more tired on nursery days than on days at home.

Local friends without babies don't understand why we don't just get a babysitter for Linnea and do things in the evenings. Well, one, we're too tired. Two, babysitters willing to deal with Calvin-esque levels of activity in a pre-verbal not-toilet-trained child are in short supply; the usual rates quoted are for babies that will be asleep for most of the sitting time. They expect to be able to study, or whatever - which is fair enough, but makes Linnea an unsuitable candidate.

I do a very important and worthwhile job. But it's generally perceived as less important and worthwhile than the job I did maintaining a database of DNS information, or arranging for power supplies to 3G phone masts, or selling fifth-rate books to tiny bookshops at a discount. I think that's crazy.

I also write. Some people think that that is my "real" or "important" contribution. I disagree. The work I do with Linnea is far harder, and far more interesting, and far, far more useful. Everything else I do comes second. Everything else I do happens while I'm raising Linnea. I'm wrapping Christmas presents while I'm singing a song. I write journal entries while she "reads" books I've chosen from the library. I do all my household tasks with her "help" (which takes a long time, I promise you, though it does make them more interesting).

I have just been interrupted by the doorbell and entirely lost my train of thought, so I'll leave it at this for now.

The Universal Mother

Further to my earlier entry (can you tell Rob has taken Linnea swimming?) I want to mention the Universal Mother. That is, when someone is a mother, they often become by some mystical process of osmosis or quantum everyone's mother.

First, they become their partners' mother - checking for crooked ties, remembering social obligations on their behalf, worrying about woolly vests and so on. Then it expands, until they are everyone's mother, offering tissues to strangers in the street and clearing tables in restaurants on autopilot.

It's just She Can Cope syndrome really; anyone who has a history of being able to cope with stuff is given stuff to cope with, and takes on stuff to cope with.

But it's very scary, suddenly finding yourself actively suppressing the urge to spit on your hankie and wipe your older neighbour's chocolatey chin.