Natalie Lue writes...
Over the past few days, I’ve finally started to accept that in two weeks time, I shall be joining the great unwashed of London and returning to work. I’ll be bitching about people releasing bodily functions in my vicinity, spending a fortune in Pret a Manger once again, and having to listen to that lunatic at Oxford Circus yell into his microphone “Are you a sinner or a winner?” every frigging day. I’ll be returning to internal meeting central, a political hotbed, and impromptu Michael Jackson performances. In a very odd way I’m actually looking forward to it, I just wish I could get the sickening feeling out of my stomach that I get every time I look at the bambino and imagine not seeing her cheeky face all day long.
Christmas and New Year are traditionally times of change, so as well as returning to work (BOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! HISSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!), I have also started to accept that I need to give up that one last breast feed. I actually loved still breastfeeding her in the morning but recently she’s taken to making my nipples feel like they’ve been rubbed on a cheese grater. Much as I love the closeness, it was convenient to be able to stick her on the boob and lean back against the pillows in a half asleep fog, but she’s killing those sleepy feeds by trying to take my nipple half way across the room with her when she decides that she just HAS to know what her dad is doing. Suddenly venturing down to the cold kitchen for a few minutes seems like a more favourable prospect…
So now I’m feeling sad about leaving her, sad about returning to work, sad about the end of a breastfeeding era, and sad that Leon (let’s be fair, he was sh*te…) won the X Factor…
Feeling conflicted seems to be a part of this motherhood thang. I am looking forward to going back to work (sort of) but I feel like I’m robbing my daughter of the opportunity to be around my wonderful self for the majority of the time. I’m scared of missing out and that she’ll feel upset and unsettled, when in reality, I will miss out but she’s likely to be having a whale of a time hanging out with a sixteen and nineteen month old running riot all day.
Watching her grab other babies by the head, lick their hair (yeuch), talk her special language, and squeal with delight when she’s around toddlers has made me realise that my company isn’t enough. We’ll have to watch her like a hawk though as she likes boys and when our friends three year old went to give her a kiss, she put out her tongue….
Despite my mothers demands to make her “someone to keep her company”, it makes more sense for her to go to a childminder because she won’t have an at least nine month wait to contend with... The way my mum puts in her requests for another grandchild, you’d swear we were being tight and just refusing to go into the newborn section of the frozen food aisle in the supermarket. In a new development, she even said “I’ve decided that you don’t have to get married before you give her a brother or sister…”. Thanks Ma! We’ll go forth and multiply now that you’ve given us the thumbs up!
I don’t think it’s an easy decision to go to work or stay at home. You go to work and you feel like you’re abandoning your child and you stay home and you think everybody thinks you’re lazy and doing the female species a disservice. But lots of women go out to work after having a baby and whilst it’s never easy, much like everything else associated with motherhood, you just get on with it and juggle it. We’re multi-taskers, nurturers, and organisers who often don’t know when we’re overdoing it and try to cram everything in so that we can be superwoman. I don’t want to be superwoman, I just want to enjoy being a mum and adjust into this next phase in my life. I want her to be happy and I realise that even if I did stay at home she would still need to go off and be with other children.
It’s strange when you realise that they’re not newborns anymore that eat, sleep, and poo all day. Now she’s almost seven months, eats, sleeps, poo’s all day, tries to open her Christmas presents, attacks the Christmas tree and the decorations, feeds herself food, rolls around the room, gets the top of her head stuck under the TV stand, gets her bumcheek stuck under the sofa, lounges around like a moody teenager, throws remotes in bowls of water, breaks beautiful Danish bowls, and grabs the skin under her mummy’s eye and twists it. She’s an independent little madam!
So it seems that my gift to myself this Christmas will be returning my boobs to their rightful owner (moi) and being at peace with my decision to go back to work. I plan to enjoy her first Christmas and my last couple of weeks with her and stop agonising over the inevitable.
Merry Christmas!
Natalie Lue is coming to the end of her maternity leave....BOOOOOO HISSSSSSS and has asked Santa for a stay of execution ;-)
