Philip Fucking Larkin

One year of single parenting

‘I didn’t want to say anything as you were stressed about the school run,’ said Angie,' ‘but when I arrived I found a poo on bench.’

The morning flashes before my eyes. My youngest daughter appearing nappy-less at the end of our bed, my eldest emerging from my shower with a razor, the nappy being forgotten with the aforementioned poo.

Its been a whole year since I became a single mum overnight. Our nanny, Angie has been a stand in for Ben and the missing part of my brain and now she’s gently suggested that she goes down to three days a week. It makes sense. The children have just both started nursery four days a week, Ben can drive himself to his appointments and make a bolognese. There’s not enough to keep her busy throughout the day.

‘I can’t clean for 6 hours every day in this heat,’ she says. I wouldn’t want her to and we can’t afford for her to, but the suggestion cuts like a knife. I spent the rest of the day on the edge of a panic attack.

When Ben went into hospital my eldest was 20 months and my youngest, 5 months old. I was breastfeeding a baby, wrangling a toddler and hoping to god that my husband wasn’t going to die. Imposter syndrome began to set in. Me -their mother - look after them alone? It looks crazy written down but I just did not believe I was up to the task, and to be honest, I wasn’t. People would tell me that it would be OK because ‘they looked after their kids their own while their husband worked in London,’ or that they ‘had friends with husbands in the army who coped.’

My husband was not in the army, he was on a ventilator, then he was having chemotherapy and foreign bodies surgically removed from his neck. For a long time neither of my kids could walk. I couldn’t even go to the supermarket with them on my own. I needed help.

Angie was coming for two days a week, then three when I went back to work, then five when Ben came home and there was another person who needed care. She was my nanny as well really. The same age as my mum. Someone who I could ask about a rash, who helped me potty train, wean, and tackle my daughters mane of untameable hair. She knows what toys all the kids are coveting these days, she brings snacks for the donkeys and she loves the dog like he’s one of the kids. For many months, she was the only other adult I would see all day. Angie from Essex, one of the kindest people I have ever met, threw herself into looking after our family. We are immeasurably lucky to have had her for as long we did and now that the girls are older and my imposter syndrome has faded, she will move on to someone who needs her more.

I have been a single parent for almost a year, although the last couple of weeks I would say that together Ben and I make one and a half. He can now lift the children up and help me with the school run. He can make them food and remove sharp objects from their tiny hands. I have got my teammate back. I know that this return to some form of normality will be short-lived. Chemo starts again soon, but having another grown up in the house feels like going to a spa and if this is only the interval in the worst play on earth, I am grateful that the fire curtain has come down on being a single mum.

I write about my experience of single parenting with trepidation because no parenting experience is the same and no set of circumstances are equal. I feel like mothers are encouraged not to talk about the tough parts of parenting because someone always has it tougher. Hearing someone complain about their life with four kids when you are struggling to cope with one can feel like a threat, so let me caveat that I think parenting is hard, full stop. It is hard with one child and it is hard with three. It is hard with nannies, grannies, nurseries and supportive partners.

That does not mean it isn’t also amazing, rewarding and the best thing that has ever happened to me. But it is hard, and when someone says it could be harder because you could live in a council flat up ten flights of stairs, or have boys instead of girls ignore them. You are allowed to find juggling parenting and life difficult, whatever that looks like because it is, because we were never supposed to do this on our own.

When my husband and I decided that we were going to take on two under two, parenting was still a relay sport. It wasn’t the plan to get pregnant when I was seven months postpartum. More the result of me reading an article in Refinery 29 that convinced me the pill would give me cancer. The lady in Guildford Sexual Health clinic looked at me with despair.

‘You will get pregnant again if you don’t use contraception.’ She was right. My Flo app as per usual was wrong and we shagged exactly when I ovulated. The first 5 months of two under two was tough because newborns are exhausting but we decided to divide and conquer. My eldest, who I couldn’t lift for weeks after a c section, became Ben’s jurisdiction and the baby was mine. Everyone warned me about jealousy, but she adored/ignored her sister from the off. She was completely unfased. She happily went off to the nursery she loved and when she got home she got fed and bathed by Daddy while having cuddles with me while the baby hung off my boob. I missed having baths with her and going to her in the night when she cried, but her and Ben were so close it wasn’t disruptive. Then five months later, he disappeared.

I immediately entered survival mode. To the untrained eye, I look like a pretty laid back human being. I am scruffy and scatty, Ben’s nickname for my handbag is ‘hell,’ but beneath my chaotic exterior lies a type A maniac. I consider motherhood to be the most important job I will ever have. I want my children to grow up and love me proudly like Pamela Anderson’s sons. I really, really want to get it right.

My eldest daughter had a tricky start. She was born with a cleft lip and palate and required specialist feeding techniques and multiple operations. She was allergic to milk and I read her nappies like tea leaves trying to work out which hypoallergenic formula would finally make her tiny tummy comfortable. There is no rash I have not googled and no rare disease I have not considered. I was convinced that if I could be the perfect parent, the obstacles wouldn’t exist. In the end the only person who spoke to the cleft trained psychologist was me.

I was so terrified of lack of sleep, I planned her naps to the minute, never fed her to sleep, always made sure she was drowsy but awake. I weaned her one vegetable at a time. I had an app that told me how to cut grapes and one to tell me when she was experiencing ‘a leap.’ I pored over packets of baby food checking sugar content and traces of milk. To anyone over the age of fifty, I had lost my god damn mind, but to my millennial peers I was just doing what we were told - which was that with all of this information at our fingertips, we had no business being anything other than right all the time.

My second daughter was more straightforward but the hangover from my first remained. I stopped eating dairy for weeks lest I pass it through my breastmilk, before conceding she was actually fine. When the results of her heel prick test got lost in the post, I drove myself mad with worry. Luckily Angie was there to calm me down.

At first, I centred the kids in every activity, leaving nothing for myself. It was all about optimising their lives because I was sure that if I met the children’s needs, I in turn would feel at peace. Of course this was a disaster. A happy mum is a happy baby, which is why I think they put bars next to playgrounds in Spain.

In a session with my therapist she casually mentioned the effect Ben’s absence might have on my children.

‘They might have some issues with abandonment,’ she suggested. I was momentarily speechless.

‘They’re too young to remember,’ I countered. ‘It won’t affect them, will it?’

I thought of my two year old refusing to speak to Ben when he returned two months after leaving in the middle of the night. He did bedtime every night for 6 months then didn’t do it for a year. He held her all night in hospital when she had her second operation, then he was too weak to hold her at all. When he came back he did not look like Ben. He did not smell like Ben. I thought if I could love them enough they might not notice what was going on. I had wildly underestimated my daughters.

‘They fuck you up your mum and dad, they may not mean to but they do.’ Philip Larkin’s opening line from This Be The Verse has been reverberating around my head since my first pregnancy. ‘Not me,’ I thought. I’ve been in therapy since my teens. I am going to break the cycle.

A perfectionist to the end, I was convinced that if I just tried hard enough I could cheat trauma just like Ben continues to cheat death. Philip may not have meant to, but he fucked me up too. I became consumed by thoughts of the damage Ben’s illness might do to my children’s developing psyches.

‘If he dies,’ I thought, I will buy a very big bed so we can all sleep together. I will love them so hard they won’t feel the pain. I won’t shout, I won’t get stressed. I will be the perfect mum. I vowed to parent gently and that we would be a team. We would be the three musketeers and I would put a napkin on my head like Jude Law in The Holiday and would laugh and laugh until Cameron Diaz came to rescue me. I would devote my life to motherhood and abandon everything else. Of course I very quickly went insane.

I find toddlers easier to parent than babies, but I find two toddlers harder to parent than a toddler and a baby. Toddlers are more robust and have ways to communicate their needs. But babies stay still.

Having two under two is like having two tiny warthogs bimbling around your house in search of danger. The warthogs are figure skaters and the bathroom is their ice rink. The warthogs are mountaineers and their Everest is a a very heavy cupboard full of snacks that I desperately want to screw into the wall. The warthogs are screaming ‘mummy blow bubbles!’ while you try and type your newsletter. Hence, this one is late.

Since they both became mobile, I have not weed or showered alone. My most used phrase is ‘there is only one mummy!’ As they both beg to be carried or beat each other off the prime real estate that is my lap. The most effective way to shower is to put the children in front of the TV at the other end of the house (which is not big), then wash as quickly as I can before their grubby mugs are pressed against the shower glass. If I go for a shower and they haven’t come to find me within 2 minutes I will have to get out naked and dripping to see what danger has distracted them. They are only distracted by danger, destruction or sugar. They will either be holding scissors or chocolate contraband or emptying the contents of their wardrobe onto the floor. I would have them in the bathroom with me but they also like to put their hands in the loo and/or try and force their way into the shower fully clothed. Two parent households, surrender your grievances, if your husband won’t take your kids for 5 minutes so you can wash, you should leave him.

When Ben went into hospital, I decided that if I could be both a mummy and a daddy, there would be little to no disruption for the children. How hard can it be to be a dad? I thought. It will just be a bit more work at bath time plus I’ll have to take the bins out. Within days it became clear that this was not the case. There was no one to take them on a walk when I needed to make an important phone call or just have 5 minutes peace. No extra pair of eyes to make sure that pasta wasn’t boiling over while I changed a nappy, no one to cook me dinner when I’d finally wrangled them both into bed. Instead of two relatively calm parents, they had one on the edge of collapse.

Every tantrum, night wake or illness threatened to topple the precarious house of cards that was my sanity. ‘If you knew that Daddy was in a coma,’ I used to think, ‘I’m sure you’d give me a break.’

At night I asked myself the questions I wanted to ask Ben. Should I be more gentle, am I disciplining them enough, is it ok if they see me cry? I couldn’t stop this from hurting them. I could not hide it from them. We were not musketeers, I was their mother.

Thankfully, I’ve had a teammate in Angie, and she stepped in where to she could to fill the holes Ben had left. She took the girls and the dog for walks for hours so I could experience silence in the house. She did my food shopping so I could spend all day in the hospital and most importantly she did what I hate most and cleaned.

In amongst my lack I found hidden strengths. I invented games that required me to lie down and do nothing while they clambered over me. When my hands are full (always) I am very good at picking things up with my feet. Too exhausted to cook, I resigned myself to only eating cold food. Salami, cheese, gaspacho, leftover nuggets. I was hopeful that this constituted an attempt at ‘the mediterranean diet. In reality looking after them all the time meant I was no longer looking after myself.

‘You are an adult and you must regulate your emotions,’ I repeated to myself while they screamed in my face, threw food, climbed up my legs and sought out sharp/hot/poisonous objects. My Aunt and Uncle would listen out across the courtyard, assessing the pitch of their screaming. When I was about to explode my cousin would appear by magic in the doorway and ask if I needed help with bath time. More than once I walked outside and screamed at the top of my lungs. It was either that or fake my own death and keep walking til nobody could find me.

Eventually I had no choice but to give myself permission to do my best instead of being ‘the best.’ My plans to gentle parent evaporated and I employed a parenting style called ‘avoid injury at all costs.’ What choice did I have but to shout when I was changing one baby’s nappy while the other one appeared in the doorway covered in blue paint. I lost my hours of poring over mumsnet and allergy related facebook groups. When the owner of my eldest’s nursery came out to tell me she wasn’t sharing I screamed,

‘What do you want me to do about it Hayley she’s two!’ She offered to come round to my house and make me dinner and babysit so I could drink wine. She never mentioned sharing again.

Neither child was sleeping much due to change and well, just being babies so I dragged them into my bed in the night, one in my arms and one my boob before crawling through days like treacle. I sacked off the sleep routine and fed the baby to sleep every nighttime and nap. I weaned her on suspicious ‘sugar free’ rice that smelt like marshmallows and slung her the occasional courgette. I found that knowing I wasn’t going to be able to get it right, meant I was more relaxed overall.

I’ve accepted that judging our parents choices is part of the human condition. If they are going to go to therapy and talk about the things that i got wrong, the best thing I can do is be chill about it. I did my best, I tried, I loved them, I dealt with my shit every week so as best not to make it their shit as well. I hope they see that I was strong, and that I tried my best. Pamela Anderson’s sons forgave her for marrying Kid Rock.

It feels superfluous to mention that I am tired, but I am cut down to the bone. I lie awake at night and worry about Ben. The weight of my responsibility rests heavy on my chest. I have had to choose nurseries, schools and doctors all on my own. I am advocating for everyone in a foreign language and to add insult to injury sometimes that isn’t even Spanish, but Catalan. I feel so close to fucking everything up with a slip of google translate. To soothe myself I think about their little bodies, warm tummies rising and falling gently in their cots. I imagine they’re next to me and I can feel their breath on my face. I slow my breathing, then one of them wakes up and has a nightmare and I wish momentarily that I was anywhere but here.

I know that this time will be over so fast, and its hard not to wish it away just so Ben can be better again. I know I will miss these years while they’re so cuddly and small. Even now I wish I could hold them as newborns just for a day so I could experience the duality of them being so little and of knowing how wonderful they are going to become.

When I stopped working when Ben was very ill I had to face down the perfect parent demon again. If you’re not going to work and you have childcare, what are you actually doing? Having a break, processing trauma and living a bit of life for myself didn’t feel like a valid choice. This newsletter has given me purpose and space to do all three. I didn’t think I could be creative again, until someone pointed out I’d just created human life. Writing has helped me make sense of my racing thoughts and given me a much needed excuse not to do housework. Now that Angie is leaving, I will have to write this newsletter, love the babies and clean. I will be an imposter holding a mop. Or I will go back to work and get a cleaner.

Without the children, by now I would have fallen apart. I can’t run home to my mum and dad because sometimes I have to be their mum and dad and they need to know that I can be their anchor.

You shouldn’t have to become a parent to appreciate your parents but it helps. You also shouldn’t have have to support your spouse through cancer and raise your tiny warthogs alone to truly see how loved and held you are. When life is hard and we’re not who we want to be we go looking for someone to blame. Its true that our parents choices and mistakes have repercussions in our lives, but the things they get right have repercussions too.

I feel safe and am strong because of them and my kids will feel safe and be strong because of us. For now, at least, they have a mum and a dad again and they are so happy he’s back. Of course I know lots of children in single parent families are happy and well adjusted. But I can’t pretend my girls have nothing to lose. Now that Ben is back at home, we are entering a new phase. A phase where I don’t need Angie every day and come September we won’t need Angie at all. I have survived a year with the tiny warthogs, and every day they surprise me with their ingenuity for stealing snacks. If the girls grow up unaffected by this time it will not be because I got it right, it will be because of the love they got from everyone around them. From Angie and my parents. From my in laws, my siblings and my uncles and aunts. It has been so hard but we still got to wake up every day in a house full of people we loved, while Ben woke up in hospital.

When Ben and I first got together, I was worried it wouldn’t work. Somebody told me that in a relationship you need a rock and an ocean. ‘This will never work,’ I said to be therapist, because we are both oceans. ‘Two oceans can be OK,’ she said, knowing all along that I was really the rock.