'Solo Parenting'

How I went from solo parent to single parent and finally learnt to love it some of the time.

A couple of weeks ago I took myself and the kids out on my own for Mother’s Day. I’m not one for commercial holidays but this one felt symbolic. It was my first on my own and I was determined for all of us to have a nice day. I might not have had Ben at home to make me breakfast in bed or draw me sweet little pictures of the children, but I was determined to treat the day as a treat.

Showing the kids a great time is of course, a piece of cake. Sitting in a plastic wendy house in a park is for them, a great time. The aquarium, also a great time. Soft play, a really really great time. Unfortunately for me, none of these activities are likely to fill up my cup.

I thought about booking a babysitter and taking myself to a spa but I’m trying to avoid being alone with my thoughts. If I get on the self pity train I might not be able to get off.

Mothering a one and a two year old alone has been really, really hard. I used to call it ‘solo parenting,’ back when parenting alone was a brief interlude - for a weekend at the most.

‘Come over!’ I’d say, ‘I’m solo parenting so I can’t get out of the house.’ I’d take the kids to my parents or my auntie and uncles, convinced that 48 hours on my own would lead to mental collapse. I’d count down the minutes until Ben got back, exhausted from gigging abroad. He’d be mute with exhaustion and I’d be craven for adult company and help with bath time.

I’d regale him with all the ways the babies had tested me. How they’d mashed wet crisps into the sofa, drank from the dog water bowl, and squeezed out an entire tube of fancy sun cream onto a white bikini.

I’ve been counting down the minutes til Ben gets back now for 9 long months. I’m no longer a solo parent. I am a single parent. That person who couldn’t cope now feels like a stranger.

My children are both very easy to love and very hard to look after. Whenever I turn my back they disperse at speed in pursuit of menace. In the time it takes to cut grapes in half entire cupboards can be emptied, and whole packs of loo rolls unravelled and stuffed in the u bend. No matter how much I try to baby proof the house, their uncanny ability to locate razors, lighters and knives wins out. It is two dedicated tyrants against one empty shell.

I’m not alone, alone thank god. I’ve moved within shouting distance of my Aunt and Uncle’s house with four dogs, four pigs, two donkeys and my cousin Isla. My children love Isla more than anyone in the world, they follow her around doing anything she asks - when she walks into the house it casts a spell. Until recently, Isla would help me look after them at the weekends. Then she went away to sea.

I ran the full gamut of grief for my departed weekend buddy. I tried booking babysitters to take the edge off, telling myself it was so I could go into the hospital and see Ben. In truth, I didn’t think I could enjoy the weekend on my own with my kids.

There are some child friendly activities that are only tolerable with adult company. Nobody enjoys sitting in a ball pit waiting to catch a plague, but if the ball pit has a café for a gossip or a beer you too can feel like you’ve had a weekend. One day when I’m out alone with the children at the aquarium I see myself in the sad fat, tank sharks, swimming round and round in circles, trying to get out to sea.

I realise that I’ve been solo parenting rather than single parenting. I’ve been parenting in survival mode, treading water and saving up life for when Ben gets better. In my commitment to making sure the kids are always happy, I haven’t been thinking about our happiness as a family. I’ve subconsciously put it on ice because family time isn’t family time without him. I haven’t wanted to picture us as a family of three, so I haven’t let us act like we are.

The moment I accept that I am in this on my own for the long haul, my capabilities stretch like elastic. Beach trip after nursery? Why not. Mother’s day a trois? Sure. I even bite the bullet and book myself a flight to Scotland to see my family.

For 9 months I’ve been afraid to give the universe permission to let us live without him. I now think that what we need to do is live for him, so he has something whole to come back to.

Mother’s day is my tester. I vow not to look at instagram all day. Watching mum’s get breakfast in bed from their ‘boy done good,’ isn’t going to help morale and I am damned if I am going to spend it watching Moana. I have learned that the best thing to do with my children is to get them out of the house as early as humanly possible and keep them out for as long I possibly can.

I shove the kids and the dog in the car and we drive to Playa D’Alcudia, a long stretch of sandy beach with a boardwalk for the pushchair, that for the meantime still permits dogs. Come Summer the sand will be heaving with sun beds, beers and burnt flesh but for now its still almost empty. Tractors are churning up the sand, creating a mogul field to slow my double buggy’s mission to the sea. My toddler starts squeaking with delight as we get closer to the water.

‘This is fine,’ I think. ‘Two babies and a dog is actually fine.’

I let the dog off the lead and he runs off and rolls in a dead sea gull before throwing up all over the table cloth I’d planned to sit on.

Hell bent on optimism, I rinse the sicky corner in the sea and the babies take their first chubby steps into the shallows. I feel overcome with a sense of achievement and calm. Then an old man tells me that the baby is eating sand.

Both children get soaked to the skin, the dog pees on somebody’s sandcastle, but everyone including me is having a great time. I strip the kids and slather them in cream, laying their clothes out to dry on top of the pushchair. We walk the length of the beach to an Italian restaurant where the kids pick at my chicken salad and ignore their chicken nuggets. Now that my eldest can talk, I realise that I don’t in fact feel lonely in their company. I look around at the other families enjoying their mother’s day lunch and I feel so happy, to be out with my sweet funny babies and the fur ball that will forever be my first born.

The babies then crap in unison and I must drag them both through the restaurant to the loo. I call my mum and ask her what she would do in this situation. ‘What if somebody steals Roast?’ I say. ‘What do I do with the pushchair?’

‘Leave the pushchair. Leave the dog. He is only extremely special to you and I promise nobody will take him.’ I remember being pregnant with my eldest and wondering how I could ever love anything more than I loved the dog. The idea of tying her to a table in Alcudia is ludicrous, but I leave Roast there and hope for the best.

When I get to the bathroom I quickly realise that I have no other option but to let one of them loose in the loo. ‘Ben would hate this,’ I think as I put the baby onto the floor and let her unravel 10 loo rolls. The floor looks like its been recently cleaned and unlike the other one she doesn’t have a preoccupation with touching loo seats. I clean them up and wash their hands. The dog is not stolen and I thank the waiter for a genuinely lovely experience. I then push the kids down the boardwalk until they fall asleep, bump the pushchair down to the beach and curl up on a sun lounger with the dog.

I open instagram. It doesn’t hurt as much as I thought it would. I take a picture of my white legs against the backdrop of the sea. I make a joke about changing two nappies and winning Iceland’s mum of the year. People are being so nice. I don’t care about breakfast in bed or cards or flowers or being the best mum in the world. I just want to go to the beach with Ben. I take advantage of the kids being asleep to have a big cry. When they wake up we all share an ice cream and watch the tractor finish churning up the sand.

‘We’ve all had a really wonderful day,’ I think. I sing Scottish nursery rhymes all the way home so they don’t fall asleep in the car.

‘You cannae shove your Granny off a bus!’ my toddler shrieks. They are such hard work and so much fun. I’m so lucky to have them all to myself and so ready for them to go to nursery tomorrow.

I tell Ben the first thing I want him to do when he gets better is take them on holiday alone so he can catch up on some solo parenting, and I can go to a spa.

My Solo Parenting Survival Guide for 2 under 2.

Having now both survived mother’s day on my own and flown to Scotland and back with both of my kids, I thought I would share a few things I have found helpful when solo/single parenting.

I am by no means saying that I am getting it right all the time, but I am somehow still sane and occasionally enjoying myself, which must count for something.

1. First things first. Lower. Your. Standards. It would be lovely if you could always keep your house/self/kids presentable, well behaved and diversely nourished but you are in survival mode now. Aim for children who are happy and anything else is a bonus. Hide vegetables in sauces, let them empty the cupboards if it keeps them quiet, give them snacks that will turn their outfits orange. They won’t thank you for a childhood where they were always quiet and clean, they’ll thank you for one where they were laughing.

2. Find childcare you trust and can afford before having more than one child. Accept all and any help that is offered. We settled my eldest into nursery 4 months before her sister was born, my aunt started taking her for a few extra hours every week and we introduced her to a babysitter who later became my part time nanny. Do not let anyone shame you for how much help you have/need. You are not supposed to be able to do it all on your own.

3. As soon as humanly possible, get them to sleep at the same time during the day. If this means propping up the baby’s eyelids with matchsticks, so be it. You need at least an hour alone a day to do absolutely nothing. I forbid you to use this hour for doing chores. Its for sitting down, eating, sleeping, bathing, whatever fills up your cup and makes you feel like yourself.

4. I also wholeheartedly recommend getting them to share a bedroom early. I’m not a huge fan of leaving babies to cry, but there will be times when bedtime feels life threatening and you will have to leave one or both of them to wail so you can take a time out. I have found the knowledge that they have each other makes me worry much less about their future in therapy.

5. if you have to fly anywhere, call the airport and ask for special assistance. I was escorted through Palma airport like a VIP last weekend and it cost me absolutely nothing. No queues, no steps, my double buggy waiting at the plane door. A dream. I also highly recommend flying Jet2 who happily entertained both my babies outside the loo while I dealt with 5 nappy changes in 3 hours.

6. Find people willing to meet you at your level of chaos. There is strength in numbers so find people who are willing to get stuck in. I find the best people to hang out with are people with an equal number of or more children than you or better yet, wonderful couples with fewer children than you who are game to help wrangle yours ( Shout out to Ally and Linden.)

7. There is nothing worse than being gaslit into thinking you should ‘cope better,’ but you can cope and you will cope. Yes there are people who say their aunt had 20 children and they were ok but their aunt didn’t have instagram reels to tell how much their parenting style could traumatise their children. The best person to be their mum will always be you, so give yourself a break and do what you have to to get through.

Every joy filled day with the girls feels bittersweet because Ben should be there too. Every milestone we reach together is another one he’s missed, but I comfort myself that he’s conserving his precious energy for getting better so he can be here for the next ones. For now, I will continue to take life day by day, and when I can’t, I’ll take it hour by hour, minute by minute, or breath by breath.