I'm crumbling, like old cake.
I had a baby and now I'm disintegrating. Nobody panic.
This didn’t start well. I almost had to Google how to write the body text of my first post.
There I was, trapped in the subtitle section, cursor bouncing frantically around the window, nearly clicking ‘send’ on a blank email and panicking, flapping, feeling a thousand times more ancient than I already do. How, on top of everything else, do I not know how to use computers anymore? What’s next? Texting with one eye closed, pointing finger poised above a shining screen?
Physically, since I had my son, I do feel ancient. Or maybe ‘brittle’ is a better word — like overcooked flapjack, fumbled and crumbled. I feel like I’m falling to bits; hair turning white, shoulders and back crunching, skin flaring, nails flaking. I used to just not really notice my body, except when someone else did. Now, keeping this bone bag together takes a continuous concerted effort: cleansing, stretching, walking, flossing, nourishing, hydrating. Skip a step at your peril. Skip a step and come apart: teeth from gums, hair from head.
But I do skip steps. Frequently. Sometimes, I use not skipping one step as the justification to skip some other one as a ‘treat’. I remembered not to cross my legs at my desk, so I don’t have to floss. I flossed, so I don’t have to do all my stretches on PhysiApp. I did my stretches, so I won’t wash my hair. My life is filled with half-a-jobs, boxes sort-of ticked in my wavering quest to take better care of myself (and if I’m honest, I hardly even do that for me — I do it so I don’t get told off by my hygienist, osteopath, husband, or mum).
And yet, when I do snare a sneaky half hour to myself — a surprise, extra-long nap, or an unexpectedly early bedtime — I don’t do any of the steps that’ll stop my legs from falling off, or help me to sneeze without anything clicking, or any of that useful, healthy stuff. Of course not. That’d make too much sense!
Instead, I do things for Arthur.
I’m compelled, pathologically, in a way I never have been to do anything for myself. I’ll bake little cheesy baby muffins. Batch cook his tea for the week. Fold his clothes into a drawer, while mine sprawl over the carpet. While he’s at nursery, I (sometimes) even vacuum the carpet in his bedroom before I get to my desk.
When I was pregnant, I found it galling how easily expectant mothers can be sidelined in favour of their babies, and forgotten afterwards. What I didn’t realise was that, once mine arrived, I’d (willingly?) do it to myself. For him, I’ll do anything. I’ll do everything. And I’ll both want, and not want, to do it. But for me? It all seems a bit too much like hard work.
And so, the baby — enormous, ruddy-faced, utterly delicious — flourishes. I — or maybe, my sense of ‘I’ — flounders.
And so, I try not to skip the steps. I make new ones. I get a haircut. I have my nails done. I put on mascara, once in a while. I flirt, daringly, with the concept of exercise. I sew a pair of trousers, badly. I write. Because while all these things sound like they’re straight from an unimaginative self-care handbook — or the makeover montage in a noughties romcom — they all make for far less crumbly flapjack.
Far less crumbly, far less lost, far closer to understanding me.