The Legacy of child-bearing

I am staring middle-age in the face, fair reader. In about six weeks, I will turn 35, thus marking the precise half-way point between birth and old. Not that I mean dead, but somehow 70 has always been the number in my  head that is the very definition of old. I have no doubt that once my parents reach this age, I shall be forced to revise my opinion for fear of offending someone.

I actually had to sit down and work out my age the other day for some form or other, and it was quite a shock. Since having The Girls, I’ve rather lost track of the passing years and just assumed myself to be ‘older-than-30 (but-not-much)’. Of course, my eldest thinks that I am six, which suits me. She can count very well up to twenty, so any of those numbers would have done, but I’ll take what I can get whilst I can: before long she’ll be telling everyone my precise age. The shock of my impending middle-aged-ness, and a laugh-out-loud post on Babylon Tales, got me to pondering what other legacies the child-rearing years had given me.

1. Stretch marks: due to weight-gain (some pregnancy-related, some not-so-much) and loss in the last four years, the bits of my body not visible to passers-by is smothered in garish purpley-pink stretch marks. Some of them are so deep they should be plotted on a map and given a name that ends in -Canyon. The Girls have been known to occupy their time by sitting on my tummy and pulling out the bits of fluff, and odd pound coin, buried deep inside them.

2. A new appreciation for all forms of caffeine: I can often be found eating instant coffee from the jar out of  desperation mid-afternoon in the hope that it will get me through the Witching Hour, though it rarely does. There is no question that one of the hardest trials of new parenthood is the sleep-deprivation, so no wonder it’s used as a form of torture. I’d like to think that my four years (ongoing) training in this department would make me an excellent MI6 or SAS candidate, emotional issues and lack-of-physique notwithstanding.

3. Juggling: you cannot tell me that managing to breast feed a baby, whilst simultaneously cuddling a toddler and reading her a story so that she doesn’t feel left out, isn’t a skill worthy of anyone’s CV. Or telling one child off for hurting another child, kissing and consoling said injured child and telling the dog to shut up , all whilst trying to do a wee. I can’t actually juggle, so maybe I ought to call it Multi-tasking to avoid confusion .

4. An encylopedic knowledge of the local area and all toddler-related activities held therein: cabbies think they’ve got it hard with their Knowledge? They should try finding a local activity to do on a wet winter afternoon when you can’t stay in the house any longer for fear you will actually start trying to climb up the walls. And a nice child-friendly place to eat that doesn’t get totally rammed in the 5 minutes between 11:58 am and 12:03 pm? That’s like hitting every light on green through the Congestion Zone.

5. Improved Deception skills: I can lie about anything with a straight face (a point in my favour on the MI6 application, no?

• Where is Mamma going? Out for cocktails with friends To work.

• Where is my dummy? I threw them in the bin because you are too old for them The Dummy Fairy took them to get Santa to make them into new toys for Christmas time.

• See that sign over there, that says Fire Exit, that says that if you shout too loud, The Man will come and take you out of the park/library/swimming pool and you won’t be able to have fun/a new book/chocolate for your tea.

• Oh Dear, the batteries have run out, it doesn’t work any more. We’ll have to ask Santa for a new one and I will donate this one to a charity shop far far away.

6. Callouses: the years of spending my days on my hands and knees have come back to bite me, because I have callouses on my callouses, both on my knees and the tops of my feet. I have no doubt that elephants would find this deeply sexy, but I’m not sure DH really has much enthusiasm for skin that could stop a bullet better than kevlar.

7. Sciatica: the exciting thing about Sciatica is that you never know when it’s going to strike next. You are just getting on with your day, minding your own business and whomp! Just when you least expect it, you are limping around like  a geriatric with a knife sticking out of their left buttock.

8. Dodgy Hips: combined with the sciatica, I might as well get a purple rinse and an elasticated skirt now. When pregnant with the Dimpled Assassin, I actually used to look enviously at those more senior citizens whizzing around on their mobility scooters. I was tempted by every product in the window of our local Mobility Centre. The shame of actually envying those lucky people who had a commode will be with me to the end of my days. Not that there aren’t advantages: DH does most of the heavy lifting these days, and I have the swanky memory foam mattress I have wanted since before I’d heard of the letters S, P and D.

9. A ‘selective’ memory: they say that you lose brain cells with every child. I want to say a half, but I probably totally made that up. I think that the blogosphere totally disproves this theory. Just look at Mammasaurus, with a total of eight children under her belt, yet not a gibbering, dribbling shell of a human being but a funny, sassy, sprightly blogger who has charmed the pants off of the BritMums (I say this in admiration, just so we are clear.) Or More Than Just a Mother, full time work-at-home mum to three and award-winning bloggerer and radio interviewee (again, admiration. Envy, too.) So why I should be unable to recall my actual age and yet instantly know all the words to the latest crap inspiring children’s programme on CBeebies, I’ve no idea. Is it a skill, or just a bloody nuisance?

10. Pelvic floor: you’ve watched Sarah Beany’s house programme, right? Well, lets just say that it’s not so much a floor as a few bits of damp, rotting, termite-infested wood held together with spit and sawdust. One wrong move and the whole house will come tumbling down. Fortunately the dodgy hips mean that I am banned from running or any high-risk sport, otherwise I’d have been buying more than just a scooter from the mobility shop.