Basic Bitch

When millennials get broody

Because I work from home, my family think

I’m unemployed. When I seem to spend my days deep-conditioning my hair, thinking about lash extensions and watching Vogue Williams’s Instagram stories, it’s difficult to refuse helping to mind my 15-month-old nephew. And anyway, I’m mad about the kid.

Generally, it’s win-win — except, maybe, for Bae, who, with neither consultation nor warning, has become a co-parent deeply acquainted with the various species of baby poo.

However, as my friends stare down the barrel of 30, my flat has become a dangerous place. Among my dying succulents, Klimt prints, ornamental landline phone, and TK Maxx Le Creuset in the bum colours, there is a toddler bookshelf. Visitors go looking for wine glasses, and are confronted by a million sippy-cups. They go to the toilet and must look rubber duckies in their beady, knowing eyes while weeing.

When the girls were over last week, drinking, I turned to see one of them curled up with one of the kid’s stuffed bunnies, on which she was putting a tiny stray sock. She looked up, all glazed eyes and faraway smile: “Baby sock”, she whispered.

I’ve found another friend sitting on my bath, like a 1995 glue-sniffer, breathing in a bottle of Johnson’s baby shampoo and welling up.

Indeed, I’m often asked whether it all makes me broody, too. “It’s great practice for himself,” they say. “It must make you think,” they say.

Of course — it crosses our minds. At the end of the day, once we’ve handed him back, we flop down on the sofa, exhausted but happy. I observe the destruction the kid has wrought. I’ve been so busy, I realise, I have absolutely no idea what Vogue is up to right now. My hair is brittle. I reach across and take Bae’s hand, I take a big breath, smile and look into his eyes: “Darling — let’s have a vasectomy”.