This much I know
Three Vogue mothers share how the first year of parenting is a wondrous learning curve.
Yeong Sassall HEAD OF BRAND VOGUE LIVING AND MOTHER OF A 21-MONTH-OLD DAUGHTER.
You’d think by now, we’d have exhausted every possible topic surrounding motherhood – we’ve been having babies for how many years now? But therein lies the great paradox of parenting: what seems like the most singular, specific experience of your life is also one that’s being shared simultaneously by millions of other women around the world. Yet how can something so mundane, so quotidian, be so baffling and insurmountable at the same time?
As a writer, I often struggle to form the words that sum up motherhood. Perhaps because it’s so ephemeral, so contradictory, so changeable from one minute to the next. When it’s 6.57am and your toddler is demanding a cuddle, her yoghurt-covered fingers threatening to topple the careful equilibrium of the morning rush … and stain your just-ironed shirt? Well, it’s hard. At the same time, in the back of your mind, you hear friends telling you to appreciate the hugs, the constant need for closeness, the unequivocal love and neediness that emanates from that tiny body. “One day”, they say, “she won’t want your hugs anymore.” It seems like every moment contains multitudes. It’s the same push-andpull chaotic thought pattern that sees you counting down the minutes until naptime, then spending those blessed two hours thumbing through photos of your child on your phone, missing them. Motherhood – it really is the ultimate tragicomedy.
At times, I shake my head in disbelief that this furniture-climbing, dancing-to-Cardi-B, increasingly chatty toddler swiping toast from my hands once lived inside my body not even two years ago. And yet I find myself dispensing advice to newborn parents (“Dine out while you can!”) and pregnant friends (“No, it’s not quite like raising a puppy”) as if I’m passing the imaginary baton of parenthood onto its next member. Or descending into cliché – “Enjoy it”, “It doesn’t last forever”, “You forget quickly” – all phrases that are mired in truthfulness yet are also entirely redundant when you’re running late for work and wrestling a screaming toddler into her car seat.
Of course, as every mother on earth will attest, despite every missed nap, every tantrum, every unexplained 5am wake-up call, there is nothing else in the world as pure as the love you have for your child. And contained in every embarrassing, endurance-testing moment (airport meltdown, anyone?) is the knowledge that there is nothing more magical or joyful than watching your child grow and discover the world. And for everything else, there’s nothing a really good cuddle can’t fix.
Katrina Israel
VOGUE CONTRIBUTOR AND MOTHER OF TWO-YEAR-OLD TWIN DAUGHTERS.
“Can I take a picture of the screen?” my husband asked our London doctor during our baby’s second ultrasound. “You might want to wait a second,” came the reply, after a sizable pause. “It seems we have two heartbeats.”
And just like that we joined the twin club. My C-section recovery was slow, so my husband took the initial brunt of the heavy lifting (aka nappy duty and inspired swaddling) from the get-go. We started as partners and thankfully we have been ever since. In those early weeks we slept in shifts, fully aware that by the time we’d fed and settled both babies it was almost time to start again.
Our lucky break was a night nurse/sleep trainer called Ria, inherited from friends with twins – night nurses are pretty commonplace in London, especially in lieu of family. Ria quickly established a structured routine and was always awake, with one family or another, and therefore available to answer my texts. She favoured muslins as comforters (inexpensive and interchangeable) and a hush/pat settling technique in the cot to avoid cuddling them to sleep – impossible with twins. Once they started to wake each other up, Ria had us arrange their cots into a L-shape (who knew?), so they could still touch each other, and we could reach them to soothe simultaneously.
Gina Ford and Alice Beer’s A Contented House with Twins and Simone Cave’s Your Baby Week by Week became our bibles for the first year, packed with advice for both them and me. And I’d recommend a baby shower registry: cute outfits are adorable, but you need a ton of practical stuff for twins. Top of the list: a twin breastfeeding pillow (challenging to master but saves time), hiring a hospital-grade Medela Symphony Breast Pump (buy the bra top and you can use it hands-free), Tommee Tippee formula machine (perfect temp every time), an electric steam steriliser (the microwave versions don’t take enough bottles), Boody swaddles (the stretch makes for a snugger fit), a double-decker pram (avoid the side-by-side style or you won’t get through doors) and the Tommee Tippee disposal system (translation: nappy bin). Our realisation? Everything is a stage, whether you want it to last or not. Pre-kids we used to think we were busy, high-functioning people. We have barely sat down for two-and-a-half years yet we could not be happier. And yes – as everyone always says but you often question in the wee hours – it does get easier.
ANNIE BROWN HEAD OF BRAND VOGUE.COM.AU AND MOTHER OF A THREE-YEAR-OLD DAUGHTER AND SEVEN-MONTH-OLD SON.
Before I had my daughter I was entirely, unreasonably confident I knew how I was going to ‘mother.’ What I’d learn, when she arrived in a precipitous fashion, is that motherhood would upend just about every one of my expectations.
The first photo of my daughter was taken 13 minutes after she made her debut. Her eyes are wide open – if you press for the live reaction, they flick back and forth taking everything in. She remains just as wide-eyed and curious at almost threeand-a-half (a big girl, she’ll have you know). In that first year she didn’t sleep; at mothers’ group, I paced and patted while the other babies slumbered peacefully.
I learned I could function on very little sleep and be somewhat okay with uncertainty. That every baby does things in their own time. And that when a baby is born, so too, in a way, is a mother. I wish I’d been kinder to myself and spent less money on books by so-called sleep experts.
It’s true: the days can be long, but the years go by so fast. And the best gift for a new mother is lasagne. I know too that the moments you treasure are never the camera-ready ones: they’re the cuddles and spontaneous dance parties. Even after the hardest day, at night when they’re finally in bed, you already miss them.
When my firstborn’s baby brother arrived, I became a new mother again – more confident but somehow just as vulnerable. It turns out that your heart can expand to love another just as much, and the risk of letting your hearts out into the world is worth every single bit of it.