Friday 11 March 2011

Buggy hours

As much as I try to monitor the amount of time I spend with babies (newborns are pretty much out of the question, toddlers I can just about handle), it doesn't take away from the little pang of pain I feel every time I see a pram being pushed on the pavement.
Now that the weather is getting milder, they are everywhere. Seriously, between 9am and 5pm, you can't move for Bugaboos, I-Candy's, those double clumsy looking things that say, 'I've got two you know, t-w-o'.
In a weird way, strangers' children are actually more difficult than the ones I know. At least with them, the majority were around before Bear was born, and I can feel some kind of love for their little cherub faces, as they are the offspring of adults I like too.
But unknown babies, and their unknown Mummies, are painful. When I went and did some errands just now, as the sun was setting, it was utter bliss. I could actually walk around like a relatively normal person, as all the little people were at home having pureed carrot willed into their mouths.
For the first time, in a long time, the office seems rather appealing.

3 comments:

  1. I so understand what you mean. When you are out in the "world" you see everybody with everything you've imagined your life to be. It is hard to cope with sometimes. I encountered a pregnant woman today and it was just so hard to see somebody else in that state. I didn't know this woman but I so longed to be pregnant and in that state again.

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  2. Everyone has to find their own way through this part. Mine was rather masochistic, but it seemed to make sense at the time.

    I felt that every place I'd been whilst pregnant, every place I'd expected to go with the new baby, mixing with other mothers and babies etc - they all held ghosts of an imagined future that wasn't happening any more, and I had to find a way to overlay the 'should have been' with the new reality.

    So I made myself go to the places and do the things that would hurt, and after a few times, it didn't (so much). Sounds a bit barmy, admittedly, but I was desperate NOT to be the lady who couldn't be near a baby - especially when so many of my friends and family have them.

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  3. I didn't want to feel bitter at their happiness, just as I didn't want them to feel embarrassed about my sadness. I didn't want to be cut off from everything good in the world. It's lonely enough, this journey.

    After a while, you discover that, contradictory to how you feel, you DON'T actually have a sign over your head that says 'woman without her baby', and it is simultaneously terrible and liberating.

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