I always thought I would be the type of mum who was relaxed (don't know why as I'm not about anything else) and would happily leave her baby with other people, but for a while it seemed this was not the case.
Back in the summer holidays over a lunch with my new mum friends I was surprised to learn that one of them had left her little boy with his grandparents when he was six weeks old for a weekend away, and two of them were planning a couple of weeks minus babies in Las Vegas next summer. At this stage I had just left Maya for an hour to get her registered. Our birthdays and wedding anniversary had dribbled past without much effort to celebrate. We had a quiet family BBQ for my birthday, lunch in a cafe and a pint in Isaacs (with Maya) for James' and although we planned to go out for the evening to celebrate our wedding anniversary when it came down to it I just didn't want to go.
In fact for the first few months I barely left Maya at all and when I did it was for nothing remotely interesting - a trip to the vets with Paddy, a quick trip to Sainsburys, etc. I did venture out on the work Christmas meal (which was pretty rubbish) but wouldn't let James come as I didn't want to spend my first night away worrying about leaving her with someone else. When Maya was six months old we took the plunge and had a night out without her, much needed as James and I were arguing quite a bit and really needed to spend some time together. We booked a table at Kwon Thai and went out early for a couple of drinks beforehand. Unfortunately service was so quick in the restaurant that we were actually completely finished by 8.45pm and we didn't want to go for anymore drinks as we would inevitably have to get up in the night for Maya. Maya was very good though for my sister which was great, although she laughed at our pathetic early arrival home! A week later we were invited out with friends to Passage to India - so we called upon Sharon for more babysitting duties and promised not to be home so early. We had a great night catching up with friends and ate lots of lovely food and rolled in after 11pm - much more successful.
One of the most annoying about babies is all the paraphenalia that has to accompany them when you leave the house. My change bag is huge, the car seat really heavy, and the pushchair absolutely enormous and difficult to manouvre around shops (although my second little one is not too bad), and we have become very familiar with Ipswich's lifts (both customer and goods). It is often embarrassing to have to rearrange half a cafe or restaurant in order to accommodate babies and buggies. And walking Maya and Paddy together is a nightmare as he runs off or keeps stopping in front of the buggy.
Recently I have overcome my need to be with Maya all of the time - as she is quite happy to be left with others. A couple of weeks ago five of us, who normally meet up and go out together with babies, decided that we were having a night out without them. We only opted for Pizza Express but did plan to go for a few drinks along the Waterfront afterwards. I embraced it as a big night out (even though it wasn't) and went into town that afternoon to buy something new to wear (a dark blue dress with polka dots), straightened my hair and got the heels out - although then changed my mind and put on some slightly more sensible shoes as it was very cold and icy! It was a fun night, plenty of wine was drank - although poor Hannah was unwell and had to go home, and it was lovely to kick back and relax without having to think about feeding babies, changing nappies and generally keeping them from disturbing everyone else. We did talk about babies a lot, which I guess is to be expected as that is what our friendship is based on, and the highlight of the conversation was Rachel revealing that she'd pooed her pants!
Last week I took this a step further, and went out for the day with Hannah and Caroline to celebrate/commiserate the end of Hannah's maternity leave. We had a lovely morning relaxing in Aqua Springs in Colchester (which is full of wrinkly and saggy old people - not quite the luxury spa image) and then went for lunch in a lovely tea shop in Dedham before wandering around a few shops. I found it very easy to leave Maya for the day as she had been up for many hours the night before so I was going along with only four hours of sleep under my belt. The day was lovely and Maya had a good day with James - in fact she was so good that he managed to clean the whole house - something that I never do!!
It was great to get out and have a few hours to myself - something I am going to need to make more of an effort to do, especially as from now on it will be just me and Maya much more often as Hannah, Rachael and Karen have all gone back to work and Caroline has put Mags into nursery on our usual day together. Maybe I will have to start making some new friends....
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