A social life is one of the main things parents forsake when they have very young children. Okay so some people still might manage to have one, but we haven’t quite got there yet. Nor am I exactly ready for an evening social life yet. But in the daytime? I reckon I’m more than ready.
One of the issues with having just moved to a small village is that we don’t really know anyone our own age here yet: all our friends are either in London or surrounding towns.
Keen not to lose sight of my close friends, I’ve found myself organising a plethora of lunches throughout October and early November. Almost every weekend we have friends coming from far and wide to have lunch with us. I guess l’ll need to hone my cookery skills and get the cupboards better stocked. My friends know I’m no Mary Berry, but we can’t exactly serve stale bread and cheese if someone’s made the effort to drive all the way from Luton!
Anyway, this morning is meant to be the first session of the village postnatal group I mentioned in my first blog post last week. Given the context outlined above, I’m disproportionately eager to attend. Despite having slept only a handful of interrupted hours (Microtoes feeding, Tinytoes teething, DearDaddy pulling the bed covers off me just as I was dropping off…) I wake up in good spirits. This would be a chance to meet potentially like-minded mums from the same village, as well as having some organised playtime with Microtoes. The only other baby group I attend is a good 30 minute drive away.
As usual I end up having to rush. I select my ‘best nursing top’ (oh the glamour!) which looks slightly less like a nursing top than the other ones, even put some simple make-up on (!) and end up leaving the house late due to a last minute epic feed (which I have to cut short), frantic top dabbing (when it gets covered in posset) and nappy change. I practically jog across the village to be there on time, carrying Microtoes to my chest in a baby carrier, with nappy bag and baby paraphernalia over my shoulder (because the group is being held upstairs in the surgery and I don’t want to have to lift the buggy up the stairs). I was determined to walk and not drive there.
I arrive, panting, bang on 10.30am and rush up the stairs. There is no one to be seen. Back downstairs the receptionist is having a mundane conversation with presumably a family member about eating baked beans for dinner. She sees me standing there, micro-sized baby clutched to my chest, nappy bag on arm, but continues to chatter. I glare at her and she eventually hangs up and looks at me blankly. “What post-natal group?” she asks.
At that moment, pathetic is it sounds, I want to cry. I marvel at how sad my life has become that I’m this upset about some dumb local postnatal group being cancelled or maybe not even existing in the first place.
I find out (hours later) that the woman who organised it was off sick and, because I’d been invited belatedly to join, my name wasn’t on the list of mums to contact.
Thank God for SuperGranny living in the same village (and very near the surgery). I walk on to see her and have a much needed cup of coffee and grumble. We pop back in the car to get the baby playmat and have our own postnatal session with Microtoes, who is none the wiser where her mummy playtime is being held.
I start to relax. There’s always next week and hey, what better local friend to spend the morning with than my own dear mum!
Calamitous Mummy 