And I’m not sure I’m able for it. There’s a reason, after all, that women tend to have children in their twenties and thirties – and I don’t think it’s anything to do with their ovaries and whether or not their eggs are soft boiled or hard boiled.
It’s more that taking care of a baby as the big five-oh looms larger is akin to an extreme sport. The energy levels that helped me coast through the early years of my twin sons’ lives with only the help of Maltesers and caffeine-laden Diet Coke have clearly run off with a younger woman.
Instead of a happy-go-lucky mum content to sit on the floorto change nappies, or nurse a crying baby in a never-ending rock-sway-step motion up and down the hall at three in the morning, there is me. Rebecca Burnside. The woman who scared her infant granddaughter by letting out a huge groan of pain as she tried to get back up off the floor to deposit a soiled nappy in the bin.
I am the woman whose arms so love to feel the weight of that gorgeous, smoochy-faced little cherub but who also starts to ache after about five minutes of rock-sway-stepping.
I am also the woman who is very genuinely in this moment wishing that her advancing years would steal her hearing – just for an hour or four, nothing life-altering. I’m not that dramatic. But just long enough that I am able to get some blissful uninterrupted sleep.
I have a theory that once your inner mammy-mode is activated with the birth of your first child, it never really goes away. As your own children grow, those skills that helped you keep your own offspring alive just lie dormant for a bit, waiting for Motherhood: The Next Generation, aka being a grandmother.
No sooner had Clara Niamh Cassidy arrived in this world than my ears had started picking up the cries from any baby within a five-mile radius, flooding my body with adrenaline and a fierce need to make sure that babba is okay.
Miss Clara’s birth also unlocked the vault of nursery rhymes and silly songs I’d sung my own boys twenty years ago, along with the tunes my own lovely mammy had sung to me. Though it has been many years since I’ve had cause to sing them, I still seem to remember them in word- and tune-perfect format. Even though I’m at the stage of life when I often don’t remember why I went upstairs, or where I’ve sat my glasses.
I’ll find myself walking the aisles of Tesco, rocking the trolley as if it were a pram and the bag of spuds it carries my belovedgrandchild, while humming the theme tune toBalamorybefore segueing into a roaring chorus of ‘Incy Wincy Spider’.
When some of the songs of my own childhood surface, I do my best to bury them. No grandchild of mine will be traumatised by the Northern Irish song ‘Who’s at the Window, Who?’ which threatened us all with a wee bad man who was coming to take us away.
Or worse again, the cheerful ditty my own granny had sung to me while I was but an innocent babe in arms:
Rebecca Burnside is no good.
Chop her up for firewood.
When she’s dead, boil her head.
And make her into gingerbread.
My grandmother was an absolute dote of a woman. The gentlest soul the world could ever know, and she would deliver that song with a sweet smile and a kiss at the end. And it was all just accepted as normal.
Then again, this was Derry in the late seventies and early eighties – right in the worst years of the Troubles. Compared to having guns trained on us walking to school, what was a little threat of being chopped up for firewood by a doting granny?
I’ll never sing it to Clara though. I love her too much. And I swear the one time I told her to ‘go the fudge to sleep’, I felt terrible, of course. I didn’t really mean it and I was just tired and emotional.
Tonight at least, I am just tired and not overwhelmed with any Unexpected Waves of Sadness. I can do this, I reassure myself, and once Adam and Jodie are home tomorrow I can crawl under my duvet and go back to sleep for another few hours and all will be well with my world.
So I sit up and by the soft glow of a nightlight I see two little legs flailing around inside her crib. Clearly my brain-fog-addled brain had forgotten to zip her back into her baby sleeping bag and the poor pet is probably freezing. And hungry. And likely to need a nappy change. Possibly she also needs a good belch. She’s quite a needy little madam for just two months old.
‘Here, wee woman,’ I soothe as I stand up and walk to the crib. ‘Your granny is here now.’ Even in the dim light I can see her face screwed up with indignation at having been left to cry for more than ten seconds. Her chubby hands are fisted with rage. She is no doubt thinking this is not the usual level of service she is used to and that it’s near impossible to get good help these days.
It’s not her fault that everyone who has ever met her knows she is the cutest most amazing baby that was ever born and treats her like a pampered princess.
She is universally adored by her entire family – even her mum’s two teenage brothers, who usually show interest in nothing that doesn’t involve a computer screen and a controller. Deals have had to be brokered on more than one occasion as to who has permission to get a ‘wee hold of her’ next.
If only that level of enthusiasm lasted into the small hours…
Lifting her up, and ignoring the pull in my back, I quickly discover she is wet through. For a moment I worry it’s not just wet and something altogether more foul might be at play, but it seems the gods are smiling at me right now. I’ll just have to change her, and her crib sheets, and then get her back to sleep. It will be easy. Wee buns, as they say round these parts.
Half an hour later and it has become clear that Miss Clara is not in the mood for easy today. Or should I say tonight. The display on my phone reads 11.45. And while a younger me – one the age of Adam and Jodie perhaps – would class that as verymuch just the start of a good night out, the woman I am now is usually rolling over and heading into my second sleep of the night. I make no apologies for preferring a 10p.m. bedtime, or even a sneaky half-nine if I’m treating myself. Sleep has become very precious to me.
Remembering some of the basics from my parenting days, I keep the lighting low. The soft yellow glow of the nightlight will have to suffice. Apart from some gentle shushing, I also keep communication with the tiny sleep thief to a minimum. All stimuli are kept to an absolute minimum, something my ageing cocker spaniel, Daniel, isn’t entirely happy about.
He is another of us who has fallen under the spell of Miss Clara. He loves nothing more than to give her a good sniff, or try to nudge her to play with him. As such, before I picked Clara up, I had stern, whispered words with him and he has slumped to his favourite corner of the room where he continues to eye me with something bordering on contempt.
I can handle the evil eye of a grumpy old dog though. It will be worth it if I get back to sleep soon.
Nappy, Babygro and crib sheets changed, I settle on the edge of my bed, bottle in hand, ready to lull Clara back to a deep and peaceful milk-fuelled slumber, but instead of adopting the look of milk-drunk contentment, her eyes remain stubbornly open and fixed directly on me.
