Drummy Mummy

My Hubby was working away on Saturday and the two older munchkins were in their granny's so the littlest guy and i visited Dundrum on Sunday morning, along with every other parent in the south Dublin area (am I a Drummy Mummy?) Why do we all gravitate towards this mecca of materialism on a Sunday morning? I'm ashamed to say I go there a lot, to meet friends for coffee, or to pick up a few nice groceries in marks and spencers, or if I'm feeling like I'm gonna wig out totally it's nice to be in public where it's less likely to happen and if it did they would take care of the kids while the men in white coats carted me away.

I think being a parent of a young child is both isolating but also can act as a gateway to approachability. A mummy or (on a Sunday more likely to be) daddy is woken at some ungodly hour by a little person, you kill a couple of hours at home playing, feeding, changing, washing and feeding again. Then what do you do? You can't phone anyone or meet anyone (unless they have young children too) as all normal people are in bed. So at ten to eleven there we are chomping at the bit to get into Dundrum, you can wander around have a coffee, maybe the little one will sleep in the buggy and you can read a bit of the paper!

I feel slightly less isolated there, surrounded by other pale, pasty looking parents nursing weeping babies and pacifying hyper toddlers with smarties cookies and juice, "just let mummy drink her cup of tea and we'll go on the slide in Daisy and Tom". As I said it can also allow people to approach you when you have a little one and I've often had very frank discussions with people sitting near me in the cafe or in a lift!

So yesterday there we were wandering around H&M kids dept. I was picking up a present for my neighbour who's baby is due, I noticed a tall woman looking at we strangely, she pushed her buggy in front of mine so I was trapped (I thought she was gonna accuse me of shoplifting). "I know you, I was in the bed beside you in Holles St.", I looked closer, could this radiant young woman be the same woman who was put in my cubicle in unit 3? (they were doubling up beds, due to overcrowding) Yes!

She'd been terrified at the time, it was her first baby, but there he was, born three hours after my little guy, Joesph, they could be twins she said, and she was right, the two of them are little podges with cheeky grins, but mine's a baldy and hers had a lovely head of curly golden locks! We chatted and compared notes until the little ones got narky, then we said our goodbyes and I thought how wonderful it is to be a mother, and to have experienced it all three times. I wouldn't change a moment of it (good or bad) because it's made me a rounder (literally) person and a member of a club, I think all women are amazing of course, but mothers- we are absolutely fecking fantastic!