Nine & A Half Weeks - What We've Learned From Little Cyd (So Far...)





It is now exactly nine weeks since Little Cyd touched down at Chelsea & Westminster Hospital to an overwhelming and humbling welcome from all our dear friends all over the world. Thank you all. We have both been so touched and south west London’s most spoiled baby would be equally grateful if she could see the extent of her new wardrobe and the wonderful toys in the nursery which now resembles a mini branch of Hamleys!

As I discovered during my predictably extensive pre-partum reading, it is easy as pie to find out all about likely attendant woes as sleepless nights, cracked nipples and marital breakdown. What is practically impossible to find, however, is any accurate description of the positive things and joy a new baby brings to the party?

Over these weeks, I have come to a couple of personal conclusions which I offer up here for your entertainment. Hopefully, those of you with kids will recall and relate somewhat; those of you without may feel relieved and perhaps some younger friends contemplating the eventual possibility of parenting may pick up a few cautionary points?

• Obtaining a reasonable class of degree from a well-regarded university is of no use whatsoever when confronted with the idiosyncracies of the contemporary baby buggy, the complexities of the car seat attachment or the buckles of the baby sling. Give me a 15th century Portuguese chronicle to translate any day…

• Should you choose NOT to dress your baby daughter exclusively in a range of day-glo fuchsia, powder pink or fetching lilac outfits, often emblazoned with nauseatingly cute and/or grammatically deficient slogans, you are generally regarded by the majority of observers as some sort of deviant and cruel mother.

• Your sudden – and perhaps unexpected - appearance behind the wheel, so to speak, of a child’s perambulator of whatever ilk, sparks a torrent of unsolicited, usually contradictory, often unwelcome and sometimes frankly bonkers child-rearing advice, from all and sundry. In the same way that complete strangers felt compelled to touch your baby bump (in a flagrant breach of the generally held mores and strictures of civilised society in 21st century Britain) passers-by now see your baby as the perfect opportunity to offer you the benefit of their "wisdom".

• This advice is invariably accompanied by an audacious candour, as bald as it can be shocking. Typical questions and comments can include: “That’s a funny name for a little girl. It is a little girl, is it?”; “Such a shame to dress her in such dark colours, if she is a little girl. It is a little girl, is it?”; “Just how much did you pay for that buggy/car seat/baby sling?”; “Exactly how old are you anyway?”

• Terrifyingly, the momentary urge to throw your screaming child out of the window in the vague hope that the foxes will dispose of any incriminating evidence, can be all too real. Thankfully, it is fleeting in the extreme and does indeed disappear as quickly as it rears its ugly head, more often than not melted away by the instant beatific smile from the erstwhile screaming child in question.

• If you are lucky enough to avoid the worst ravages of sleep deprivation with the blessing of a baby such as Cyd who is practically sleeping through already, you will inevitably be kept awake by your recently acquired anxieties about the burgeoning size of your carbon footprint and the likely contribution to inevitable global warming of the dozen a day nappy sacks you are committing to land fill.

• You renew your acquaintance with the strange and forgotten world which is the small hours of the morning - once all too familiar from protracted nights clubbing or essay writing, or from six times a year serious jet lag from the eight hour Hong Kong-UK time difference. You remember how, (even despite the London accompaniments of the occasional urgent siren or caterwauling vixens, hungry for grizzly baby flesh), the middle of the night can be a rather magical place, especially when you are hanging out with your brand new little friend.

• The fact that a pretty little girl looks disconcertingly like a 40-something, snoring, beer-bellied old bloke and shares so many of his mannerisms, facial expressions and gestures already, is somehow not as alarming as it should be, but really rather endearing.

• Canine depression is not, in fact, the evil construct of avaricious vets but an all too real and rather perplexing problem, which – to date – does not seem to respond to extra biscuits, cuddles and protracted walkies. Spaniel sighs and the mournful eyes of the once supreme, now utterly usurped, canine baby can pull on the heartstrings as much as any human infant wiles.

• A Gucci nappy bag is still a nappy bag

So there you have it - FWIW! Love to hear if anyone else has any similar aperçus!



Oh Harley! You will love her one day, we promise!