Four

In about five minutes, Isla will turn four and two minutes later, Grace will too. This is both extraordinary and mundane in equal measure. I am staggered by how quickly the last four years have gone, yet it seems entirely right that we are here. These grown up girls who have no toddler in them at all, have school places ready, have ambitions and plans, well of course they are now four, of course they are.

Isla is bossy in the loveliest way. She is always the mum when they play games or the teacher or the doctor. She loves Grace unconditionally, knows that she is the older sister, knows that she should somehow look out for her. She can sign most of the alphabet, knows the letters of her name, loves to count and she knows some basic Spanish (thanks to Dora). She likes unicorns and ballet, thinks that her daddy is an actual superhero, and prefers dresses over jeans. She thinks that when we go one stop on the train we are in London. She can’t say small but tells me that things are ridiculous. She loves peas and strawberries and hands me tomatoes uneaten with a grimace if I dare put them on her plate. She is a wonderful little girl who loves me to the seaside (not far) but her twin to the moon.

Grace is hilarious. She is emotionally younger and physically albeit briefly. She is smaller than Isla but ever so slightly taller, a testament to her little birth weight probably. She loves on people, will touch your cheek and ask how you are, will haul herself onto your lap and wedge herself in. She still loves her dummy beyond measure and it probably makes me a terrible parent but it makes her happier than anything else and she’s little for just a blink of an eye so I don’t really care. She loves dinosaurs, knows their complicated names and pronounced them correctly, knows a kompsognathus from a plesiosaur and will roll her eyes if you tease her and get it wrong. She isn’t a tomboy, she just likes dinosaurs and I will defy anyone to tell her otherwise. She wakes up early no matter when she goes to bed. She doesn’t like cereal very much but loves croissants and grapes. She potty trained herself when she decided she was ready, we were just along for the ride. That’s Grace, feisty and funny and completely herself. She currently wants to be a dentist and put plasters on baddies. I don’t correct her. She can think whatever she likes for as long as she likes.

Being their mother has been the greatest challenge of my life. Yet it has been the greatest privilege too. An honour. I sometimes simply can’t believe that they are mine, that I grew them in my body. I’m grateful too to the baby who is still not here, as because she is coming, because we get to do this again, I can just embrace the fact that they are getting older, growing and changing and becoming their own people. I think I’d be a wreck if it wasn’t for that.

So Happy Birthday to my beautiful daughters. I love you both further than the seaside!

Windrush

This is a political post so if that isn’t your thing, then click away now….

In the UK over the last week or so, the press has been dominated by the growing story of the Windrush generation. Very simply and concisely, this was a group of children that were invited to come here by the Government in the sixties from the West Indies, in order for them to have better lives and for them to contribute to society. They came with an indefinite right to remain but no documents, they were mostly on their parents’ passports and they went on to marry here, have children here, pay taxes here, they are British. Now, a number of years ago, it became law to provide documentation of your legal right to work in the UK. As a manager, I became used to photocopying passports and birth certificates and there were heavy fines if a company was found to have ‘illegal’ workers on their books. Slowly, these men and women started to lose their jobs because they didn’t have their own passports, their birth certificates stated that they were born in Antigua or wherever.

A man appeared in the press with the heartbreaking story that, on being diagnosed with cancer, was taken into a side room at the hospital and told that his treatment could not start unless he could pay the £54000 that was needed to fund it. A man who had lived in the UK since he was a small child, a man who had never returned to the country of his birth.

I was born in 1980 and I doubt that I have come close to contributing to society, in this country of my birth, than the vast majority of these men and women have. I haven’t nursed anyone back to health, haven’t set up my own successful business, haven’t raised a doctor or paid the taxes that they have. I am about to have a baby and I have no idea how much that will cost the NHS as I take it for granted that the cost will be covered. By the accident of my birth. If I ever get cancer, then I will expect treatment and to be cured and to move on with my life without exorbitant bills that will follow me for the rest of my life.

Do I feel superior because I was born here? Because I am a legal British citizen? Am I superior because I am white and will likely never suffer the abuse that any of these people have suffered throughout their lives?

No. I feel inferior to these people. Grateful. Humbled. Embarrassed that the politicians that share the colour of my skin are cruelly and systematically removing the rights of the minorities and are only called out when a petition on twitter gains enough digital signatures to generate debate in the House of Commons. The day after this debate, the debate was on anti-Semitism, and we are now almost a year from the devastating events of Grenfell.

This government is awful and I do despair sometimes. But I despair more often at the standard of the opposition. It feels like we have nowhere to go, nowhere good or positive and I look at my daughters and wonder what the world will look like when they are older. All I strive to do is make sure that they are ready to cope with anything and that they are good. Good, kind people. All three of them. If my baby is ever born!

Anyway, I shall leave it there. More introspective relationship stuff to come soon and hopefully a baby announcement in the next few days….

Small for Dates

So here we are. Six days away from the due date. There is no sign really of anything happening any time soon, but then I’m not an expert. My last pregnancy ended in an induction and an emergency c-section, after a very medical pregnancy, so I don’t know what a contraction feels like, what it might be like to be like one of those women on One Born Every Minute and I just haven’t a clue really.

Last Tuesday, I went for my 38 week check up with the midwife and the fundal height (the measurement they take of the bump) was only 34 weeks. I was told not to worry, that this could be for any number of reasons, the way the baby is laying, how engaged the head is, how long your own body is and I was told that the growth scan was just procedure.

That was yesterday, the baby is fine, she is estimated to weigh 6lb 14oz, which is fine by me. The girls were a good size for their gestation and for them being twins but she will still seem enormous to us, I think. I wasn’t nervous by the time we went for the scan, J was, but I can feel her wriggling and squirming and that is infinitely reassuring. The radiographer showed us her little lips and nose and for some reason, that little image keeps coming back to my brain. I think I just want to meet her now.

I want this over with. I don’t, as I’ve said before, think that this is my last pregnancy, but if it is, I am trying to savour all of it. I am very small though, I could easily pass for six or seven months pregnant, I’m not sure that anyone would think that my due date is next Tuesday. I am trying to savour the kicks and the rolls as she spends her last few days inside me but the truth is, I’m tired. I’m very lucky, I’m able to sleep well still, able to walk around without any problems, but I’m tired. It’s hard to look after my girls when you feel like you could fall asleep at any moment. Isla has started waking in the night, before we go to bed usually, and I wonder if she knows that her world is about to change forever. She had a lovely time last night watching Umi Zoomi under a blanket with J and I am loathe to get cross and demand she get to bed.

This is rambly. I have so many thoughts whizzing through my head, and most of them are stupid, like how greasy my hair will be if I go into labour in the middle of the night and it’s been 18 hours since I last washed it. But mostly I’m not that scared. Maybe this is how it feels for everyone. Like it has to happen so why waste time worrying about things that can’t be changed.

Also, the girls, my little babies are four in 12 days.

TWELVE DAYS.

That’s more scary!