The Women

a version of this essay first appeared on Maybehood

Motherhood is a whole rainbow of people and life and experiences. Amidst the life affirming joy and love it’s – very much like Maybehood – an up and down life vibration of exhaustion, worry, fear and constant winging it. It ain’t easy being green, sang Kermit the Frog. It ain’t easy being a mum. It ain’t easy being in Maybehood. My mum friends have, amidst their children, worries and lives, been a rock solid support for me. They have shared the joy and frustration of their children with love and sensitivity and encouraged me to be Auntie Bel. I have never received so many drawings of our cat and cards from under 7 year olds for my recent birthdays. My neighbour said to me this week – unknowingly tapping into my thinking for this blog – that she thought my blog was wonderful. I was choked. She said she finds it difficult to know what to say and not say to Maybehooders about motherhood and her gorgeous son as she is so sensitive to what we may be thinking and feeling.

You know what I’m thinking?

Could we all channel our inner RGB and help bridge the gap between Maybehood and Motherhood, the two extremes in what feels like society’s supreme court? Where women from both parties come together to support and understand each other, appreciating that at times either side is not all it’s cracked up to be? Where the ultimate goal is to show that emotional empathy and flexibility? Even if you can’t find the words, maybe you can find a coffee?

We won’t always get it right, granted, but female friendships are important – and that one time you’re able to go beyond your comfort zone to help out someone else with a kind conversation, a supportive gesture, could mean the difference between someone able to keep their shit together and move forwards in a vaguely sane way that day or not. We’re all modern women and men. We understand how important the on-going conversation around mental health is and always will be, for whatever life stage you’re at. Could we at least give it a try? The mums who see so clearly our grief; who understand our longing for a child instinctively. The Maybehooders who are suffering so badly, who do not understand how their life direction has gone this awry but who know they must do their best to meet this Plan B; I think we see life is not easy at times for our mum friends either.

I know it can be done. I know because one of my closest supports, an extraordinarily empathetic, vivacious, witty and wonderful friend and I have done it. We’re doing it, we keep doing it and in fact, we bloody love it. I couldn’t imagine my Maybehood without her. Katie is the Bubbles to my Desiree “hello DAHHHLING”, the gin to my tonic, the prosecco to my glass.  From the moment Katie told me at work in a whisper she was also pregnant and due two weeks after me, that was it. Both only children who longed to be mums, we spent our first trimester (when I eventually returned to work) eating together, quoting Little Britain and other wildly inappropriate comedy shows together and inadvertently going to the same set of work loos, at the same time – yes you’ve guessed it – together. We imagined a south east London life of babies, mat leave and bubbles. The timing seemed beyond fortuitous. Then came my 12 week scan. I remember seeing Katie when I returned to work four weeks later and I don’t know who was more shell shocked. Her bump was showing then and in my shock and disconnect from the world, I knew one thing: I willed her on. One of us had to get our baby, to get to the finish line – and hopefully I would be back in the race (and other painful, completely shit metaphors) soon.

At six and a half months pregnant, Katie gave birth to her beautiful son William. Her placenta ruptured and after an emergency caesarean William was welcomed to the world.  The photo she sent to me was the most precious capture of first time motherhood I have ever seen: Katie looking wondrously at the camera, Laura Mercier lippie on as she cradled her baby son on her shoulder. The days that followed were unspeakable, a flurry of messages where Katie and her husband were going back and forth to the hospital, her anguish and hormones obvious through the pixelated words on my screen.

Ten days later, William passed away. Losing her darling son plunged Katie, her husband and her family into the cruellest of Maybehoods, a vast, empty chasm where words do little justice to the emotions, where grief is all consuming and where lives and dreams have changed beyond all recognition. I felt Katie’s anger, her pain, the bottom falling out of her world. My job was to back her, be there for her, to listen, to understand. My admiration for her reached new heights as I watched her navigate a life without William.

Her loss remains incalculable. Our babies had lived and died together. I will always feel a bond with Katie that I have with no other person, not even my husband. She understands me implicitly. She is one of my closest friends and within that my confidante, advisor, the person I go to when I feel unsure whether my reaction is disproportionate to the situation, babyloss or otherwise. That she has continued to support me throughout her next two pregnancies after loss is extraordinary. One of my most precious and poignant moments in our friendship was us Whatsapping each other as Katie was about to go into theatre to have her daughter Isobel. I sat on my bed clutching my phone crying, so proud of her, bricking it for the next two and a half hours until I received the message that Isobel had been born safely and mum and baby were doing well. I remember my husband in a very rare show of outward emotion popping his head round the door, looking anxious: “Any news from Katie and Shaun?” A week later, I had the honour of being one of the very first to meet Isobel. Holding her, seeing Katie hold her daughter, was a defining and wonderful moment for us both. My heart could not have been fuller.

Katie has never stopped reassuring and supporting me, convinced that one day, this will be me. She is backing me all the way to whatever my Maybehood turns out to be. Only Katie could have encouraged an absolute shagfest during lockdown; only Katie could have invited me over to her beautiful garden for a belated 40th birthday lunch complete with bubbles and her infamous cherry bakewell as soon as lockdown eased. Only Katie could have known without a single syllable from me the thoughts and feelings swirling around my head, my heart, about reaching this milestone in Maybehood. I can only hope that my support, my backing and friendship has had the effect on her as she has had on me. Now with two young children, she brings me joy in the way she includes me as “Aunt Bannabel”. There is no sugar coating either side and we continue to support and back each other. We’ve both known Maybehood and now that it’s mixed with Motherhood, it seems like the natural order of things. The way it’s meant to be.

I am approaching the fourth anniversary of my due date, the 12 October. It’s almost a year since our last fertility treatment. Maybe, four years on, pondering our next steps, I’m now at a clearer point where I can see what I’ve gained from staying in close touch with my mum friends even at times when seeing their babies and children broke my heart.

“Real change, enduring change, happens one step at a time,” said the Notorious RBG. With the world now irrevocably changed and society in serious need of redrawing and redefining how we all human the world together, is it time for a Maybehood manifesto? That everyone in Maybehood, in their own time, when they feel able, and everyone in Motherhood, in their own time, when they feel able, make the effort to come together? It can be a text, a conversation, a sit down over coffee, a walk in the park, a raucous night out, a wine bottle dropped outside the front door. It can be approaching someone and not knowing quite what to say but figuring that a smile (or crinkles around the eyes, we are living in a global pandemic) and a muffled conversation, even if you don’t know quite what to say, is better than nothing.

Because I think for both parties it can be. I know from my experience that for both parties it is.

~Maybehood