The mother of four
ANDREA HEY
Four children aged 13, 11, 9, and 4
Looking after three children under 4 had been desperately hard work but the worst was behind us. So what happened five years ago, when my third child was within striking range of that welcoming reception class door? You've guessed it. As my mother mutters darkly, I have ended up with "more children than is strictly necessary."
"How clever you were to get it all over with quickly," everyone said after my third was born. But the details were lost in the blur. It had all gone so fast. We'd started out young and now our friends were beginning to produce gorgeous bundles of their own. I felt broody and left out.
There were also deeper forces at work, less comfortable to examine. At some level, the idea of having four children appealed to my vanity. What a statement about the health of my marriage! Look how competent I must be as a mother! At the time we were feeling financially secure. If I put off building some sort of career for myself, never mind. I wouldn't be just a mother; I'd be a chief executive mother! And the small question of what to do with the rest of my life could be shelved for a few more years.
So I luxuriated in the pregnancy, savouring that "last time" feeling. This would be the child whose parents had finally hit their stride: the mother relaxed and experienced, the father competent and attentive. This time we'd do it properly — the activities, the social life, the table manners, all the niceties that had fallen by the wayside in the first crazy batch. Then we were handed 8 lb 4 oz of reality and a whole new set of problems.
Don't get me wrong. We adore her. We're beyond lucky to have four healthy children. But perhaps all mothers come prewired with a set number of times that they can perform certain tasks before blowing a circuit. Just how many repetitions of The Wheels on the Bus can anyone bear before reaching for the gin? Think hard about a fourth baby if, like me, you can't afford a nanny to sing the Postman Pat theme tune while you lie in a darkened room.
Maybe mothers, like other aging flesh, have a best-before date. I came to realize quite quickly that my energy for the more practical tasks would have been nicely used up by three-and-a-half children. That extra half has sometimes pushed me beyond fulfillment into despair.
The early months passed in a fog of exhaustion. My husband and the cat escaped expulsion from the house, but I can recall banishing the dogs to a kennel: the numbers had to be reduced somehow. I couldn't cope.
A not untypical "first year" scenario involved driving to school with the baby screaming for some undiagnosed reason; Number Three being sick in a handy bucket; Number Two sobbing because I had put the wrong filling in his sandwich; and Number One announcing that I had forgotten her swimming kit again.
The packed lunches were made with the newborn ululating for the morning feed. Tummy-bug victims couldn't stay home alone but had to trail out on the school run.
Nurturing another small personality has remained endlessly fascinating, but after 13 years I'm numbed by the practicalities. Forget 9 to 5, it's the monotony of the 0-to-5 routine that kills the spirit. When you shovel yet more gloop into the little mouth or gird yourself for another round of potty training, you know where this is headed and it won't be pretty.
As Number Four starts to develop her own collection of little friends, fitting her social life into the busy whirl of the greater family is like stuffing a balloon into a sock. My brain can't hold another classful of names, faces, and birthday parties.
I am stale. Walking into her "first" third birthday party felt like stepping back in time. The roar of the bouncy-castle pump, the rioting of hyped-up toddlers, the impossibility of conversation with other distracted parents: hadn't anything changed? Well, yes. I had.
Older children doing more grown-up things is exciting. Yet our late addition slows us down (or necessitates a babysitter).
Even the simpler aspects of family life — cinema trip, bike ride — are compromised by the little one's inability to keep up with the gang. Her infant illnesses tear up my agenda at a moment's notice. Last Saturday I was housebound with a very sick youngest. My husband was left to cope with the birthday disco party (including the scene where the teenage daughter locks herself in the loo five minutes beforehand, howling that her outfit is wrong). I can feel my eldest storing that particular maternal absence for future recrimination.
Whereas our third child's delight in the birth of his fan club has been constant, there is slight resentment in the older pair. "You said that when Freddie was bigger we'd go on a skiing holiday. Instead we got another baby," moaned the elder daughter.
Plus a bigger car ... financially, how naive we were. My broody self had "reasoned" that surely one more baby wouldn't add that much expense. What about all the hand-me-down clothes, toys, and equipment that we already owned?
But it transpires that the cost of rearing four children is actually about one third again more than the cost of raising three.
Funny, that. The lesson I have learnt is that having four children is indeed a status symbol. But doing it in comfort is the preserve of the seriously rich.
Life out there feels closer now but I still can't quite touch it. And when my baby starts school in September, I face my fourth encounter with the same reading scheme.
There is a look that I recognize in the eyes of mothers of four. No matter how much we dote on our brood, it's as if we left something important behind and can't quite remember what it is. Socks? Wipes? Car seat? No. It was our better judgement.
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