My achey, breaky heart

Today was the first day in his school and nursery career that my oldest son refused to kiss me goodbye. He strolled into his classroom, trying to attract the attention of his disturbingly pretty teacher, without a backward glance. As I stood plaintively waving goodbye the kindly teachers assistant asked "Aren't you going to kiss mummy goodbye", to which he went puce and violently shook his head.

He is only six and already I am an embarrassment to him.

I knew it was coming, all mothers of older children have tales of the careless heartbreak inflicted by growing children as they morph from cuddly toddlers who can't get enough of you to sulky tweens who are far too hip for hugs, but I just didn't think it would arrive so soon.

I am crossing my fingers that at this young age that it's just a phase as he is still all to willing to sit on my knee and twine his arms around my neck in the privacy of the home, it's just public displays of affection that he has begun to scorn. But it has to be a sign of things to come and I don't like it one little bit.

Although I relish the growing independence of my big boy who can now dress, wash, read and help out all by himself, I can't help but miss that little boy whose face dissolved into tears at the prospect of two and half short hours away from me in nursery. At the time I was eager to unwrap his distraught body from around my legs and get on with the tasks of the day in that small window of freedom, but now it's on the wane I long for that unbridled devotion.

I love my boy and I know I will grow used to this new, more detached, incarnation, but today will always be a black day to me as today is the beginning of the end of my baby, as this big boy takes his place.

Still at least I have three more hot on his heels to make up for those missing cuddles, and as one is screaming in his cot right now, I'd best stop for now.

Transformers under my pillow

It's been a turbulent few days chez FDMTG as a nasty virus has felled us one by one, our childcare and cleaning arrangements have unravelled simultaneously and my work has decided to take a turn for the busy. It's enough to make me (almost) regret having four children.

When times are good, having lots of boys to kiss and cuddle is dreamy, but when illness strikes or the tangled web of support that keeps us all going snags, I really do find having a large family cumbersome in the extreme. It all started when my stalwart mother's help began to reveal that she simply wasn't up to the job of juggling my four boys. In her defence it wasn't what we hired her to do, but in my defence I can't afford to pay her unless she can tame the boys sufficiently for me to be able to work in peace on the days she is in loco parentis.

To cut a long story short I have now had to start the painful task of searching for a new nanny to take on the task of boy management two days a week, which is a boring round of posting endless adverts, contacting agencies and doing interviews. While some of the nannies we have seen have been lovely, it disturbs me the number of women who reply to an advert for an experienced nanny who have never actually looked after one child, let alone four. Still fingers crossed the perfect Mary Poppins is waiting just around the corner.

The next brick in my castle to fall out of place was my cleaner of six years throwing in the towel. It comes as no surprise to me as she is the brightest most conscientious woman and is desperate to start a family of her own, but I take to change like a fish takes to fresh air so all this staff movement left me a dribbling wreck.

I know all of this might make me sound like a right spoiled madam, moaning about nannies and cleaners like a true domestic diva. I hold my hands up in shame as I often feel sharp pangs of guilt that I don't give up work to look after my baby boys, but what I earn makes the difference between happiness and misery in our household, so to give up isn't really an option, and child care problems go with the territory.

As for a cleaner, I am far from ashamed to say that when I am not slaving over a hot keyboard I would far rather cough up for someone else to scrub the toilet and clean the oven, than spend even more time away from the boys doing those tiresome chores myself.

Now all these hiccups on the domestic front are unsettling enough, but on top of this son number one came down with a feverish cold on Monday, followed by me, son number two, son number three and now dad is showing worrying signs of illness. This bout of sickness brought home how painful a big family can be as we haven't had an unbroken night of sleep in a week, what with late night (or even worse early morning) requests for water/medicine/cuddles/trips to the loo.

Each night we put our head to the pillow in trepidation wondering which of our many offspring will be the one to wake us from our slumbers tonight. That is if we can get to sleep what with the detritus left in our bed by the sick little boys who have inhabited it during the day. I have variously ousted books, pens, biscuit crumbs, crayons, magazines and a menagerie of soft toys before there was room for me to lie down, and tonight it was the eponymous Transfomer under the pillow courtesy of robots in disguise-obsessed son number two.

The final straw in this week that quite rightly ended on Friday 13th, was that the client I am working for at the moment managed to wipe out all the work which I had done the previous week leaving me with the tedious task of doing the whole lot again. Cue many hours spent at digital grindstone with a streaming cold and misanthropic outlook.

I am crossing my fingers that all will be well tomorrow as we are due to brave the gale force winds and rain to make the journey to visit Lapland UK in Kent. And so Christmas begins.

Book club

Almost forgot that I promised myself last night to recommend a fabulous book I just finished reading. It's a bit gory and gruesome in parts, but so beautifully written and such an engaging story if you can deal with the nasty bits it's a wonderful read. To be honest the books I mostly read have pink sparkly covers and require zero brain cells to comprehend, as that is about how many I have left at the end of a day with children.

But this one is actually intelligent and thrilling, and nothing to do with boyfriends, babies, motherhood or any of those typical topics I find myself reading about over and over again. It is the sort of book I would love to write, but know I never will. It's imaginative and so gorgeously phrased you can almost feel yourself in the situations described. The book is called City of Thieves by David Benioff. Give it a try and let me know what you think.

It's in his kiss

Yesterday, halfway through the manic morning routine that is back with a vengeance after half term, my husband stopped his impressive juggling act of dressing one child, feeding another and trying to do up his shirt buttons for a nanosecond to remind me that we had got together on this very day 10 years ago. 'That's nice dear', I replied with a swift peck on his stubbled cheek as I simultaneously shoved sandwiches into a lunch box, mixed up yoghurty goo for the babies' breakfast and attempted to shimmy out of my nightie and into some semblance of day clothes in time for the school run.

Now, as I sit at my desk with a little space to contemplate, I realise just how much things have changed since that day 10 years ago. My husband was then a fellow journalist who I knew vaguely from the press party circuit, which back in the pre-Credit Crunch days was pretty active, spinning us unworthy hacks from one swanky do to another. A great, if deeply unhealthy, life when you are young, free and single or would like to be.

I was in the throes of a nasty and elongated break up and he had proved to be a stalwart shoulder to cry on. Although he later revealed that this uncharacteristic empathy was actually an elaborate ploy to get into my pants, I appreciated it at the time, as so many of the other men around me were so much less subtle in their seduction techniques.

That fateful night I was working late in an attempt to avoid going home to my misery, he was walking past my office in Soho to go to his brother's wrap party just around the corner. As he passed the plate glass windows of my place of work he spotted me and rapped on the panes to get my attention and invite me to the do.

So many things should have stopped us from getting together, what if I hadn't worked on the ground floor, what if I had been sensible and avoided all romantic entanglement given my fragile state, what if he had been sensible and avoided this woman with all her pantechnicon of emotional baggage?

Fortunately prudence isn't in either of our natures and I accepted his invitation. We sat huddled in a dark and smoky booth revealing all our most glamorous and attractive points to each other - naturally this didn't take long and we soon decided to give up on the chit chat and get down to some serious snogging. But not without me issuing my now famous proviso (which I was sure would scare any right-minded man off) and refusing to kiss him until he agreed that in principle he would like to have children!

Now I know this makes me sound certifiable, and him too as he still leant in for the kill, but let me explain. At the time I was in a turmoil over my split, and one of the key reasons it didn't work out with the ex was because despite the fact we had been together for many years he was adamant that he didn't want children. I thought to myself, I am in my late 20s, I want kids asap, I am a total emotional wreck, I will give this poor boy a chance to run a mile, but if he does choose to stick around then at least I know we are singing from the same hymn sheet.

Ten years later with the smokey bars of Soho a distant miasma of the past, we are still belting out the same tunes as we rush around after our four boys. The notes might not be quite as melodic, but I am glad I checked if he was daddy material before our first smooch, and I am even more glad he was mad enough to kiss me anyway.

My little pumpkin

Tonight I stood beside my firstborn's bed, the dim lamplight brushing the contours of his face, I watched his chest rise and fall with the regular breath of sleep and started as he rolled over in bed, afraid I had woken him with my silent regard. He is six today, a Halloween baby and always our little pumpkin. I am wiped out after throwing a spooky birthday party for him and traipsing the local streets trick or treating, bringing home a haul of sweets that should keep him going until his next birthday.

As appears to be the case with children, each milestone you reach seems to race up upon you at an ever faster pace. I cannot believe the boy sleeping peacefully in his room below where I type is the tiny baby I held in a hospital bed, petrified at what I had gone and done, just six short years ago. I think the bond I have with number one was forged in such adversity that it has a quality that none of my other children can match.

I love all my boys with a passion that defies belief, but nothing is quite the same as the experiences you share with your precious firstborn. I am not sure this is an unalloyed benefit to either of you. I certainly made many mistakes with number one, and the intense gaze of parental attention isn't always a good thing, but it's certainly unique.

My first pregnancy was so magical. I found the whole sensation that something, another human, was growing inside me, so alien. I couldn't quite equate that burgeoning bump with a real live baby, and when my boy did arrive he was nothing like what I had expected. Conditioned by adverts on the TV which portray babies using six-month-olds who can sit up, smile and play, my newborn son was a revelation to me, and more in an apocalyptic sense than a pleasant one. His blank eyed stare chilled me, and I found it hard to wait hand and foot on this being that seemed to give nothing back.

We never got along with breast feeding and I still recall one night when he looked up at me, his dark blue eyes seemingly filled with malice as yet again I was unable to satiate his hunger. I almost flung him away from me across the bed I was so frightened by him. I would grimace smiles at him as I had read that you must smile at your baby, lest he feel unwanted, but every time I heard him cry I would cringe away from the inevitable painful battle that would ensue as I tried, and invariably failed, to feed him.

That said, although I found getting to grips with being his mummy unbearably hard, he is also the only baby I could devote myself to without distraction. When I look back at his baby days I recall holding my tiny son close and dancing away with him for hours, feeling proud that I could bear a child and still have some idea of what 'the kids' were listening to. I can't hear Maroon 5 or Keane without instantly being transported back to my old living room, holding my baby son close to my heart and weeping tears of love for him, wetting his bald and uncomprehending skull with the damp outpourings of maternal passion.

We went everywhere together, me and my boy, we spend every hour of his first few months learning how to be mother and child, learning how to love each other, and the result is an intense adoration that can, at times, exclude all others.

This is the boy who leaves me love notes under my pillow and the child who made me realise how much I loved being a mummy. I think with all my subsequent children I have been trying to recapture that feeling of wonder (tinged with a heavy dose of terror and trepidation) you have with your firstborn. I have since come to understand that you can't turn the clock back and that it is a feeling exclusively reserved for number one.

The others get the benefit of a more relaxed and confident mummy, but they can never experience that topsy turvy journey into parenthood, where you become aware of the depths of passion and despair that your child can stir up in you, where you experience the first kick, first birth, first night feeds, first crawl, steps, words and on and on it goes.

My first baby taught me how to care for him and for his brothers, and as he grows older I learn more and more from him. But no matter how old he gets in some part of my heart he will always be that blue-eyed baby who taught me how to be his mummy and for that I am forever in his debt. He owns a special place in my heart that no one else could ever share and that will be my birthday present to him for the rest of his life (although at six I think he preferred Rosie, his sparkly pink unicorn from Build a Bear!)