As an urban-dwelling, free-spirited 41-year-old with sleep issues and a whimsical trade – writing – having a baby posed many challenges. The chief of which has been having to constantly work with two other people: baby and baby-daddy. I vowed as the due date approached to get kitted up in ways that would feel reassuring, limiting the cannonball splash effect of the new arrival. Would I be able to spend my way out of the bits of ensnarement I feared most? The answer is: sort of. Here are the items that have got me closest to living my best self as a new old mum. Call it Mum and the City.
Sleep
For this, there is one main big-ticket buy that can literally make the difference between insanity and misery and… ‘hey, this is kinda fun, even when she screams for three hours!’ And that is the Snoo Smart Sleeper (£1,395), an American creation by a company called Happiest Baby, created by one Dr Harvey Karp, author of the parent bible The Happiest Baby on the Block.
The rather attractive Snoo bassinet (good till six months), a deep oval of firm beige net, is designed for ‘safe’ sleeping. This means the baby is securely on her back, without any suffocation risks. It contains a swaddle that at first terrified us for its straitjacket look, but proved comfortable and effective. But the kicker with the Snoo is that it sways and murmurs steadily, mimicking the feel and sound of the womb, and when the baby fusses it detects the noise and ups its vibrations and its pulse.
They’re a little odd because they flash, making me look either bionic or like an approaching train
It comes with an app – of course – which shows just how many wake-ups (e.g. parental sleep interruptions) are avoided thanks to the censor. If the baby cries for ten minutes without piping down, then the Snoo switches off and you have to step in. As soon as we got over our fright at the looks of the swaddle, we leaned in and so did our baby, who began sleeping six-to-nine hours continuously in its murmuring embrace. The only worry is what happens when she’s too big for it, or we travel, but the two American friends who told me about the Snoo first, and who swore by it, said weaning their babies off it wasn’t an issue, and the nice lady at Happiest Baby insisted it was a non-issue (but of course she would). In two months, all shall be revealed. It’s desperately expensive, like much new baby kit, but you can also rent it for £97 per month. It might save you.
Milk
I had two main goals: feed the baby breastmilk as entirely as possible and ensure other people could feed her easily and reliably. Breast-feeding directly was tricky and remains so: she was a bad latcher to begin with and is still patchy depending on degree of hunger.
But my milk supply was excellent. Enter the remarkable Elvie pumps. Wherever I go, mums (and men) marvel at them, remembering (the mums) the noisy hand-held udder-pumps they had to use. My Elvies are damned pricey (£269 each) but worth their weight in breast milk gold: they go under the bra, hands-free, with 200ml glass collection cups which you then decant into a bottle. They make only the faintest pulsing noise, which is soothing, like an old locomotive and in 15 minutes you’ve got a big feed or two sorted for later. I’ve used them in the cinema, on the Tube, walking, in cafes, at lunches in posh restaurants, working. They’re a little odd because they flash, making me look either bionic or like an approaching train. But they come with me everywhere and have meant the baby has had almost exclusively breast milk since birth, from a wide array of helping hands – particularly important at night. There’s an app too that allows the tech-forward to monitor amounts being expressed, plus a timer, and remote instructions about intensity.
When I do breastfeed, I like to do it comfortably, which is a surprising palaver. This palaver is minimised with a special chair. But I didn’t want a hideous one, which the traditional breast-feeding chairs are. So I went for one that I could see myself using at any time: a tasteful rocking chair of richly-coloured wood and a capacious off-white body that brings to mind Martha’s Vineyard sea-view more than lactation device. This was the Gaia Baby, from the Serena Bouclé Collection, in Chalk Boucle/Walnut, from trusty old John Lewis (£405). The rocking is soothing to me perhaps more than the baby, and it has big armrests and a nice soft but firm back.
Getting out
One of the great pleasures of the first few months has been the ease of grabbing the baby and heading off – almost as I used to do, even if it’s Cambridge or Hastings rather than Italy or Israel. But I have also had to keep working. Both of these endeavours were almost entirely reliant on the BabyBjörn Harmony carrier (£177), which was a cinch to carry for hours over hill and dale and also put her to sleep within seconds so I could toil for my daily bread – sometimes for up to four hours at a time (at which point the baby really needs to eat).
She has recently got tired of being strapped to my front, inward facing, and so we have ventured out in one of two prams in our possession – prams she rejected at first for their bewildering flat-lying rattly nature.
We have a nifty Thule Shine (£650) which is a lightweight, rather clever contraption that is a little more substantial than the ubiquitous YoYo. Given that I live in a flat up steep stairs to the building’s front door, lightness is essential so that I can haul it up and down as needed (it folds OK but you have to take the bassinet out for that – who can be bothered). The Thule works well on a range of terrains, like the dirt paths on Hampstead Heath that were my pre-baby second home.
But for the serious, more royal and rugged pram, we use the Bugaboo Fox Five, which makes up for what it lacks in light-weight stair-carrying with a sense of security, deep suspension and overall comfort. Its hood is good for hanging things from: the baby likes being wheeled about peering at (or engaging in hand-to-hand combat with) Mr Octopus, a garish creature of patches and mirrors and rattles. Also, I feel like a yummy mummy with this pram, which is helpful for self-esteem when I am otherwise dressed in sick-slicked elastic-ware.
Fun
And finally, for the rare moments that the baby is in a mood to just feel, see and be, we have the BabyBjörn bouncer (from £178). One can lazily tap it with one’s foot, which might just buy one another few minutes of peace, if not the freedom one once had.
As for the cheaper must-haves: a proper changing table (saves the back), glass bottles (they smell better over time and are easier to clean; I like Nuk); and a sleep swaddle that zips up (babies really do wake themselves up with the excitement of their limbs). Having a baby was scary. But it’s less scary than I thought thanks to an incredibly developed consumer market which requires either a bit of cash, or savvy second-hand shopping.
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