ENTRY FIVE - THREE WISE WOMEN

When you have a baby your life is supposed to go on hold while you struggle to mother a newborn. Sleepless nights, non-stop feeds and endless nappy changes become de rigueur and mummy turns into a blobby, downtrodden workhorse with giant eye bags and grotty jogging bottoms.

Always keen to challenge such preconceptions I organised a weekend away to the seaside with two of my best friends and Felix. Hythe in Kent was the destination, and I duly booked a family room for our unorthodox menagerie at the Stade Court Hotel on Hythe seafront.

We arrived to pouring rain. Proper cats and dogs rain, the kind that soaks you instantly and thoroughly. No matter, we retreated to our favourite Nutmeg Cafe where we consumed high levels of carbs and caffeine. But first off a trip to Aldi to stock up on junk food and decidedly moderate amounts of booze. With one pregnant and one nursing mother in our trio it seemed clear that our vodka shot days were over, at least for the time being. Like a true gypsy I breastfed the baby in the back of the car whilst the others shopped, thankful for the steamy windows that partially obscured me from view. 

As the sun began to set the weather turned and the sky lost its leaden coat. We set out along the promenade, the pram bouncing merrily along the pebbles that the high tide had strewn upon the path. Soft streaks of pink and rose brushed the horizon where the setting sun met the sea. Barrel shaped waves launched themselves at the shore, creating a rhythmic roar as they dragged stones back and forth in the undertow. Keen to give Felix a proper lungful of sea air we manhandled the pram onto the beach and stood looking out to sea. Jubilation washed over me in a warm wave. 

The next morning dawned bright as a new penny, and as I sat and breastfed the baby I watched the sun climb out of low clouds into a faultless blue sky. Ever the modern girl I facebooked a photo of the rising sun, captioning it 'Good Morning Hythe'. 759am on a Sunday morning...how things had changed! 

After breakfast and a mercifully brief incident of being locked out of our room, me and Bells headed down to the shore for a swim clad in wetsuits and wide shit-eating grins. As Monika pushed the pram along the seafront we entered the November sea, feet frozen instantly, soles blanching from the pinpricks of sharp stones. We gasped, we grimaced and we cursed but we got in, and shrieking with adrenaline and gusto we swam triumphantly back and forth. The sea that morning was as calm and blue as the Mediterranean, the low morning sun pouring honey-golden light onto its calm expanse. A million points of light glimmered and glittered in the sun-trail, and I let the buoyancy of the sea and the wetsuit combine and render me almost entirely weightless. Bobbing like a buoy I turned my face to the sun and closed my eyes, letting the serenity of the sea wash into me and over me. Heaven. 

It was then that the real meaning of the weekend struck me. I was still me. I was still free. I had survived the ordeal of his birth and I was alive, more alive than ever. Far from taking away from my life Felix had merely added another string to my bow. The sweetest and most melodic sound I ever heard, like an angel singing a lullaby.