Before I had my baby, I pictured myself swanning around the capital’s galleries, baby fast sleep in his shiny new pram, meeting friends for coffee and perhaps browsing the shops. A few weeks in, I discovered that swanning around the capital with a baby is impossible, unless the swan in question is extremely tired, lugging a massive pram and can’t fly. First, there are three lifts on the entire Underground network, and two of those are broken, so you spend a lot of time waiting for stressed commuters to help you up and down stairs. Second, sleeping babies love nothing better than screaming their heads off when you go anywhere near an exhibition space. Third, it’s just all so tiring. Like many new parents living in London, I don’t actually live in London. I have to catch a train to the tube and it only runs once a year. So it became pretty clear, pretty quickly, that I’d need to find something else to do.
In a fit of proactivity (a more positive term than ‘panic’) I busily signed myself up for as many baby classes as I could find – and quickly dropped out of all of them. So, if you are a new mother, please read on before forking out hundreds of pounds to sit in a circle singing shit songs.
NCT (£varies, around £180) is basically six evenings of your life that you’ll never get back where you’ll be told that drugs are bad (‘even paracetamol has risks’ apparently) and that if you stand in the right position and breathe deeply, birth will not just be fine, but a positively magical experience. Course highlights included videos of mad women claiming labour pain is caused by ‘tension and fear’ and that giving birth ‘is like making love’ if you fork out for a doula. I did make friends though – the closet of which were forged through mutual suppression of giggles and a campaign to cut short the last lesson so we could go to the pub. We all went on to have C sections, and I took all the drugs.
Mum and Baby Yoga (£10 per class). ‘You’ll find that in a few weeks, the babies understand when it is time to meditate’ said the instructor, who does not have children. At least one woman would have to leave every week because her baby was having a meltdown. They did not get a refund. The whole thing was far less relaxing than just sitting at home eating biscuits. Some babies did eventually chill out in the meditation bit. I’m pretty sure that’s because their mothers snuck them some Calpol before doing Downward Facing Dog.
Bounce and Rhyme (£Free!). This one is actually quite nice. My baby’s favourite tracks from this freebie at the library are Zoom Zoom Zoom, The Wheels on the Bus and If You’re Happy and You Know It. But – and there is a big but – what the fuck is Wind the Bobbin Up? What is a Bobbin? Why are we winding it up? Why does it have such a terrible tune? Is this a London thing? I definitely do not remember this from my Brummie childhood. Perhaps, like Bounty saleswomen, Peppa Pig and 8 week meningitis injections, this song has been dreamed up specially to torture the new generation of parents. If there was a theme tune for postnatal depression, Wind the Bobbin Up would be it.
Baby sensory (£10 per class). Not just any Baby Sensory. A big, branded, all singing, all dancing baby sensory class which positively steamrollers those senses completely senseless. My baby did not want to socialise with the giant puppet being shoved in his face. And he certainly was not interested in dancing to a ‘rave song’ about brushing his teeth. Frankly, neither was I. ‘Can the mummies keep the chatter to a minimum please?’ No. No no no no no. No. No.
Baby swimming (£10 per class). Earth to parents. They are babies. They will not be swimming in this lesson. Instead, in this class, I learned how to hold my baby in a variety of challenging positions in a tepid pool made up of 75% wee, 23% leaking breastmilk and 2% chlorine. All this, in a bikini, every woman’s favourite postnatal outfit. In the first class I nervously asked what would happen if I dropped the baby. ‘You won’t’ said the instructor. ‘I’m really clumsy,’ I said. ‘They float’ she said. I tried not to have visions of her as an evil clown. The real reason I did this class was because my new friend from NCT was doing it and I wanted to hang out with her. It didn’t take long for us to realise that we’d much rather just go to the pub.
Sing and Sign (£10 per class). I told myself I liked this class because I was learning something, not just singing shit songs for no reason. My enthusiasm lasted around three weeks. My husband nearly lost his mind when I put on the 30 minute DVD. I’d like to see him survive a whole class singing ‘I want more, it’s all gone’ week after week. My baby does not sign. When he wants more, he grunts, which is pretty similar to my approach to biscuits. We understand each other perfectly.
Like so many things, It was sleep that put a stop to my ridiculous addiction to baby classes. Suddenly banking more than two hours sleep at a time, I asked myself if I actually enjoyed sitting in mouldy church halls trying not to be sarcastic.
Perhaps your baby meditates, or likes meeting strange puppets, or singing shit songs. But mine seems happiest when I am happy and doing things that I enjoy. So I decided to sack off the classes and just see the new mothers I’d met along the way for pleasant things, like coffee and daytime comedy gigs. With all the money I saved, I also invested in a much smaller pram, making London considerably easier to get around. I still may not be swanning around, but I am at least getting somewhere.
betabump and beyond 