Mum talk

The biggest change in our playgroup over time is not that our babies have suddenly grown a metre in height or that they’ve morphed into Spidermen. It’s the conversation that’s changed. 

Our conversation.

When we first got together five years ago, cracked nipples were a major theme. Cracked nipples were fascinating. Who had them. Why. What cream to use. We all shook our heads in sympathy for the cracked nipplees of the world. And winced at the idea of babies wanting a feed. Didn’t they understand?

Then came the really big topic – The Birth. It’s strange how you can get together every Friday afternoon with people you’ve just met and give them a blow by blow description of your innermost girly bits. It’s liberating too. You’ve all been accepted into this secret society of motherhood and you understand completely.

For some reason most of our earlier meetings took place in the backyard of whoever was hosting that day. The next door neighbour, innocently weeding his azalea patch, could learn things like this:

- My waters broke at 5.30am, just after the Wimbledon men’s final.
- Really? How much comes out?
- Stacks. There was so much I had to wedge a beach towel down my jeans on the way to the hospital.

Or

- Tommy’s head was as big as a basketball. I should have had a caesarean but I was too far gone. They tried the forceps but ended up using the vacuum. I had 32 stitches and walked like a cowboy.

Sometimes our conversation shifted to the babies and we learnt all sorts of new vocabulary. I had never heard of a ‘percentile’ before it became the yardstick on which I based my success or failure as a mum. I thought my son was doing well on the 75th percentile until I heard that Sally’s boy was so tall he’d blown himself right off the chart.

It was easy to talk about babies and women’s bits when the babies were in arms. It wasn’t until much later that we realised this was the time we really could have talked. The little things just lay there then, cooing and blurting, oblivious to the world. We could have talked about books and films and even the news. But we didn’t want to. Those cracked nipples kept getting in the way.

Soon the kids were crawling and then they were taking their first steps. Another shift in conversation. This was the staccato period when conversation was studded with ‘oh, hang on’, ‘just a minute’, ‘sorry, I missed that’ and ‘ANDREW COME BACK HERE NOW!’ 

I remember one trip to the Botanic Gardens when nobody answered a question until they had raced down the hill, saved their boy from drowning in the lake and staggered back up.

I say ‘boy’ because boys are the dominant sex in our group and certainly the most active. This has led to many conversations on the future of the human race. Are we breeding a new race of rowdy giants? Will we ever get to dress a girl in pink? How in the name of soggy breadcrusts do people make girls? Will mothers’ groups one day be extinct?

The domination of the male sex inevitably leads to husbands. Men in the context of family life always produces a hearty session of husband-bashing. Anne’s husband once tried to change a nappy using sticky tape and paper clips.

Sophie’s husband has never changed a nappy. Jackie advises that in ten years of marriage her husband has never changed a toilet roll. After our fourth cuppa – there are always four - she goes to Sally and Roger’s bathroom and returns with an empty toilet roll.

Suddenly the kids were at crèche and most of us were going back to work part-time. Conversation got serious again as we talked about the way we were going to juggle our lives.

Some mums had a nanny for one or two days, others had Grandma, all had crèche. We talked about the first day we had to say goodbye to our child and how we followed the rules, didn’t hover and walked away with wobbly legs.

One mum recalled returning to the crèche at the end of the first day, parting the bushes, cupping her hands around her eyes and peering through the window to see how her son was getting on. It wasn’t her last act of voyeurism.

Since our first meeting under the silver birch all those years ago, only one conversation hasn’t changed. And that’s tiredness. We mothers are so fatigued, knocked out, fagged and pooped we’ve exhausted Roget’s Thesaurus. But it’s all for the greater good and we love our greater goods, even in our sleep.

Our babies are five years old now and not babies any more. We no longer talk of nipples though most of us have second children now. The birth story of second progeny hardly cracks a mention.

Today we are talking about school uniforms and what to put in lunch boxes next year. We are talking about state schools and private schools. What we are not talking about is the future of mothers’ group.

Just now Ange brings out a flourless, gluten-free, eggful chocolate walnut cake. We are all silent as we feel the cake make chocolaty explosions in our mouths. The children are upstairs, pulling apart the home that Ange and her family have just moved into. 

Someone starts:

- I don’t want this to stop.
- It’s the highlight of my week.
- What am I going to do without you all?

Ange offers another round of cake and it’s agreed implicitly. Mothers’ group will go on as long as the kids are at school and even when they’re not. As long as someone offers a fourth cup of tea every Friday afternoon.

by Jo-Ann Stubbings

This article was first published in Australian Family Magazine, October 2005.