Usually a mild mannered type, it interests me to note how irritating I find other people’s comments about my babies. I am not referring to the obligatory: “He is ever so sweet!” or “Oooh, twins, how lovely!” – the other day I even drew back the hood of the pushchair for an old lady trying to peer in at the pelican crossing when she said, “I do love to look in prams but can never see anything.” No, these gentle, non-specifc remarks are not the problem, but rather the direct comments about the babies’ appearance, personality or the way in which I might care for them, which almost always seem misplaced.

At first, I linked my displeasure to anxieties about breastfeeding. Though only a few ounces lighter than your average eight pounder plus, my babies were not especially small at birth; indeed, you could go so far as to describe them as weighty for twins. Despite their relative chunkiness, however, people would often peer into the pram or look at their little pink legs swinging in our slings and say, “They are still so very small and thin; they can’t be more than a week old.” As this happened long into their first two months of life, I would always wince and think it surely must be because they are not getting enough to drink – pass me the milk bottle, quick. Looking back, I realise it had a lot more to do with the fact that (and I have said this in a previous entry) more cautious parents, with twins or not, just do not go out very often with small babies, and also that people so quickly forget how small all new babies are – our point of reference for a ‘baby’ is usually one from TV adverts well into its fourth or fifth month.

But this indignation did not stop when the babies grew sturdier and the nature of the comments changed. Two separate incidents, both at my yoga with baby group, perhaps will illustrate my point. The first example: I unpack one baby and lay her on the floor in front of me. The yoga teacher leans over her and coos, a little too loudly and a little too quickly, so that said baby is shocked and bursts into helpless tears. The yoga teacher steps back and on the basis of this short interaction says to me, “She must be much shyer than her brother.” How does she know, how could she know? It is an entirely arbitrary remark. Babies do this sort of thing all the time. The second: I unpack the other baby on another day and sit him on my knee. The mother beside me, who I happen never to have seen before and who does not know the age of my babies, turns and says, “That one likes to eat too.” I found out later that the group had been talking about the apparent ‘greediness’ of another baby, who appears quite big for his age, but out of context I thought, so what, now he is too healthy looking – a mother can’t win. There is a third incident, outside on the street this time (of plenty more with which I will not bore you). I am walking with a grumpy baby in my arms, the other is being pushed in the pram by a friend. A group of old ladies stop to look, of course, and one takes the opportunity to say to me, “You should not hold her like that whilst walking. It will be bad for her spine.” I, holding my baby in a perfectly normal and safe way, am too astounded to say anything spiky in return, but move along thinking darkly this will provide good fuel for my blog.

I suppose my irritation comes, first, from a sense of ownership. These babies, though both full beings unto themselves, are still so much an extension, physical and emotional, of myself. They are mine and their father’s, and thus ours to comment and speculate on. They are ours to decide how best to care for and love. They are ours to instinctively know better than anyone else what is good for them. There is also the element that no one likes to be told what to do, in any aspect of their lives. But I believe my feeling goes beyond ownership and pure contrariness and comes back to the idea that my babies are so clearly individuals, little people not to be judged or dictated to, particularly not by strangers. Who would dream of saying to an adult, taking off her coat, “You like to eat, don’t you?”. Or, to someone shying once from another person suddenly leaning into his or her face and shouting “boo”, that they must be shy in all areas of life. It would seem so supremely rude, and well, misplaced. Surely, babies deserve the same level of personal respect. 

Oh well, I expect we are also dealing with the novelty twin factor: it seems to me that strangers are more interested in twins than single babies and are always keener to have a good, long peer, in such a way that would be unusual in other circumstances. No matter, breath deeply and grin carefree – always an appropriate response.

I describe a scene from a recent parent and baby group. One mother cast a forlorn look at her baby lying face down on the floor, crying and tiny arms flailing. “But she has to practise,” the mother said, when the lady running the course encouraged her to pick the baby up and comfort her, “That’s what the chiropractor said,” she continued, concern in her eyes whilst she reluctantly pulled the baby onto her lap. We were then told that this very normal looking baby apparently had the serious flaw of pulling her arms behind her when lying on her tummy – a flaw only to be cured by two hour-long sessions of physiotherapy a week, which this baby, understandably, hated. 

Two weeks ago I was feeling distinctly un-Christmassy, so bogged down I was in nappies and trudging through the snow. What a shame, I thought, (I usually love Christmas) not to be revelling in the festive spirit for our babies’ first one.

And why? In pre-baby days, the pretty street lights and wafts of mulled wine promised a last day of work for at least a week, a train journey spent reading a novel, lots of feasting and even more long, lazy mornings in bed. This year Christmas posed no relief. Unlike work, babies don’t break for Christmas. Our planned six hour car journey to grandparents seemed like a marathon we had not trained for and the coming nights in a new environment for the babies were set to be even more restless. There would be feasting without the resting, snatched bites between jiggling an overwhelmed baby up and down. New Year’s Eve and its fireworks – we couldn’t even bear thinking about it.

What pessimism. Christmas transpired to be a wonderful break for us and a lovely chance to have our babies adored by all and sundry. The babies slept and babbled their way through most of our journey. There were no traffic jams on the motorway. And it turns out grandparents are happy to see babies at 7am and entertain them for a couple of hours whilst you slumber on. They are also keen to wash baby bottles and clothes because they want to provide you with relief from your everyday grind. They should perhaps be renamed Santa’s elves.

It just goes to show that life with babies is not quite as inflexible as I thought, stuck in my pre-Christmas rut. What’s more, it does you the world of good to go away somewhere for a while, where other people can cuddle your babies, tell you how gorgeous they are and what shining eyes they had when they first saw the Christmas tree (really an adult invention – babies’ eyes shine at all sorts of pretty things that have nothing to do with Christmas – but never mind). Oh and New Year was fine too.

So in retrospect, all very festive and very special because we could share it with the two little ones.