Having two children is vastly easier than having just one
The 25th anniversary of Gina Ford’s Contented Little Baby Book – one of the most successful, and controversial, parenting manuals of all time – reminds me that I must get on with writing my own bestseller.
A friend and I came up with the title years ago: How to Have a Second Child the First Time Around. At the time we were both on our second passage through the toddler years and realising – with a kind of perplexed elation – that having two children is vastly easier than having one. (I have since discovered that three is better still; but I do realise this is an extreme solution.)
Here’s how my method works. You keep having babies until you can no longer pretend to be in control and you don’t have the bandwidth to worry about it. There we are: job done.
The horrible thing about first-time parenthood is that a) you really don’t know what you are doing, and b) you mind this desperately. I remember a more experienced mother telling me, when I had my first baby, to follow my instincts. “But I don’t have any instincts!” I wailed back, truthfully.
Gina Ford was my saviour then. She gave me exactly what I needed: clear, unambiguous instructions, with graphs and numbers. My obedience was total, bordering on unhinged. My in-laws once invited us on a boat trip in Devon, sailing upriver to a favourite picnic spot. I insisted on bringing a travel cot, a blackout blind and a swaddling sheet. While everyone else was playing Grandmother’s Footsteps and toasting marshmallows, I was hovering anxiously under some nearby trees where, trussed up like a tiny mummy and entombed in darkness, my son was defiantly resisting his 6.45 bedtime.
Then his brother was born, and the madness began to lift. I now had a bit of experience, and even some glimmerings of instinct. But most importantly, I didn’t have time to hover over him. This baby would have to learn to sleep while dangling upside down from a sling as I jemmied his older brother’s feet into wrong-way-round shoes. As for Number Three: I don’t think she ever once napped in her own bed. Her preferred sleeping places were sofas, cafe tables, sandy towels and – when we took her to the Devon picnic spot – a musty old sailing jacket spread out on the ground.
Imagine how relaxing parenthood would feel if it started out like this. But it never could. Experience can’t be faked, and neither can chaos, and parents need both of these to reach a degree of serenity. Which is why, alas, my bestseller remains unwritten.
Old duffer Cleese
John Cleese credits stem cell injections and a much younger wife with keeping him youthful. The former Python, whose fourth wife is 30 years his junior, told Saga magazine that she keeps him young. But he also has monthly jabs of “the highest quality” stem cells, at a cost of ￡17,000 a year. “So I think that’s why I don’t look bad for 84.”
He’s right; he does look good for his age. But he doesn’t sound it. For years now, Cleese has been playing the part of the cantankerous old duffer, snarling biliously about the youth of today and the world going mad. By contrast, Michael Palin – whose wife of 57 years died last May – gives off an air of kindness and curiosity which makes him seem younger than his years. It isn’t your wrinkles that age you; it’s your attitude.
