As a fully-grown adult, knocking on the door of the big 4-0 no less, sometimes it can feel like I have seen it all before. And even if something new does come along, I am far too BUSY and IMPORTANT to stop and care about it. I have EMAILS to send. EMAILS. So what is amazing about raising Bella is that it has forced me to cast aside my frenetic, commute-hardened fuck-off attitude and slow down to experience those first times with her. Because babies have seen nothing before and everything is brand new.
Bella’s young life is a series of firsts, from first sip of water (deeply underwhelmed), to first taste of avocado (deeply overwhelmed, in fact she can’t get enough, that’s my nice middle class baby; I didn’t have avocado til my mid-30s. Growing up in Blackpool in the nineties I didn’t even have pasta til I got to university, unless you count Alphabetti Spaghetti), to first roll over (incandescent because she couldn’t get back the other way), to first adult poo (easy to clean up but by god the straining, the straining). And now we have another first. We took Bella to the playground and she had her first go on the swings. After trying to gum the chain (natch), the look of amazement and sheer joy on her face as she took that virgin swing was just lovely to behold. Babies really do remind you to stop and relish those fleeting moments that make up life. They are simultaneously feverishly exhausting and an exercise in mindfulness. For someone who used to sprint across London from meeting to meeting whilst bashing emails out on my iPhone and somehow also doing Skype calls, this is a much-needed different perspective on life.
So seeing all these freshly minted moments with Bella got me thinking about MY most memorable firsts. And warning, not all of these are baby related.
First Memory Ever: My first memory is of my little brother. He must have been under one year old as he was in the pram bassinet, and I must have been about three. We were in the park and I was putting grass in his mouth. Grass. From the ground. My mum also remembers this, less fondly than I do. My second memory is of building a castle out of old cigarettes that I found in the garden. I was clearly a rank and offensive child.
First Kiss: Sorry if this is a bit Mizz magazine, but this HAD to go in the list. My first snog was fuelled by a gallon of Diamond White, that infamous destroyer of 90s livers. It was at a young farmers ball (that’s how we rolled in Blackpool). This sounds faintly glam but was actually just a big room with sticky carpet, sodden with the secrets of events past, more sick, alco-pop detritus and fag butts than shag-pile. I vaguely remember kissing some boy with slicked forward hair who smelt of Cool Waters and had a Kappa shirt on, before I proceeded to vomit in EVERY corner of the ballroom. I think my friends just moved me round to avoid detection but I left a trail of vom behind me like a cider-powered slug. Classy. Very classy.
First time away from home: We had an 18-30 (does that even still exist anymore?) holiday to Magaluf in the late 1990s. We were three teen girls released from the parental shackles, free to down Archers and Malibu til we could no longer see. This sunny jaunt was EVERY stereotype you could imagine and more. Lineker’s bars, miming sex positions to win shots of rancid liquor, fry up breakfasts where the hash browns were 90% oil, and Union Jack towels on beach loungers at 8am. On day two I fell off a banana boat, got kicked by a fat man and ended up in hospital with a broken arm. So a raging success then.
First Moment with Bella: I will never forget the moment the midwife put her on my chest for the first time, as I lay there covered in ALL of the bodily fluids, so tired I was seeing double. As mentioned in my birth story I did not expect her to come out with full 1980s, eastern-bloc mullet, and the sight of a mini Bjorn Borg (let’s keep going with the old school tennis player references) nestling into me is one that will be imprinted on my memory forever.
First Nappy Change: This was in the maternity ward in the middle of the night and I had NO idea what I was doing, convinced that nappy changing was THE most fiendish task in existence. Bella screamed as I took her freshly christened bodysuit off, screamed as I took her nappy off, screamed as I cleaned her, screamed as I put a new nappy on (which obviously took ten minutes) and screamed as I re-dressed her. I was traumatised. Then all the other babies in the ward started wailing and I could hear their mums tutting in disgust at the squalling banshee who started it all.
Mumz in the hood 
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