Right back to the start

Just over seven years ago I met this lovely lady and her newborn daughter who had been born just days after my oldest son. For months we met, along with three other friends and their newborns, every Thursday morning in the local John Lewis cafe. We drank coffee, ate scones and compared stories of our weeks. As the babies grew the conversations changed from how much they were sleeping, to what type of pureed food had been tried, to where to get the best name tags for labelling up clothes. Then slowly one by one we all went back to work and the opportunity to meet up weekly became more difficult.

Over the years we have met as often as we have all managed, which hasn't been as often as any of us would have liked, but we have kept in touch and always appreciated the bond that we have from sharing the first months of parenting together.

Now, seven years on our initial group of fifteen has grown and changed and become a group of twenty-four and two of us are back at the newborn stage and back to drinking coffee, eating scones and sharing stories, although not, today anyway, in John Lewis.


* Really wish I had a photo of my mum to blip for yesterday, as she appeared, unexpectedly, at absolutely the right time and saved the day. Thanks mum *