December

They say that there is a baby in every bottle of stout. If you conceive on, or around St Patrick's day, as I did twice, you are pretty much guaranteed a baby in December....

The year ends with a burst of birthdays, and each one takes me further in time away from my childrens' babyhood. But, as often happens at this time of the year, small things, like Fleur Adcock's poem which I found in the Guardian Review this afternoon, bring back ninth-month memories; the bus rides along Highgate Wood, and down to Archway, sitting at the back of the top deck, where it was bounciest, to try to induce birth. The first, tentative walks with a bundled up baby in a new push chair; the Haringey pavements suddenly too potholed and bumpy and treacherous. The thoroughness of French hospitals, the luxury of the individual room, the swabs of cottonwool, crimson with iodine. Double portions of food (the prerogative of the breast-feeding mother), a glass of synapse-hitting champagne served on new year's eve, the pain and tiredness and heart-stalling happiness of it.

Thanks for the memories Fleur x