So yes, i have actually become that desperate woman who eventually steals a baby from a maternity unit.

I’m borrowing babies. I’m quite enjoying borrowing babies and, i hasten to add, i’m doing it quite legally and with the blessing of their mothers. I wouldn’t want anyone thinking i’ve started leaving empty prams anywhere or anything dreadful like that.

However, i have an excellent array of small people around me currently, all conveniently girls, which is even better 🙂 Yesterday i took Baby-Flower out with me, while leaving my girls behind with Mummy-Flower and paraded around the inner city with her for a while while her mother did my work for me. This was excellent in many ways, not least that she appeared to quite like me and we did lots of bonding over kisses, raspberry blowing and silly talk – but also because it didn’t occur to me to take a sling or pushchair with me and i’d forgotten that you can’t put tiny 15lb 9 months old down on the floor in a bank when they don’t belong to you and are dressed in cleaner clothes than any of your own children have seen in about 3 years. So i then looked foolish while attempting to juggle baby, cheques, paying in slips and a pen and evenutally had to admit defeat and get the clerk to do it. So that reminded me of how cute babies are when asleep but how many extra arms, or gadgets, you need when they aren’t. bargain.

Today i’ve been borrowing Madison; we popped over to see Kate, my children disappeared in a flurry of “other peoples toys” and i sat guard over a fast asleep Madison who didn’t need me but is so cute that i just have to look at her and bend lots of thoughts towards her staying just as gorgeous and healthy as she is now. Summer rather adorably demanded a cuddle from me too, perhaps the first time she has ever acknowledged me as an acceptable person and communicated a want to me, so that was also great. But really, for me, Madison stole the show; so pink, so perfect, so sleepy and babylike. And agreeably woke up in the end and let me play babies too; change her, cuddle her, snuggle her.

It kind of helps that she was conceived just as i stopped being pregnant and after being waited for for so long, a little (slightly insane and mostly controlled by happy pills) bit of me feels like maybe one little souled hopped on to somewhere else where i could still love it. I’m sure Kate knows i feel like that and i know she won’t mind; she’s a kind lady. it takes a very, very kind person to have been friends with me for all this time, still enjoying being my friend when i was wrapped up in having babies that she couldn’t have. I admire her so much. Even now, when finally she has just exactly what she wants, when she has the happy ending she deseved and i’ll never get to be properly happy again, she’s giving me back way more than i could ever ask. She really is a remarkable friend. And such a great mum, such an inspiration.

Kate is the epitome of doing the best you can do even when the best is absolutely bloody, sh*ttily awful. if it wasn’t for her, for her grit your teeth and keep walking determination that i’ve admired so much over the last 8 years, i wouldn’t be here at all, i don’t think. We can all only be what we can be, but when i see the grace and dignity that Kate has faced the darkest, most unlucky 8 years with, loving her daughter, doing her absolute best by, fighting for her, enjoying her, living for her and never once complaining that she might never get even a glimmer of another chance, i can only thank my lucky stars for the accident of fate that meant she walked into my life.