Not a Write Off vol: 1

The one where I’ve launched and haven’t freaked out about the commitment yet

I’ve finally decided to do it.

Yes, the Substack I’ve been wanting to launch for a hot minute has… launched! If you want to know why I’ve shifted over here and what posts I’ve got lined up, have a read of this post: Why I Created Not a Write Off. For now, we’re getting comfy with a journal entry.

Currently, I’m sat on the sofa with a literal pint of tea as the baby naps in her cot. Yes, you heard right. Her cot! If you followed my #napsaga on Instagram a couple of months ago, you’ll know that I was in the midst of a semi-meltdown as the result of reading approximately twenty-seven different parenting books adn every page of Mumsnet in an attempt to figure out the ‘right’ way for the baby to take her naps. I swear to god, the phrase ‘drowsy but awake’ will haunt my dreams until she leaves home. Was my baby broken? Putting her down was like playing a game of Buckaroo - one second she’d be silent and so angel-like that Michelangelo would have gladly painted her into a fresco. The next, she’d be eyeballing me with a look that said ‘Ummm, sorry, what?! You expect me to sleep independently? Are you out of your mind???’ Anyway, long story short, I tried to put her down ‘drowsy but awake’ for five days until I realised that I actually quite liked being used as a walking, talking springloaded mattress.

Like all problems I’m not sure how to handle, I took to Instagram and received in excess of thirty messages from parents kindly explaining to me that ‘drowsy but awake’ is a form of self-flagellation designed to funnel you towards sleep consultants who offer things like ‘nap schedules’ and ‘controlled crying’. Don’t get me wrong, a controlled cry has it’s merits. As a teacher, I’d diarise a cheeky ‘controlled cry’ in the stationary cupboard once a half term. It kept me sane! But for my baby? My baby who wakes up grinning with sleepy eyes? Who tucks her head into the crook of my arm and whimpers in her sleep? Who is growing at the rate of a deep-rooted dandelion? No thank you, sir!

Pushing small babies towards independence, I have since found out, is a particuarly Western approach to child rearing. So, I stopped. She slept in a sling whilst I chopped up carrots for dinner. She slept in my lap whilst I looked at said chopped carrot from the sofa, wondering how to turn it into some sort of dinner. She slept in her pram as I walked around the block for the fifth time, passing the same kids playing basketball and the same ginger cat stretched out along my neighbour’s wall.

And you know what? She now sleeps in her cot. I didn’t have to ‘train’ her, like I trained my brother’s dog to spin on the spot for a gravy bone. One day she didn’t want to and now she does. One day she reacted to our bottle attempts like she was being waterboarded, and now she pulls it towards her open mouth like a baby starling, mouth open wide. Perhaps it’s coincided with the realisation that she’s her own person. She’s her own planet, her own world. I know this sounds obvious and a little unhinged, but when you spend so long thinking of them as ‘baby’ and reading endless guides on how to care for your own, it’s very easy to feel like you’re on some sort of management training programme and not—in fact—raising a little human being.

I wanted to start this Substack when baby was maybe eleven or twelve weeks old. I was simultaneously wired and mind-numbingly tired, with fingers itching to write again but not coherent enough to finish the novel I stopped writing when I was eight months pregnant. Back then, life felt like a game of Whack-a-mole, but now? Perhaps, dare I say it, we’ve found our groove. I can write again. I am, as they say, Not a Write Off yet.

Just so you know, these volumes are a wee bit like diaries, often typed from my phone and proof-read in the thirty minutes before my critical thinking ability resembles that of a goldfish who has swum into the side of it’s tank a few too many times. For now, they’re about me attempting to navigate parenting and writing and maybe—occasionally—a think piece on why I can’t stop watching Below Deck. My recs and writing posts will trickle in alongside these. Thanks for being here whilst I find my feet.

XOXO