Tonight, the part of Mum will be played by...

Seventeen months ago, I wrote about how I didn't really feel like a Mother - with all that word's associations. Not deep down. A lot has changed, and now I feel as odd and fraudulent if I'm walking somewhere WITHOUT Alice in the pushchair as I did then with it. Her health, safety, development, and bowel movements are constantly in my thoughts and I would do anything to protect her. I am her mum, no question.

But am I a Mother? When I was a child I thought about my mum, and other people's, as if a) that's all they were and b) they had always known exactly how to be it. I mean, SURELY there's a switch that goes on when you give birth, that makes you all-knowing, super-competent, infinitely patient, totally nurturing, and able to to sew on nametapes, make castles out of cereal packets and cook three nutritious meals a day - isn't there? Well, apparently not. I still feel like it's a ridiculous mistake that I have been put in a charge of a baby - a person. Far from bestowing new and perfect knowledge, parenthood has, like space exploration, only revealed even vaster areas of ignorance. Everything is improvised, accidental, piecemeal and experimental, full of compromise and error.

But I have gained ONE vital piece of knowledge in these past seventeen months. Which is that parenthood is that way for EVERYONE, always. I am not alone.