Home sweet home

G&T - 28 months  M - 6 months

Well, that's it. My baby has moved out. Little M's cot has been decamped to her sisters' room, and the Moses basket in the living room has been packed away. From now on, she'll go to bed with her big sisters, while I stay downstairs and miss her. Until it's time for me to go to bed, then I'll go up into my own bed and miss her there instead. It's brought back so many memories of the day the twins first moved into their nursery. Their move was perhaps even more stressful, as it not only meant being separated from Mummy and Daddy, but also from each other. Although they were still to share a room, they were moving into their own cots, having shared one since birth. Their dad and I worried for weeks about how they'd take to it, and in fact instigated an elaborate plan to ease the change. We kept one cot in our room, but built one in the nursery and, over the course of a week before the move, the girls alternated between rooms, with one parent and one child in each room. Then came the big day. Both cots were put in the nursery, the girls were put into bed and... a totally uneventful night. They were utterly unperturbed by any of it. Turns out we, or more probably I, was being a drama queen. And I know M will be OK too. In fact, separating from her should be easier. Until just after she was born, we lived in London, hundreds of miles away from most of my family in Scotland or my husband's clan in Yorkshire. It meant there were no ready babysitters and there was always a little adjustment period while they clung to me until they remembered who visitors were. It made expecting M a difficult time, first worrying she'd arrive before my mum came to stay on my due date then, even when Granny appeared, worrying that the twins would be stressed about Mummy and Daddy vanishing. Of course, when I did go into labour in the middle of the night, the girls were simply delighted when they had a whole day of playing with Granny and Aunty R, while I cared about nothing but getting that baby the hell out of me! But I'm glad that now, should I go into labour in the wee small hours (admittedly unlikely) none of us would bat an eyelid. My mum lives literally five minutes away and all three girls love being left with her or Grandad or Aunty S. They're always having far too much fun to notice their parents abandoning them. M has been looked after by Granny far more times in her six months than her sisters did in their first two years. Not only does that give Daddy and me more freedom to spend time with the twins, or even, amazingly, each other, but it's pretty good for Granny too. If I ever see anyone prouder than my mum when she strolls along pushing her little lookalike grand-daughter in her buggy, I'd be surprised. After raising the twins so far from home and coping with them alone and pregnant while Daddy was at work, my life now has transformed. And so has theirs. If I could give you one piece of advice, it'd be move back home. Nothing in the world is better than grandparents!