Swipe Left!

Being pregnant and pushing a pram it’s a logical assumption for people to make that I have a partner. Man, woman, non-gender identifying – all acceptable, but it rarely crosses a stranger’s mind that there isn’t one when my baby is five months old. It’s an assumption but it was one I was prepared for.

I was prepared to tell people I was on my own, that I was a solo mum and that she was being raised by me, my entire family and the population of an entire village. I was prepared to tell them that she was loved, supported, cared for but she only had one parent.  I was prepared for all of that.  What I wasn’t prepared for was dating.

I’ve never been good at dating.  In fact, I suck at it.  I didn’t get to my late 30s and have a baby by myself and have a large list of suitors waiting at the front door and a giant pile of men disposed of out the back.  I fall in love with inappropriate men who are not emotionally available to me.  (Read between the lines on that one people! I’m being very kind to myself these days).  But I am noticing that men smile at me a lot more these days.

For about a second and a half I congratulated myself.  I must be looking ok today.  Clearly being back at the gym is working.  Maybe I AM fuckable.  Then I look down at the smiling baby in front of me and the realisation hits.  Yeah, they’re smiling at me.  The way women smile at old ladies with dogs.  I’ve become harmless.  I’ve become friendly.  I am, worst of all, an approachable mum.  All of a sudden the idea of being fuckable dissipates rapidly, like a twenty year old’s bikini on a nude beach on the Amalfi Coast.  Somewhere I’m not going with a five month old.

The disappointment is real and softened only by the ongoing table of Easter chocolate I’m not so slowly working my way through and caffeine in a paper cup.  The indulgence of not using my keep cup makes me feel naughty and like the low level rebel I am not.  My silent, ‘fuck you’ to the world and the wives of those smiling men who reuse their keep cups and keep an extra one in the pram.  I know it’s bad for the environment, but I’ve just realised I’m not fuckable.  Let me have it.

Dating wasn’t something I thought I’d be doing so early on.  I didn’t do it while I was I pregnant.  I haven’t done it since I had a baby.  And if I’m being honest, I haven’t really done it in the last four years at all.  Dating is hard.  Dating is terrifying when you have a baby.  The logistics alone are mind boggling and so far all I’ve done is consider it from the couch while looking at Tinder in the App Store.  I’m beyond terrified.

My dating life pre-baby was hindered by my own sense of self hate.  I have been a fat girl my entire life.  While trying to get pregnant, I had to lose the weight. I dropped forty kilos and became the size 14 I always wanted to be, even while I was pregnant. I was ecstatic. My arse had finally fit into a pair of size 14 jeans and continued to do it eight months pregnant.  For the first time in my life I was proud of my body.  (Well how it looked from the outside, the skin is a nightmare. The lights still need to be low.)

I was proud of my size 14 arse, I was proud that my body finally did what it was supposed to and was growing a baby.  I was happy and body confident. I should have been hashtagging the shit out of myself but alas, I was too busy shopping in stores I couldn’t walk into before. #sorrynotsorry

What I didn’t do was allow myself some time to transfer that happiness with my new arse to the dating world.  There wasn’t time to Tinder skinny.  I went from fat to skinny-ish to pregnant in under six months.  I figured there’d be time when she was ten to find a man and I was secretly hoping Prince Charming would find me at home, on the couch, nursing an infant with vomit on my shirt and find me as sexy as hell.  (I’m still hoping for that.)

When the smiles started in our local shopping centres, and the second looks as I walked on by, the oxytocin levels increased and for those short seconds, I thought there was hope.  I considered the concept of dating and toyed with the idea that I might even be successful at it.  For three and a half seconds.

She is five months old.  She is as cute as hell and yes, everyone should be smiling at her.  I am.  Almost every minute of the day.  I am more proud of her than I am of my size 14 arse.  (It’s sometimes in a 12 these days #justsayin) Men in public take a second look at me, at her and I think we’re doing alright.  They also take a look and assume my partner is at work.  But I’m going to take those looks and pretend they’re for my size 14 arse.  They’re for the $$$ I spent getting my hair done and for the clean shirt I bothered to put on before I went to Coles.

I’m still hoping Prince Charming is about to show up at my door with ice cream, a box of Maltesers and a bootleg copy of Avengers End Game.  He won’t mind the toys on the floor, the funny smell in the rubbish bin and he’ll change a nappy while he’s here.  The chances are less than a million to one, but I’ll wait.  So instead, I’ll got to Coles and smile back at the tradies on their coffee break while they smile at the approachable, friendly mum with the cute kid shopping while her wife is at work.

You can’t have everything I’m afraid.  But maybe I’ll download Tinder and Bumble just to swipe left and pretend that dating with a baby is as easy as dating after a bottle of tequila. And then maybe I’ll invent a story or two about my working wife, my secret husband and my non-gender lover while I drink coffee from my paper cup.  Whatever works for us I think.