Name:  Jo Middleton

Age: 32

Children: Bee (15) and Belle (8)

Lives: Somerset

Likes: Gin & Tonic, Colin Firth, talking to Grown-Ups

Dislikes: Housework, poor spelling, playing 'shops' with children

They say a mother has the ability the pick out her baby’s cry in a crowd – even a crowd of crying babies. In my case it is partly true. I do recognise my children crying, but sometimes I have been known to pretend not to.

First time around I was spoilt. I had a baby who just didn’t seem to cry. She slept through the night, she fed well, she ate well, and you could take her anywhere. It was great at the time, but it left me completely unprepared for my second daughter, who for at least the first year of her life had two main interests – breastfeeding and crying. When she wasn’t doing one, she was usually doing the other.

To stop her crying I had to hold her or carry her. All the time, no exceptions. I can remember going along to a baby group when she was a couple of months old and the group leader, Jessica, asking to hold her. “You’re welcome to,” I said, “But I should warn you that she will cry if she’s not with me.”

Jessica smiled at me – a knowing smile where I knew she was thinking I was one of those over-anxious parents who don’t think anyone other than them can possibly know how to care for a baby. I handed Belle over. She started to cry. Jessica rocked her, chatted to her, rocked her some more. Her confident smile started to slip. She persevered through about five minutes of full volume crying before handing her back…

Switching off, tuning out

I consider myself a fairly patient person when it comes to crying babies – I’m pretty good at switching off, or tuning out if I’m busy trying to do something else like enjoy a coffee and a cake, but there were many times when the constant crying became overwhelming, when I cried myself, and wanted to shout “just stop crying can’t you?”

At moments like these I found the best thing to do was to put Belle down somewhere safe, close the door, and walk away. Not for long, but long enough for me to take some deep breaths, calm myself down, and overcome the urge to run away forever and join the circus.

I did try controlled crying a couple of times – I know lots of parents swear by it – but personally it just never felt right to leave my baby to cry when I knew that I had the power to pick her up, comfort her, and stop the crying. Instead I learnt to adapt. I bought myself a sling and, as she got older, a hip seat. I developed a habit of sticking out one hip at all times, and learnt to do all sorts of things one-handed and with a baby under one arm. I actually cooked a very tasty Christmas dinner with a four month old attached to my breast. Now that’s multi-tasking.

Jo Middleton writes an award-winning blog about the ups and downs of parenting at slummysinglemummy.wordpress.com