Life with Alex:

Alex's first Christmas

Alex at 4 months

• Time to get a buggy, I think!
• Stimulating baby
• Christmas!

I can't believe it's almost Christmas! This time last year we were busy preparing for a trip to the UK, and had just found out that I was pregnant. In some ways the last year has flown by, but in others that carefree me that was about to hit London for a work conference and pre-Christmas party season now seems a whole generation away.

I feel as though I've always been a mother. Nicholas and I were talking the other day and I asked him if he'd ever looked back and wondered what we'd done. 'No,' he said, 'I've got absolutely no regrets; I couldn't be without her.' It's exactly how I feel. Alex has completed us somehow. She's absolutely wonderful.

She started her fourth month weighing an impressive 16lbs - Dr Bello, our paediatrician at Fougeres, was clearly impressed. 'Costaude' is the word people keep using to describe her here - 'hefty'! She certainly is - I took her for a long walk with the dog and two of my friends the other day, to take advantage of some late autumn sun, and she weighed a tonne as I carried her on my front. Time to get a buggy, I think!

She's sitting up, too. I know every mother thinks their baby is more advanced and more intelligent than everyone else's, but it's hard not to be secretly chuffed when you read in books by Miriam Stoppard and Penelope Leach that 'At four/six/eight months, baby's head will be strong enough for her to start sitting up with your help'. Alex could hold her head up at birth, and could sit up (with some help balancing) at three months. She can now do this completely unaided, and wants to sit up all the time. It's time we borrowed a playpen…

I wonder if anyone else worries about 'stimulation' as much as I do? When Alex is awake, she's very alert, and I feel bad just leaving her in her bouncy seat watching me type, or wash up. I know the books say they will be 'fascinated to watch you, however mind-numbing the task, whether ironing or peeling potatoes', but I can't help feeling she needs more. In the absence of a good range of toys for her stage of development, I've tried cobbling together playthings from old egg boxes and a pair of maracas from Spain, but she just sucked the egg box until it was soggy, and gave me a small scare when the cheap paint on the maracas came off on her face, leaving her lips dotted with blue flecks. I then had a minor panic about the beautiful hand-carved rattle my Dad made for her. She'd been sucking that too and it's made of Yew wood (isn't Yew poisonous??). Fortunately I think it's just the sap that's dangerous (that's one of the reasons we chopped down our large Yew tree earlier this year anyway).

Ah yes, maternal guilt is alive and well here. It extends to worrying whether I'm drinking too much tea, to whether I'm going to give her liver damage if I allow myself a second glass of wine in the evening. I went down to the cellar the other day to change over some washing, and came back up to a very red-faced, hard-crying baby. I'd left her gurgling happily in her bouncy seat in front of the TV. I felt terrible that I hadn't heard her cries, even though I'd only been gone a moment. I scooped her up, kissed her obsessively and promised her faithfully that I'd be the 'best Mummy ever' from now on. How many other new Mums have done that, I wonder? My friend Emma confesses that her 10-month old, Yvie, rolled off the bed the other week when she'd left the room for a moment. She felt the same kind of anguish and is still beating herself up about it.

As an attempt to stimulate Alex, I try to do one 'exciting' thing with her each day. This usually involves a walk, or a trip to Super 'U', our local supermarket. Hardly the most scintillating activity, but she likes it - the bright fluorescent lights, the people, the coloured packets and tins, and the chance to sit at eye level with Mum while being pushed around (like most babies, she likes motion). I do crave more toys for her though, and have added things like the Fisher Price Crawl 'n' Cruise Playground to her Christmas wishlist, as I suspect she will be crawling then walking before too long, and the trouble with our house is that all it's all bare floors - cold, hard tiles, or dusty floorboards. Not very conducive to a baby on her hands and knees for the first time - or for a small bottom to fall onto when she takes her first unsteady steps.

I saw an item on 'This Morning' about 'Tummy Time' yesterday, based on research from the US which claims babies are not developing strength in their upper arms any more, because they don't spend any time lying on their front. Alex certainly falls into that category - she hates lying on her stomach because she can't see what's going on. I'm not too worried though - it's probably just some big marketing ploy to promote more designer play mats. Something else to add to Alex's Christmas list…

We're looking forward to Christmas with mixed feelings, though, as Nicholas and I are utterly broke at the moment. We're excited about this being our first Christmas with Alex, of course, but we wish we had a bit more money to spend on making it magical. As it is, we're still suffering from the three months I took off work to have Alex (this hit us hard, as I'm freelance), combined with a big roof project we've just paid for (re-roofing the dance studio), and a series of huge bills I've recently received from the French financial authorities for tax and social charges for 2001. They've taken a while to assess me, but now they're catching up fast, and the payments (which add up to a staggering 50% of everything I earn) have already taken their toll on our meagre savings. By the end of December we'll be wiped out, and with no new work coming in (due to the ailing economy, and the massive slowdown in the IT publishing market), the immediate future is a bit worrying.

Presented with such a scenario before we had Alex, I'd have been a nervous wreck, but having a child is oddly calming. All I have to do is look at her angelic, trusting face smiling up at me, and very little seems to bother me. Nicholas and I are agreed that we could live in a tent if we had to, as long as Alex is okay. Let's hope it doesn't come to that though!

But no, Christmas is bound to be a joyous time. They were stringing up the Desertines village lights the other day, and musak versions of Christmas carols will no doubt be playing in Super U when I take Alex there this afternoon. Because we can't afford to go to Canada for Christmas as we'd originally planned, most of my family will be coming over so we'll chop down another pine tree from the garden and create some good, traditional family fun with drunken games of Balderdash and old James Bond films. I'm sure Alex will be oblivious to it all, but she'll make it extra special for the rest of us. My parents are bringing over my old feeding chair, as we've just started Alex on solids, so we'll have to make sure we have the video camera on standby for when she's smearing cranberry sauce all over her face!

Sue Tabbitt, 33, is a freelance IT journalist, who moved to the outskirts of Normandy more than 12 months ago to start a new chapter in her life with her Canadian husband, Nicholas, a ballroom dancing teacher.

Tune in soon to find out how Sue, Nicholas and baby Alex are getting on in Normandy ...

Thanks to Kodak for the digital camera lent to Sue and Nicholas for the duration of this diary column.

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