Despatches from a mother who started late (and is running to catch up)

Mum splits with buggy

After fighting temptation for months, I've given in to the inevitable. Yesterday I spurned my faithful travelling companion of many months for a lightweight feller-me-lad I met on the Internet, whose slim good looks and fancy orange top seduced me with their superficial charm. I'm being like Prince William. It doesn't feel good, it certainly doesn't feel right, but boy, does it make those Edinburgh hills easier to tackle.

For more than a year I've pushed K around town, across beaches and up hills in the Jane Slalom Pro, a stylish "all-terrain" three-wheeler chariot whose trendy disc brakes have excited more than a little interest from male acquaintance, from which K smiles graciously at admirers and bestows regal waves.

The Jane Pro is a bit like the BMW of the pram world - expensive, sturdy, comfortable - with good engineering you feel you can trust. This new pram, the Maclaren Volo Saffron - nicknamed Vol-au-Vent -  is more like a toy for pushing dollies around in, not real babies.

It was J who chose the Jane Pro, since I was in such a hormonally-induced daze while expecting that I tuned out as soon as shop assistants started clicking "travel systems" together, but I've always been  proud of it. A few weeks after K made her appearance a young doctor looked at the Jane Pro with something like respect in her eyes. "You can go running with those, you know," she offered. I snorted with derision, but a couple of months later I was racing round Inverleith Park (also, incidentally, home to Scotland's Axe-Throwing Championships) with K in the buggy in a mums-and-babies exercise class, and it was one of my highlights from that post-natal period.

The only problem - and with Edinburgh being so hilly, this really is a problem - is that the Jane weighs about 10.5kg,  or around 1.5 stone. The Vol-au-vent, on the other hand, tips the scales at just 3.9kg.  The Jane's also bulky and hard to fold. I vowed that after spending so much on the Jane I wouldn't buy another pram but the Vol-au-vent came up cheap on the excellent Kiddicare site, full of bargain baby kit.

The turning point came after yet another sweaty struggle on the buses last week, where I had to enlist help from two strangers, even though I was with Granny, to get the pram folded and stowed away.

The new pram's not a patch on the old -  you can feel every bump in the pavement jarring  your  hands and arms, cobbles (another big Edinburgh feature) are a killer, and it's so flimsy and lightweight it's feels more like a mobile deckchair than a proper buggy. But the acid test came this morning when pushing K up the hill to nursery: it was a breeze compared with shoving the Jane inch by inch to the top. Even so, I'll be planning my routes carefully, so I can wheel out the Jane any time I'm going somewhere without buses or hills involved. You see, it's the one, even if I need to flirt with others from time to time.

Posted 17 April 2007 15:23

Daughter Edinburgh Husband Kit

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