It begins ...

It's beginning to dawn on me that being a mother actually means (a) being in a constant state of anxiety and (b) not being able to go to the loo without waving my arms around while singing The Grand Old Duke Of York. The anxiety part comes from suddenly seeing danger everywhere (get that massive baby-munching hound away from my pushchair, punk) and God help me if I think any further into her future than the day after tomorrow. To make matters worse, each night just as I'm drifting peacefully off to sleep, my other half usually starts snoring like a chainsaw ripping through cast iron and it's at that point that my mind starts throwing up images of Isabel toddling in front of cars and accepting sweets from strangers. Talk about cold sweat. Not being able to have a shower without playing peekaboo from behind the shower curtain pales in comparison.

Being a mother in Italy also means taking on the full force of Italian bureaucracy as, (quite unwittingly) I have created a little Italian person who needs several hundred documents and certificates in order to officially exist. She already has a tax code, which, let's be honest, is just what all five-month-olds want for Christmas. Last week, disaster struck when I discovered that she wasn't registered as a 'resident' of Florence, where I'm registered, or indeed Milan, where we live. The woman in the town hall in Florence was horrified at my lack of concern: as far as she was concerned, walking round with no official place of residency is the bureaucratic equivalent of wearing socks with sandals. Two mornings spent in the town hall later and Isabel is now resident in Florence, like me, despite actually living in Milan. It's complicated. Now I have to transfer her residency to Milan. And mine. By the time that's all sorted, we'll probably be living somewhere else ('O, Signora, you foreigners do move around a lot!' Read between the lines: you have no sense of home or family you poor, sad weirdo, I bet you even put ketchup on your pasta).

So I'm learning what it means to be a mother and Isabel and I are both learning to stay calm and not start crying in town halls, police stations and all the other places you have to go to get documents stamped, signed in blood and generally sweated over. And this is just the beginning. I can't believe I have a lifetime of bureacracy and worrying ahead of me...