The other day I was tagged by one of my lovely insta buddies (@mamo.style) to share my intro into motherhood. The hashtag has been created by @the_floral_anchor_ in the hope that it will encourage women to tell the truth about those early weeks into motherhood, and importantly, to not be afraid to admit the challenges they faced… because it's not always easy is it? It really got me thinking.
As many of you know, Jude’s arrival into the world was quite a bit sooner than I was prepared for and while we were both recovering in our little bubble of St Mary’s hospital, our home resembled the set of '60 Minute Makeover' as family, friends and neighbours rallied round to get four weeks of redecoration done in as many days.
When we arrived home it was still chaos. The midwife’s arrival was synchronised with the carpet fitters hammering away on the stairs, the electrician tinkering under the television as I discussed things like latching on and vaginal stitches, and the dog was barking away in a dining room where the table had been lost to the baby things we had never got around to putting away. Crikey - we had no nursery to put them in, and it would be a good couple of weeks before we eventually did.
But he was here. And that was enough.
The Early Days at Home
It wasn’t like I had imagined motherhood to be, but only because I hadn’t dared to imagine it at all. I remember saying to my husband that getting the nursery finished was important to me because it would mean that we really had a baby at long last. It would mean he had a definite place in our home, and not just our hearts.
Said Husband obviously thought I was mad, since it was quite clear from the huge dent in our finances, the dirty nappies, and the tiny clothes all over all of the radiators that by that stage that we definitely DID have a baby in our home… we certainly didn’t need a nursery to prove it.
A little irrational I may have been, but I genuinely felt I had to pinch myself every second. Partly to keep myself awake (sleep deprivation ain’t a form of torture for nothing) and also because it really did feel like a dream.
Being completely honest, I perhaps didn’t feel that overwhelming rush of love for my tiny son immediately, but I was in awe of him, and fiercely protective. That fierce instinct was what led to emotional tears in IKEA when one of the midwives said his jaundice had become a problem again and we might need to return to the hospital. I felt sick to the pit of my stomach and spent that night and the next day doing everything in my power to get his bilirubin levels back down. Thanks to a combination of round the clock feeding and keeping him in front of the window like a little flower, he flourished and was here to stay.
After the initial whirlwind, those first six weeks remained wonderful… I had an exceptionally good baby who slept a lot and barely cried. I had a home tidier than it had been in years; I was fully dressed with a full face of make up on each day and I had all the meals on the table. I even managed to express 8 -10 times a day and as well as feeding Jude, was getting a nice little stock in the freezer. I convinced myself that I must be a bit of a superwoman and that I had this whole parenting thing licked.
Oh how wrong I was.
You see I’d had the luxury of midwives on tap while we stayed in hospital for a week after he was born and for four weeks out of the first six, my baby should still have been tucked up in the womb, so I didn’t fully appreciate what life with a newborn was really like…
Pulling the Rug Out
When Jude was around 4 months, it started to creep up on me: that feeling that I wasn’t quite rocking this motherhood lark after all. By the time he hit 6 months and became mobile, I was absolutely sure that I was a complete fraud in the mother stakes. In my darkest moments, I felt it was punishment for having IVF and that I should have left mother nature to her own devices. But even mother nature doesn’t always have it right and with some amazing support, I managed to find the middle way.
So while these days I do most often manage to get out of my pyjamas by 10am, this is only because if I miss my 10 minute showering window, I would still be in my pyjamas come bedtime. My hair has never been so infrequently washed; my husband does more washing up and laundry than me and most days my eyelashes are lucky if they see a wand of mascara. But I have a tiny baby who is now on the cusp of becoming a toddler; one who calls for me when he is sad, and who giggles like I am the best entertainer there is… and every day I think: we actually made that. So what could be better, hey?
#myintrotomotherhood has shown me that I am not superwoman, but nor am I a fraud. I am just winging it, like every other mother I know and that my friends, is perfectly fine with me.