One thing I have definitely learnt from being a mum is that it is NOTHING like you read about, nothing like the films and nothing like you dreamt it would be.
Conception itself is nothing like you expect it to be. After spending most of my teen years trying NOT to get pregnant, it never occurred to me getting pregnant would be so hard, or take so long. Folic Acid, expensive vitamins, cycles, no alcohol, no tuna, cervical mucus (I mean really?!) … I drew the line at sticking a thermometer up my vagina. Sex used to be for fun, now it was timed. Didn’t fancy it? Tough! Jump on and away we go. Poor lad thought all his Christmases had come at once with sex on tap – having being previously a strict once a month, lights off under the covers kind of girl – until I started insisting on keeping my legs in the air singing “just keep swimming, just keep swimming” after each attempt. Each month brought with it a hope which died and burnt that little bit harder each time I had to reach for the Always. 36 months later, after our first initial discussion, it happened.
They tell you pregnancy will make you glow. I didn’t glow, I beamed. Bright red, sweaty with a fetching pregnancy mask. You worry; about everything and anything and all in between. That went on until, well, I’ll let you know when it stops. Waist line disappearing, huge boobs making their debut, crankiness, tiredness, burning as my pelvis split from my spine. Salt and Vinegar Walkers and beetroot on Ryvita. Stretch marks and leaking boobs.
D-day, 28th August, well it came and went. They tell you so much about how to prepare for labour, but nobody actually tells you what happens when your body and baby didn’t get the memo. A slice and dice later, finally she was born.
So there was a rush of love, birds sang, angels appeared playing the harp, just like they say, right? Well no, not exactly. There was no skin to skin, no holding her up over the screen like the lion king. Instead my “big” baby was actually a tiny 6 pounds and rushed off to be dressed before being presented to her daddy, not me. Not the one whose insides where all over the theatre, who had an 8 inch hole in her abdomen, the birth plan still in the file untouched, unread. Her dad – the one who had done nothing but drink tea and play with his phone – was the parent who got the first cuddles. I felt relief she was ok, relief I was ok and relief my spinal block had worked. No rush of anything other than that. Except disbelief.
It’s Nic. Lover of punky music, wearer of hoodies and converse, practical joker. The person who still turns off the hall light then runs up the stairs so nobody gets her… a mum? Entrusted with a thing of such beauty, so tiny, so needy? Who the hell thought I would be a good candidate for being a mum?! I killed a Cactus. They don’t even need bloody watering!
And so it began, the sleepless nights, the breastfeeding, the stream of visitors. All things you read about yet never truly digest until you’re there. Then it hits you, about day 4 and at 3am when you are soaked in your own breast milk, with a baby that is clinging on to your nipple like its chocolate covered gold. This is for real, she is mine. For good. In between the hallucinations caused by 2 hours sleep in 4 days, the toe curling pain when the latch is wrong, when you don’t know your own name anymore or when you last had a drink, this little baby is all yours. Could you ever believe you could produce something so perfect?
See, everyone spouts so many clichés when you are expecting. How your life will never be the same again, how you will never get a lie in. You listen, you nod, you believe them… but nothing prepares you for the reality.
Then there are the things nobody tells you, like that a breast fed baby feeds every 20 minutes, and then won’t take a bottle. So when you sign up to breast feed, you really sign up. Not just for a week, a month, until they are 18 years old. Ok, so maybe a slight exaggeration but when you are doing your third feed of the night (and your baby is on solids and therefore SHOULD be sleeping through, yeah right!) and its only midnight, part of you thinks “damn you breast feeding Nazi nurse, damn you” .
Before you have your own baby, a crying new born makes you shudder in a way that makes you think “give me a dog any day of the week” When it’s YOUR new born, you think “pass me my baby before I rip your head off and shit down your neck, you monster”, whilst your breasts spray liberally soaking through a breast pad made of steel in seconds. The sound of my baby crying made me want to weep with her, an instinctive but more powerful feeling than anything I have ever felt, knowing I would run through red hot embers in ballet shoes with shredded glass tips to get to her, maiming anything in my path. Nobody warns you about that. Nobody tells you when the midwife does your babies heel prick you will have to sit on your hands to prevent yourself from ripping every hair out of her head.
Everybody tells you how you should do it; how they should sleep, how they should eat, how they should play. Everyone tells you that you will want a rest. Nobody tells you that whilst you will want this rest – strike that, need this rest -you will never be able to let your baby out your sight in order to get the rest you so need. Nobody tells you that your baby is more addictive than crack. That you will wake up hourly, no matter how sleep deprived, just to check she is still there, to smell her or to just listen to her snuffly breathing. And nobody tells you that you will still be doing that when she is 6 months old. Nobody tells you about the overwhelming urge you will get to bite (softly) their bare bum, or even lick them. I regularly have to fight temptation to lick her face, like a dog. I don’t know why this is, and I don’t think it’s in the 0-5 book provided by the midwife. They grow, they tell you that, but they don’t tell you how quickly. The outfit you delicately picked out and wondered if it would be too big, fits her, she looks lovely, you wash it, you put it in a drawer and next week it goes in the eBay pile.
Then it’s how it changes you. Everyone talks about how a baby changes your life, but don’t say how it changes you, how it changes the very person you thought you were. I was proud, feisty (apparently) but shy, crippled with embarrassment for even daring to walk this earth, focused on my work, house proud, cold and practical. Now I know I would fight to the death for her. My house is a mess, my body is ruined, yet I am happy and have purpose for the first time in my life. The cold hearted, emotionally stunted woman (thanks darling!) has changed into a person who fought tears through the three minutes she caught of comic relief, aghast at the cruelty of the world. She tears up at the sight of her baby holding her arms up for a hug. She no longer cares for work; all ambition has gone, along with dignity and sanity. All I want to do for the rest of my life is hold my baby, play with her and do my very best not to screw her up too badly. Nobody tells you that you, and everything you knew about you, changes. But most of all, nobody tells you that you will become one of those sad b*stards who upload photos of their delightful child to facebook on a daily basis, because why wouldn’t the rest of the world be as hooked on your child as you are?
Guest post by Nic
In Sunshine and Shade 