The Wet Patch

Lying in bed having just fed my son, I rolled over and found myself lying in something wet. I started giggling. This giggling soon turned into proper belly laughing, which then turned into a rather manic guffaw interspersed with crying. Hubby, who had looked mildly amused at first and giggled with me asking, “what’s funny,” suddenly looked rather unsure as his laughter tailed off and he looked at me with the look you give a crazy person in a street before you cross the road to avoid them.

I was laughing because it was the umpteenth time since my son had been born that I had found myself lying in an unidentifiable wet patch. For some reason I found this hysterically funny. Hubby did too once he processed what I was saying. I could see his mind quickly working through the amount of times he too had woken up with his hand in something wet and acknowledging that yes, at 6.30am when we would normally be blissfully asleep, we were in fact both trying to find a dry muslin in the pitch black to soak it up, all the while trying to decipher whether it was sick, wee, poo or breast milk. It was either laugh or cry. And neither of us could face anymore wet stuff.

For what I have come to realise five months into being a mummy is that much of motherhood can be defined by things that are wet and are mostly pretty foul.

Think about one of the first things that happen – your waters break. For some women this happens before labour starts. You can be standing in your kitchen enjoying a cuppa and a bit of cake and out of nowhere you start gushing water out of your vagina. For others, like me, it happens once your labour has started. In my case it was in triage, just after they had checked how much my cervix had dilated. They broke all over me. In the leggings I had intended to wear home. They also had merconium in them which basically means my son had done a poo inside me. Not pleasant. For some, they don’t break naturally and therefore need to be broken by a midwife. Really not pleasant.

But it’s once the baby is here that the ‘fluid’ fun really starts.

If you’re breastfeeding, body parts that have thus far just sat on the front of your body and not really done a lot, are suddenly food. And it’s a bit of a shock to the system. Particularly the first time you look down to see milk squirting out of them. I found this very odd and very amusing. The first time it happened I called hubby into the lounge to show him how far I could make it ‘squirt’. Hubby usually has cereal with milk in the morning. I noticed he had toast for about a week after that.

Most women who breastfeed will, at some point, express milk. This is a completely and utterly undignified process using a machine that looks like a mixture between a Victorian torture device and a sex toy. Neither my mum or I had any idea what to expect when I initially plugged this contraption in and were in fits of laughter as my nipple began to take on a life of its’ own, intermittently being sucked in and out of the torture device by a vacuum.

I do express, but I really dislike doing so. My least favourite experience was one night over Christmas. I was sitting on my sofa watching Downton Abbey, pumping away, when I looked down to see what look liked strawberry milkshake. The milk in the bottle was pink. Bright pink. I literally had a panic attack. Hubby, who is usually very calm in these situations also looked worried. He even googled it. It turns out that this happens occasionally because a small bit of blood gets in to the milk from your nipple. Oh, is that all? My nipple is bleeding and I’m squirting out strawberry Frijj. The glamour is too much.

Another of the perils of breastfeeding is forgetting to put your breast pads in resulting in leaking milk. I was recently in the pub chatting to a male friend who looked horrified when I announced I was putting on my cardi to, “cover up my leaking boob wet patches”. To make matters worse I was wearing a grey t-shirt and anyone who sweats a lot knows this is not a good colour to get wet.

Pee. Another liquid that you end up dealing with a lot. Especially if you have a little boy because when they wee without a nappy on it goes everywhere. The distances my son can reach are actually rather impressive. Not so impressive is that is usually ends up on me. If this had happened before I had a child I would have been horrified. Now it’s like water off a ducks’ back. A few weeks ago I had forgotten I was wearing a vest top which my son had urinated on. I continued to wear it unwashed for three days. Motherhood has turned me into a pissy tramp.

Poo. Until babies start solids you can most definitely regard this as a ‘liquid’. If you’re breastfeeding then it is yellow, runny and looks a bit like it has mustard seeds in it. It is also amazing how much can come out of something so small. And it gets everywhere. Hubby was changing baby’s nappy a few weeks ago and I suddenly heard, “shit, shit, shit, help”. I ran in to discover hubby had taken said nappy off, but our son hadn’t quite finished doing his business. Hubby was frantically looking for the baby wipes whilst trying to catch the offending poo that was gushing out of our boy like molten lava from Vesuvius. So disturbed by it was he, that I’ve seen the fear in his eyes every time he’s changed a nappy since.

But for me, the liquid of liquids, the ‘wet’ that has so far come to dominate most of the last five months of my life, is vomit. My son has reflux which means I am constantly covered in sick. It’s in my hair. it’s on my clothes. It’s all over my bed, sofa and floor and on one very unfortunate day, it was in my mouth. Forget the wheel and the internet, my eternal gratitude goes to whoever invented the baby wipe.

Bless him, my little dude leaves his calling card wherever we go. Thankfully he doesn’t seem seem bothered by it at all. In fact, he usually just smiles and giggles through it. It’s a good thing he’s so cute – it makes it easier when he pukes over our friends and family and you see their faces as they realise he has just regurgitated milk from my boobs all over them. As my friend once put it, “I’m not sure what’s worse, being covered in sick or knowing that it’s from your boobies”. She should try sleeping in my bed. 

The Boob

Long before I gave birth I knew I would breastfeed. I do believe ‘breast is best’ (even though that is the most annoying phrase ever) and I had decided that I would try it and hope it worked for me and my baby. I figured it would be the most natural thing in the world. My baby would be born, he would search out my breast, instantly ‘latch on’ (another annoying phrase) and nature would take it course. Women have been feeding this way since time began and I thought it would be easy.

Oh how wrong I was. Not only is it one of the hardest things I have ever done, but also the pressure to do it and the guilt that surrounds it, is something I never anticipated.

From the moment my son was born I felt that I had no other option. “Is mum ready to feed now”? “Mum should really think about feeding now”. Err, mum has just pushed a 7lb 2oz human out of her vagina. Do you think she could have a minute?

Terrified that my baby would be starving, I managed to sit up in bed and start the feeding process. You would have thought, given how adamant the midwife was for me to begin feeding, that she might have given me some help or shown me the best way for the baby to latch. Nope. It was just my baby, my nipple and me. Better get on with it then.

My one piece of advice to any preggers ladies who plan to breastfeed – do as much research as possible beforehand and get a breastfeeding specialist to show you how to get the baby to latch on properly. It saves a lot of time and pain. I hadn’t really over-thought the whole process (I tend to over-think most things, so this was a rarity), but I’ve since realised that the reason I over-think things is because they’re then easier to deal with when they happen.

So, having not ‘over-thunk’ it, I hadn’t realised how much of a science breastfeeding was. I hadn’t really thought about what ‘your milk coming in’ would actually mean, or how it regulates depending on how much your baby needs. I also thought that demand feeding meant feeding every time my baby made a noise.

About two days after giving birth my milk ‘came in’. My boobs suddenly turned into painful rock hard solid lumps that I had no idea what to do with. The health visitor came to visit and declared that I had ‘a lot of milk’ and that my baby needed to drain it by feeding. No shit Sherlock. Unfortunately my baby wasn’t ‘draining it’ quickly enough and my boobs became engorged.

My baby also wasn’t ‘latched on properly’ meaning my nipples were red, cracked, bleeding and so sore I couldn’t even wrap a towel around my chest after a shower. I cried in pain every time he fed. I wanted to give up and was dreaming of bottles, but the guilt was too strong. I thought this was simply something that I had to suffer and according to everything I read online, ‘it would get easier’. When? When would it get easier? When my child was five and my nipples had fallen off?

Luckily for me I was granted a visit by the breastfeeding angel, Patricia, who arrived at my house and set about sorting out my boobs. She taught me how to get my son to latch on properly. She also explained why they felt like they did and showed me how to get rid of the engorgement. Cue the rather amusing sight of my mum, my hubby and me taking it in turns to ‘milk’ my boobs by hand whilst holding hot flannels on them to encourage the milk to flow. Any sense of dignity had by this stage completely gone. I had turned into a cow.

Everyone was right, the pain did ease and once my milk was properly established the hard boulders disappeared. Amazingly my nipples also recovered. Patricia told me that the skin on your nipples is like paper, which is why they can hurt so much, but that this paper-thin skin also heals very quickly. Although it didn’t feel quick. Believe me.

Next came my baby wanting to feed all the time. In fact, for the first four weeks he fed almost all day. Every day. One day he fed for  what must have been ten hours non-stop. I didn’t know what to do. Surely this couldn’t go on? Surely he wouldn’t carry on like this for the next 6 months? The thought that he might, made me want to stop. When I thought about this, however, the guilt yet again kicked in. I banished the idea from my mind for fear I would be struck by lightning or attacked by a giant, rampaging and revengeful breast. And again I was told that him feeding so often ‘would become easier’. When? When?!

Around this time the sickness started. After every feed there was vomit. Sometimes during a feed there was vomit. I was told I was overfeeding him and that perhaps I should start trying to spread out the feeds. I did this. That he didn’t like it was made clear by the screaming. I felt guilty in case he was hungry, so I then fed him. And sure enough, he was sick again. He was then diagnosed with reflux. I asked if it was because I had so much milk, that perhaps I should try bottle-feeding him (I asked this because I had at this stage introduced one bottle of expressed breast milk a day so hubby could take over one feed and baby was less sick from a bottle). The doctor looked like she was about to have an aneurism before insisting in no uncertain terms that I should continue to breastfeed.

For me, the eternal dilemma with regards to breastfeeding is whether the baby is getting enough. Not knowing how much he was eating was my biggest challenge. Could I simply let go of the control and go with the flow?

In the first few weeks he was gaining a lot of weight. Once the reflux started, however, he began to gain a lot less. In fact at the week five weigh-in he dropped down from the 25^th to the 9^th percentile. I nearly had a panic attack.

At this stage I once again considered formula feeding, but was again advised against it. In actual fact I didn’t really want to stop breastfeeding, but I had started to wonder who I was breastfeeding for. Would he be better off for me being able to see exactly what he was having compared to what he brought up? Apparently not according to my doctor. And so the internal battle continued.

Oh and I also got mastitis. It wasn’t pleasant. The answer? Keep on feeding.

On reflection though, however difficult I’ve found breastfeeding over the past four months, it’s also been incredibly rewarding and conducive to establishing a routine which both baby and I are comfortable with. I also love the feeling I get when I’m feeding him. I love looking at his little face as he concentrates on his meal. I love it when he finishes feeding and looks up at me with his big blue eyes, happy and content. And I love how natural it feels. Plus when they go well the feeds are pretty quick, painless and a million times easier than having to sterilise a bottle before every feed.

It is also the most powerful weapon I have with regards to every testing aspect of motherhood and I’m not sure what I’ll do without it. Hungry? Fretful? Teething? Bored? Tired? Can’t sleep? Hysterically crying for no reason? Whip out the old boob and Bob’s your uncle, the crying stops.

In fact, the boob now gets whipped out here, there and everywhere. In the beginning I was much more self conscious about where I fed and who I fed in front of. Now I don’t care. Half of North London has seen my nipples. The other day I fed him in the hairdressers between my colour and blow dry.

Yet the eternal breastfeeding question still rages on in my mind. How much is he getting? Is it enough? Should he be bigger? Would he be bigger if I formula-fed him?

He now seems firmly set on the 9^th percentile, but I’m finally ok with that. He’s healthy, bright, forever smiling and very alert. He’s amazing. I could do without the constant vomiting, but I’m assured once solids start that will resolve its’ self.

When I got pregnant I wasn’t sure for how long I would breastfeed. Six months felt like a lifetime. Now, as six months gets nearer, I’m not sure I want to stop and this surprises me. I honestly never thought I would carry on for this long and given the battle I’ve had with it, I’m shocked I’m still going. But I’m glad I have. I feel lucky I can do it. I’ve got friends who had to stop for various reasons despite huge effort and sacrifices on their part.

Hubby will often get in from work to find baby crying as he’s seemingly struggling to feed, while I’m shedding tears of frustration. He’s therefore keen for me to stop at the sixth month point. Seeing how stressful the whole thing has been for me has not been easy for him to witness either But I wonder if he’ll still think like that when he’s preparing a bottle at 3am!

I partly want to stop, but again the old guilt raises it head. Am I a bad mother for stopping at six months when I could carry on? The main reason for stopping would be for me to have my body back. But even writing this, I feel a huge sense of guilt. And so the dilemma continues.

At this rate I’ll be feeding him when he’s starting school and I really don’t want to be ‘that’ mum.

Everything Changes

When you’re pregnant for the first time the one thing you can rely on people telling you is how much your life will change. Of course you agree. After all, you are about to give birth to a little person who is going to take over your every waking moment. But meanwhile you secretly think that they’re exaggerating, that things can’t change that much.

There is also a part of you that thinks, ‘well maybe your life was totally different, but I’m going to ensure my life doesn’t change that much. Hubby and I will still be going out for dinner and I’m sure we’ll get occasional lie-ins. The baby will fit into our routine.’

And then your baby arrives and you soon realise there is not a chance this will happen and that ‘they’ were 100% correct. Your life as you previously knew it is no more.

Looking back, I was prepared for the most obvious changes. I knew my social life would never be the same again. I knew that going out on a whim, staying out for a few drinks after work, a couple of drinks on a Saturday afternoon turning into a massive 12 hour session would probably never happen again. I knew that hubby and I would never again be able to do anything spontaneous – holidays, cinema, dinner. Certainly not without a huge amount of organisation and pre-planning. And of course that negates the ‘spontaneous’. I knew that henceforth hubby and I would always have a child with us and that that child would be our absolute priority.

What I wasn’t prepared for (and neither was hubby) were the tiny changes. The small day-to-day things that you take for granted in pre-baby world.

Hubby and I are creatures of habit. If we had no plans of an evening we would get in from work around the same time each night, eat dinner, cuddle up on the sofa and watch a box set (we love a box set). We really enjoyed this. No pressure, loving each others company, watching telly and eating – perfect. When baby arrived this routine was the first thing to go completely out of the window.

For at least the first six weeks I can count on one hand the times hubby and I stopped for a moment and had a cuddle, let alone a non-baby related chat. Our conversations now invariably involve our son’s nappies, the colour of our son’s nappies, the frequency of our son’s nappies, how many times our son has vomited, whether it was a lot of vomit or just a small amount, and whether it looks like he has brought his whole feed up. What we chat about the most though is sleep, or lack of it. This is something we discuss all the time – because we don’t get any.

Yet whilst things have changed in many ways for us as a couple, this doesn’t compare to how much my life has altered (not that it’s a competition, hubby. Well, okay, if you insist, I guess it is and I win hands down!) You see, hubby still gets to go to work five days a week and still, despite having a child manages to retain some sense of what of his life was like before. For five days a week he has structure and routine and control. I have the opposite. And for a total control freak, that’s far from ideal.

I had never really thought about the fact I wouldn’t be able to leave my baby alone. Particularly in the early days and certainly not for any longer than the time it takes to run into another room to grab a drink.

I rarely go to the toilet alone. Instead I sit, child on lap, pulling silly faces to distract him from the fact that he’s sat on his mummy as she pees. I have had my upper lip waxed with him sat on my knee and I had a Brazilian whilst shushing and rocking his buggy as he woke up early from a sleep (I won’t be telling him that when he’s 18).

My son sits in the bathroom whilst I shower (which I now do in about 30 seconds in case he kicks off). Occasionally I do this whilst he has his morning nap, but spend the whole time in tense anticipation that I’m about to hear his screams through the monitor, which teeters precariously on the edge of the bath, and will have to run to him soaking wet.

It’s only in the last few weeks, since feeding and sleeping has become more of a routine, that hubby and I have actually been able to both eat a meal together and do so with two hands. I’d previously been using one hand to support my son as he breastfed, which meant he became used to having food dropped on him. What with him being massaged with olive oil and me dropping lettuce coated in balsamic vinegar onto him, the poor thing smelt constantly like a salad.

Three months in and things have gotten easier. I’ve managed to have lunch with a friend whilst hubby babysat (although I did spend the journey there and back looking at photos of my boy) and the box sets have made a welcome return. Yes, my life couldn’t have changed any more, but I wouldn’t change it back for anything.

The First Night

During my pregnancy I often thought about what the first night back at home would be like. We had gone through nine months of pregnancy talking about the what if’s and the maybe’s, wondering what sex our baby would be, worrying about the labour, and thinking about how much our lives would change. But for me, the first night home was something that was always at the back of my mind.

Every week I received emails telling me about my baby’s development in the womb. My weekly antenatal classes concentrated on the stages of labour and ways of dealing with them. But nothing, nothing prepares you for entering the hospital as a couple and leaving with a baby that is relying on you 100%. This absolutely terrified me.

As you may have gathered, I’m not a fan of hospitals. I was adamant that no matter what, I was going home the same night I had given birth. Okay, I know this is highly unlikely given the chance of complications, but being forced to stay in on my own in a gross hospital bed that someone would have definitely died in was really worrying me. For some reason thinking of a hospital ward conjures up images of a makeshift hospital in the First World War, full of people wailing and screaming in pain. I was more scared of this than the birth.

My little man arrived at 12.18pm with no complications, meaning I was able to leave the same day. Unfortunately he had to have eight hours of observation due to meconium in my waters. Provided the doctor could get to us on her rounds though, this would still mean we could leave by 9.30pm. By 8pm I was getting nervous no one would make it to us in time and I would be forced to stay in for the night. This was not happening. Cue my mum and hubby taking it in turns to mill around the midwives station asking when the doctor would be here.

Fortunately the birthing centre was very quiet that day so we were able to stay in our own private room all day. It was amazing. It was like I’d given birth in a private hospital (I would definitely recommend having a baby at Homerton hospital). There was no way I was going from this to the ward. I’d been packed and ready to go by 2pm.

At 8.30pm exactly, the doctor arrived to carry out my baby’s checks. Some of them looked rather painful. I tried not to cry. I also tried not to let the fact she looked about twelve worry me too much. Once this was done, we managed to get him dressed, change his nappy and feed him – and he was still breathing. So far so good.

And that was it. Twelve hours after arriving at the hospital we were walking out with our son into the big wide world. Thank God my mum was with us – my very own safety blanket.

I’ll never forget the feeling I had as I walked through our front door holding my baby and thinking, “I am now responsible for this tiny little person. I am petrified I am going to drop him, or squash him, or kill him. I am literally going to watch him every minute of every day in case something happens to him. I am never going to sleep again.”

It was at this point hubby and I looked at each other with a ‘what do we do with him now’ look. Neither of us had the answer so we just sat and stared at him, taking it in turns to check he was still breathing.

We had now been awake for more than 24 hours. Despite the adrenaline coursing through our bodies we did finally go to bed. Not that we slept.

We put him down in the moses basket. He cried. I nearly had a panic attack. “What’s wrong with him?” I said to hubby. “No idea,” he replied. We called my mum. “Mum, what’s wrong with him?” As we all stood looking at him I wondered whether the moses basket was too big. Turns out it was. We put a smaller cocoon inside the moses basket and filled it with a sheep skin rug. He stopped crying. I felt a huge sense of relief and achievment. I’d successfully guessed what was wrong with him! “Maybe I can do this,” I thought to myself.

He settled down, but cried again soon after. “What’s wrong with him?” said hubby. “No idea,” I replied. My Mum came in and deciphered he needed his bum changed. Phew. We’d worked it out again. It only took three of us. It was at this point that hubby and I agreed we’d take it in shifts to stay awake and watch him to make sure he didn’t stop breathing. Hubby agreed to stay awake first so I could sleep. And I did. As it turns out we both did. The next thing I knew it was light outside and hubby had jumped out of bed in a panic “Shit, I fell asleep on my watch”. We both leant into the moses basket and prodded him. He was fine. He was also now crying at the shock of being woken up to find the two of us staring at him.

So we did it. After 9 months of pregnancy and labour, we’d brought our son home and survived the first night. What I hadn’t thought about was the second night, third night and every night after that. Hubby and I looked at each other through very tired eyes as the realisation dawned….things will never be the same again.

Hospital Baggage

Five weeks into the whirlwind of being a new parent I’ve finally got round to unpacking my hospital bag. BC (before child) it would never have taken so long. I’d actually forgotten about it and had simply moved it into a corner under the Mulberry handbag that is now gathering dust alongside anything else remotely fashionable or stylish, and clothing that doesn’t have easy access to my boob.

Going through the bag and looking at its meticulously planned contents, I realised how much my life had changed since I packed it all those weeks ago. I thought this for two reasons.

1) The way I had obsessed over getting every single thing from various ‘hospital bag check lists’ that I had researched prior to my son’s birth.

2) The fact that due to the speed and unpredictable nature of his arrival – the start of everything being unpredictable – I had used pretty much nothing from it.

BC the hospital bag was a slight obsession of mine. Once I got to 35 weeks it became my thing to do, the last piece of the pregnancy puzzle to complete before baby’s arrival. I became consumed with the idea that the baby would arrive and I would have nothing for it to wear. I started to think I would need a suitcase, not an over night bag, for the other 300 things I needed to buy.

So, getting the bag ready became a mammoth task. Hubby and I looked at various websites to get an idea of what you needed, as well as the list that we had been given in our antenatal class and recommendations from friends. It was a long list. And one Saturday morning we headed to Oxford Street, list and pen in hand and on a mission.

First stop was Primark. Not a fun place to be on a Saturday. This was for nighties. I bought two – one to give birth in and one to wear afterwards. I was pretty sure the one I gave birth in would get ruined. I also bought a light dressing gown for ‘walking around the ward’. I wore none of them. Actually that’s a lie. I wore the dressing gown home. I had to. My waters broke in the leggings I had intended to wear. For the journey home I also wore pyjama bottoms, fluffy socks, my Converse trainers and a dressing gown. I was not a pretty sight as I shuffled out.

Luckily my mother in law had bought me all my mini toiletries so that was one less stress. I used none of them. I could barely lift my head from the bed let alone contemplate a shower. I was also told to get water spray to cool down my face during labour – I think I would have punched someone if they had started to spray that into my face. Two bottles of it are still sat in my bedroom. Perhaps I’ll get some use out of it in the summer.

Other things I was obsessed about getting:

Lavender oil (this took me about 3 weeks to find and trips to numerous heath food shops) which was meant to be calming during labour if used to help massage ones’ back. I would have punched someone if they had tried to do that. As you probably guessed – it wasn’t used.

Arnica tablets – I took them on and off for about 3 days (apparently they help with bruising). They taste like sweets and appeared to do nothing. The other thing I so desperately needed?

Bendy straws. Everyone in my antenatal class said to get them as it’s important to keep hydrated and it means someone can keep giving you water whilst you are using you hands to either punch something or claw your husbands skin. You’d think it would be easy to find them. It’s not. I eventually found them in Ikea. I am now the proud owner of 800 multicoloured straws. I didn’t use one of them, but now have a lifetime supply.

For me (and hubby) the most important thing on the list was ‘snacks’. It has been drilled into us in our antenatal classes that food is the most important thing during labour as you can be in there for hours. Being greedy people, we didn’t need telling twice. We bought loads. Unfortunately I ended up eating most of it beforehand at home and forgot to replace it. All we ended up with was a bag of yoghurt-coated raisins. We ate them about a week after he was born. Plus, the last thing I could ever have contemplated during those few hours of torture was eating. It took me about a week to get my appetite back.

Lastly I had to buy clothes for my baby to wear. This I found the most scary. This meant we were actually having a person that we would have to dress and look after. This made it very real. A few weeks beforehand I had to have a growth scan, as they were worried my bump was too small. It wasn’t and everything was fine, but it meant I knew that if I went full term my baby would be early 7lb. They were right, he was 7lb 2oz. This also meant I had to buy tiny baby clothes as newborn would be too big. We found a lovely set in Mothercare with vests and trousers and baby grows. It was very cute and meant my baby had a fancy outfit on his first outing in the outside world.

I had also been sent a beautiful set of clothes from a company called The Essential One. It was designed to give you everything you need to get you started at the beginning and came in an array of unisex colours. He has lived in them ever since. It’s a shame he’s grown out of them now.

So, as we left the hospital and I carried my son to the car I looked around and was genuinely surprised to see that the world was carrying on as normal. Did no one realise that the most precious being in the whole world had just been born to hubby and me? Why wasn’t everything standing still? As I thought this I looked round at hubby to share my joy, but he was struggling under the weight of my hospital bag.

A Natural Breeder

The day finally arrived, on the 23^rd October 2012. Two days past my due date I gave birth to a beautiful baby boy. He is without a doubt, the best, most amazing thing that’s ever happened to me in my life. I am completely and utterly blown away by him and to say I love him more than anything else on this whole planet is an understatement.

Throughout the last nine months I have taken every step possible to look after myself in pregnancy and to prepare myself for birth. I have eaten well, exercised, practiced yoga every week, taken vitamins religiously, and attended a brilliant antenatal class in my local area. As the due date approached I felt ready, eager even, for it to start. I knew it was going to hurt, but after nine months of waiting I was more than ready to meet my baby.

What I hadn’t really thought about was that they don’t call it ‘labour’ for nothing. And nothing can prepare you for what it actually feels like.

I’d started to get ‘signs’ a few weeks before he actually arrived – period type cramps and a ‘show’ which appeared a week before he arrived. Having never done this before I started to think that every little pang or cramp was labour starting. I became obsessed with researching what it feels like when it starts and trying to work out if this was ‘it’. Despite reams of information and hundreds of discussion boards, all I could decipher was that ‘you’ll know when it’s labour’.

I found this really annoying. Why couldn’t anyone describe the pain? Is it like some secret club where all details must be kept fully confidential once you’ve been ‘initiated’?

But, then my labour started and guess what….’I knew’.

It started in the early hours of Tuesday morning and by 4am I knew these contractions weren’t going away. They hurt, but nothing compared to what was to come. By 6am I called my mum and told her she needed to come now. At this point hubby and I had started the breathing and moving exercises.  I also stuck the TENS machine on. It didn’t do a lot. In fact I think I ripped it off as it was just annoying me.

I was determined to do as much of my labour at home as I really didn’t want to go in and be sent home having not dilated enough. By 9.15am I knew it was time to go to the hospital. The car journey is one I would rather forget. Contractions and speed bumps? Not pleasant.

As we arrived at the hospital the contractions were coming thick and fast. It was at this point I turned feral. The noises coming out of me were something I imagine you could hear on safari, or in the woods late at night….terrifying and indescribable. I should also point out that at this point I was walking down the hospital corridor next to Costa coffee. It wasn’t my finest hour. Everyone looked terrified as they sipped their morning latte’s.

So in we go to the triage at about 10am and I have to be checked so they can ensure I’m over 4cm dilated. All I’m thinking is that there is no way I’m going home and if they even try to send me I’m going to chain myself to the nearest midwife. Luckily I am. My waters also break….no going back now.

I won’t go into too much detail at this point. During the pregnancy stage I don’t think I’d have liked to have read the small print. But I will say that it intensified very quickly. I dilated at the speed of light and he came into this world at 12.18pm. Even if I’d wanted any, I’d have had no time for any drugs. The midwives were shocked considering it was a first baby. According to them I’m a, “natural breeder with an ideal cervix for giving birth”. That’s one I won’t be putting on the CV.

It’s hard to find the words to describe what it was like holding my baby for the first time. It was the most amazing feeling I’ve ever had. Totally worth every bit of the labour. And despite the pain, I found the experience of labour to be quite astounding. I feel quite honoured to have gone through it.

My hubby was an amazing support, breathing through every contraction with me and never once complaining as I was hanging off him digging my nails in and wailing in his ear. He was my biggest cheerleader as I brought our son into the world and this has made our relationship even more precious. And having my mum in my labour was incredibly reassuring. Sometimes, no matter how old you are, the only thing that makes it ok is your mum.  And even though I know she struggled watching me in pain it has brought us even closer.

So there you have it. After 40 weeks, my new life as a mummy starts. I’ve decided to keep the blog going as I venture into motherhood and experience all the trials and tribulations, ups and downs, and firsts that my new life throws at me. Here’s to the next 18 years (and counting)!

Maternity Leave

Something wonderful happened to me last week. I started my maternity leave.

When I told my boss all those months ago that I was pregnant, leaving work to have my baby seemed like a rather alien concept. I told him, we discussed when I would leave, I suggested possible replacements, but I could never actually envisage the time coming where I handed over my whole job whilst I went off to have my fist child. I’ll admit I found it all rather daunting. It was almost like I was having a conversation about someone else.

That was until I got to 34 weeks, couldn’t even bend over to do my shoes up and nearly cried every morning as I dragged my big fat preggers arse out of bed to get on the tube. By then, I was more than ready to leave.

I thought I would really struggle to leave work. I love my job and I’ve worked hard to get to the position I am in. The thought of simply handing it over to someone else for nine months made me love it even more. Who would do it?  What if they were better than me? What if everyone liked them so much they wouldn’t even want me to come back? What if I go back and am slowly ousted only to be replaced by the job stealer? Men never have to think about anything like this. Funny that.

Luckily for old control freak me, I was responsible for finding my replacement. This definitely made the process a lot easier. I could not have handled anyone else deciding who would be the ‘new me’.

I had thought as time got closer to my leaving that things would ease up somewhat. But alas, this was not to be. Ironically, it was the busiest time of my year and rather than slowly packing up and going, I was stressed, manic and feeling the strain. This presented me with two problems. Firstly a reluctance to leave without seeing all my projects through – this would, however be impossible without taking multi-tasking to a whole new level. Secondly a great feeling of guilt that I wasn’t able to concentrate fully on my baby as work was taking precedence.

I’ll admit, the minute my maternity cover walked through the door, the sense of relief was palpable. I had this person in my mind for a long time and luckily she was available. She is brilliant and I feel more than happy knowing she will do a fabulous job. I literally jumped on her with a booklet of handover notes as I slowly felt the weight lift from my shoulders. Poor woman, if she had wanted to slowly ease into the role she didn’t stand a chance. She must have noticed the crazed look in my eye as she got on with things immediately. I could have kissed her.

As my departure drew nearer, I felt a lot better than I thought I would. I felt sad to say goodbye to the girl I work so closely with every day, but I also felt a massive shift. I felt like a different person. I felt like a mum and I felt more than ready to embrace my career change. As I said goodbye the significance of what I was doing hit me. I was leaving as a woman who goes into the office every day, who has structure and routine and who knows what is happening from one day to the next to a woman stepping in to a life of the total and utter unknown. Terrified? Yes. Excited?! More than words can say.

I’ll admit I still have my Blackberry on. It’ll probably take a few weeks to let go of my third arm. A bit like a baby, I’m having to slowly wean myself away. But I’ll have to, I have another job to do. I’m going to be a mother. Eek!

I have realised since leaving that I am stickler for routine. I spent the first week with something to do every day and diarised my life like a job. I shopped, cleaned, organised, had ‘meetings’ (with friends for lunch) and generally kept myself very busy. It is only now, in my second week, that I am finally allowing myself to relax. I almost have to force myself to do this, but I am enjoying it. I’m baking cakes like they’re going out of fashion (I don’t think this is nesting, I think it’s so I can eat them) and I’m watching as much trash TV as I can possibly get my hands on (although I am drawing the line at Jeremy Kyle – I can’t be ‘that’ type of mum).