We’re just about to hit the 12 weeks mark and time has flown by. I’m surviving and having a lot more fun than I ever imagined in this season of Motherhood. I’m told it will change in phases and I suppose I’d just have to roll with the punches, in every season of hard.
I feel like I’m driving blind every day on the adventure road trip of a lifetime. Every day/hour, I am doing something for the first time and learning something new, about the baby, about myself, about life.
It’s a new angle and perspective on life – from the baby’s viewpoint and odd to say but another chance at life after cancer, chemo-menopause, years of chronic pain – all that was gone with an uneventful, symptom-free pregnancy. Hormones reset?
Motherhood feels very much like that old Emirates TVC (When was the last time you did something for the first time?), except with tears, poonamis and cries, wails and the works thrown in. We live and learn.
I couldn’t be any further from maternal, but I realised that having a baby is essentially like taking care of a pet human. I feel like we’re growing exponentially as a family – as partners in our marriage as we laugh through our swaddle fails, getting peed on and figuring out how to turn the newborn over during bath time without any accidents – and learning about the baby every minute of every single day.
Now that Baby G communicating more with constant eye contact, punctuating moments with endless cackles and starburst of laughters, it’s been so much fun with our growing dialogue as we move away from my awkward monologues and mundane day to day narrative.
We are surviving well and started sleep training at 8 weeks, it took us 10 days and he sleeps through the night 10 hours straight with 4 feeds a day. I highly recommend Suzy Giordano’s Baby Sleep Solution, it’s the only book I read recommended by my paediatrician and it worked wonders.
I don’t have a hallmark card relationship with my soul-crushing critical Mother so I have little clue what Motherhood is like for the lack of example and often wondered if the role of a Mother – loving, kind, nurturing, present, inspirational etc is real or just a marketing concept?
I read endless social media posts and dedications to Mothers every year on Mother’s Day and feel completely alienated and sad. For that reason, having a child was never part of my agenda – what do I know about mothering?? Why would I bring a living being into the world to suffer? The planet doesn’t need more people. Any trans-generational trauma (it’s said to last 7 generations) should be put to rest by breaking the cycle of having any progeny.
The Universe made plans for me and here I have a life I never imagined possible and experiencing for myself the vast bottomless pit of love you could have for someone. I never really knew the meaning of Motherhood or being a mother until I became one myself, and the best I can do is to try my best to mother mindfully, kindly and consciously.
I had a symptom-free pregnancy and only found out towards the end of my first trimester I was expecting. I didn’t do the folic acid, I was sliding on mats on the French Alps doing Snow Yoga, dipping into hot thermal baths in the snow, drinking copious amounts of alcohol and caffeine for the month I was in Europe and walking about 25,000 steps a day. Not to mention eating plenty of unpasteurised butter, cheese, caviar and raw food. I was pretty anxious and worried about Baby G because I didn’t take any care in the first trimester, and eternally grateful that I carried a healthy happy baby into full-term.
The sheer luck. I didn’t realise that this new chapter was a whole new rebirth. For the first time since cancer, I felt like my old self pre-cancer during pregnancy. It must have been the hormones and body recalibrating itself from chronic pain, menopause and I never forgot the misery of 16 months of immobility with bilateral frozen shoulders; just washing my hair, dressing or feeding myself took an enormous amount of effort with pain killers. Sleeping without painkillers and pills was unheard of.
Thank you life, thank you Universe for the gift of a lifetime. Nobody knows how long I will live, but I hope I live long enough to see my child grow up and become a kind, helpful and useful human being to serve people and the planet in meaningful ways.
