As I alluded to in my previous post (however short compared to my usual sporadic ramblings here), I didn’t manage to post before I gave birth. In fact, I didn’t manage to do a whole host of things because I, technically, started latent labour at 38 weeks and 5 days, eventually giving birth at our local hospital at 39 weeks. Ie. a week early.
Certainly not my July baby! This makes June even more of a cluttered month, but I surprise myself by not caring. I surprise myself by how little I care about a lot of things now. Giving birth–or, perhaps, the act of having an Earthside child now–seems to have imbued me with a strength of mind, a confidence that even the pregnancy glow didn’t give me.
I have a birth story written, but I’m not sure that’s something I strictly want to share all of on the blog. In short, it was a positive experience for me because I was able to utilise my hypnobirthing training, as well as stay strong to my ethos that my body was always made to grow and birth babies, hence a higher-than-average physical-pain tolerance, and I didn’t need to cry “epidural” at any point. Alas, as much as births are like, I did not get the birth I’d have preferred, thanks to a baby who moved her way around back-to-back and waters that trickled away over 48 hours before the IV oxytocin made any progress in dilating me further than 6cm. (And, believe me, I knew when my body had moved into the transition period of 7cm – 10cm!).
The more I think about it, the more I realise how many facets there are to my daughter’s birth, and how many different ways I could tell it, how many different pieces and sidelines there were. Because those three days I was in various stages of labour will be ingrained into my mind – hopefully forever.
As L&D nurse Nurse Zabe says in her final point of the video below, one thing that birth partners can/should be doing for their birthing people is discussing the birth afterwards. This is primarily to help the mental health of the birthing person – after all, they’ve just gone through a probably-painful, likely-lifechanging experience, and they need to process this in their own way.
Nevertheless, I now have a little girl, who fills my life with such extraordinary light and love.
I posted the other day on Instagram how I’m sometimes hit with a sense of dissassociation – of not really believing that I’m finally here, that she’s finally here in our family.
We had almost four years of marriage without a baby – but the world hasn’t rocked immensely or fallen off its axis now that she’s here. Life is just normal – no: natural. And maybe I’m just one of those mums for whom the newborn stage is easier. I give my night hours to her when she needs it; I find the day feeds a blissful mode of connecting to her. She’s a crazy bubba whose personality bubbles up – at almost 11 weeks at this time of posting she’s learning how to almost *almost* laugh and is enjoying when family members play with her.
And I look forward to seeing how she grows and changes and matures into her full personhood. I’m so blessed to have been given the chance to be her Mumma.
And if you’re wondering about the maths in the title, that comes from the two cats, who are still very much our babies. It’s not even the craziest family – but here we are, building up our little world.
Alexandrina Brant 