Tag Archives: birth

Z is for zero

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Day zero to be precise: the day when all of those months of planning and anticipation and expectation came to an end and I became a mum.

Moments after this photo was taken, on the Paignton platform of the Dartmouth Steam Railway, my waters broke. I was taken by surprise a little because Arthur actually wasn’t due for a couple more days. I remembered what we’d been told in our antenatal classes, and fully expected that this might not imminently signal the start of labour – we’d been told only to get concerned if things hadn’t started progressing within 48 hours. But half an hour later, just after I’d sat down with my family for lunch, I experienced my first contraction. It was beginning.

You can read the rest of my birth story here.

But what’s most significant about this picture, about the person I was and the thoughts I had on that last day out before Arthur was born, is how much everything changed once he was here.

I thought I knew what to expect. I thought I knew how I would want to do things, what sort of mum I wanted to be, what I would be capable of. But I know now that I really had no idea. It’s been such an incredibly steep learning curve over the past twenty-two months, and my primary teacher has been my son.

And I love that.

I love that for all my love of planning, my tendency to want to be in control of everything all of the time, to want to know what’s coming and anticipate how I’m going to react to it, I’ve actually been able to let go so much.

I can’t say it’s true of other aspects of my life, but I love that where parenting Arthur is concerned I’ve generally managed to let him take the lead in our adventure. And as his second birthday fast approaches, and that bump which transformed into a baby and then a toddler is fast transforming into a little boy, I know that for all that has happened over the past two years, our adventure is still just beginning.

Z is for zero.

 

Joining in with The Alphabet Photography Project over at PODcast. 

Y is for yawn

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This is one of the earliest pictures I have of Arthur. He’d been born less than two days before, and was still very much adjusting to being in the outside world. Everything was new. When he yawned, he scrunched up his big eyes and his tiny fists, and my heart melted.

Just as he was experiencing everything for the first time in those early days, so my world had transformed too into something I barely recognised. Its boundaries had shifted, the things that had seemed important before had become insignificant if not invisible. The edges of the universe had blurred as if to throw into sharp focus this being which had hurtled into its very core.

We didn’t move far from our bed at first. The bed where he was born. We snuggled up against the December cold, a family born along with this precious baby. Others came and went, cooing and crying and declaring his perfection. It was lovely to have them there, but lovelier still when they were gone and it was just us three.

Slowly we adjusted to our changed reality, venturing down the stairs and into the open air, that little being tucked up close beside my heart. Every step we have taken since has been an adventure, but I will never forget the magic of those moments when we lay still, cuddling and stretching and yawning and nurturing, watching and listening and glowing with the wonder of it all.

 

Joining in with The Alphabet Photography Project over at PODcast.