My Small Motherhood Achievement

I think it was a birthday present. We didn’t manage to save them all but the Paddington Snap had been quickly stashed in my backpack where it slowly worked its way down to coexist alongside sand from last year’s summer, some socks and a bow-tie.

I haven’t been the most present mother lately and tensions are running high at home, with my boy determined to defy even the slightest instruction in his quest for autonomy, his desire to be heard. He is lonely, he is bored. He wants to play fight and most days I just long for peace and calm.

“Judah can you just—"
“Can you NOT"
“Please just—"

More often that not it is mummy who needs to be put in time out.

We were at baby group on Friday and yet again Judah was bored. He began to rifle through my bag, as he is wont to do, and out came the cards. Baby Violet was asleep in the sling so I found that I had time to play with him. I let him win a couple of times but he was pretty quick. I liked it when we were nearly the same speed and he ended up hitting my hand. I love his laugh.

He is such a traditional little child really, an Enid Blyton boy, who would love nothing more to be packed off for the day with a picnic and some jolly chums to play cards and have adventures.

I think he sensed that he had found a "way in" (he is so smart) and again today when the baby was napping and I sat down next to him on the sofa and there was no whining, no stroppiness, he simply asked if we could play Paddington snap.

I love the way he says Paddington snap.

I love the way he says he has sharp eyes to spot the match and furrows his brow.

I love the way he enunciates dramatically, putting emphasis in all the right places. He is a born performer.

I love the way he indignantly insists that he is paying attention after I win.

I love the way he marvels that there is a clock called BIG BEN.

I felt no frustration, only love.

There was eye contact, communication, jokes, good-natured competition. I marvelled at his humour and his charm.

It was then that I realised I have been so stressed about him not getting ‘quality time’. We go to soft play so he can burn off energy and I can work on my phone. We go to play dates so he can socialise with other children and I can vent to another mum. We run around everywhere on these insane errands and life admin. The game of snap took ten minutes. But he loved every second.

The vision in my head I have of ‘quality time’ tends to be us baking together, painting together, adventuring together, and a lot of the time is totally unrealistic. I will always fail and resent myself for it. I was allowing that resentment to bubble over and spoil any chance we ever had for connection.

The baby woke up and I popped her in her high chair, she is getting so big now… she is able to watch now...

What if quality time was pockets of ten minutes in an ordinary day where he gets undivided attention?

What if that was enough?

The guilt on my chest might lift and I might find that without that pressure I could feel more free to watch and enjoy the child I have in front of me, not the one in my head who is missing out on all the things I’m not giving him.

With small achievements comes confidence and I know this applies to most of our journey as parents. I remember the first time I took both children out together. I remember when I cracked doing bedtime with them both. It's the little things that seem insurmountable at the time. 

So thank you to whoever gifted us the Paddington snap - I never knew how useful it would be!

When Rebel Girls Become Intuitive Mothers

I am young for a birth worker. I had my son when I was 22, having wanted a baby since I was about 16.

One thing that’s been swirling around my head for a while now, something I’ve noticed about my generation of girls that makes me infinitely proud - is how much we have reclaimed motherhood.

These are the women who twelve years ago were backcombing their hair, taking the first selfies, mixing vodka and energy drink behind city hall and stumbling home to their unsuspecting parents. Getting their first piercings in Blue Banana and stealing each other’s boyfriends and standing up for what they believed in.

And these girls became… mothers.

Who are not afraid to be different.

Along with rejecting conventionality we decided to reject leaving babies to cry. We rejected the idea that holding our babies would spoil them. Ideas that have to be explained with accompanying evidence to others, to tell them it really is okay, we seem to have intuitively understood. We would often choose to share our bed with our babies than a partner.

Seeing the beauty in birth from the women who spent hours in the tattooist's chair, who understand the idea of transformation through pain.

These women are fighting the older generation for their right to breastfeed their babies to natural term, often coming up against huge opposition and criticism. This shows exceptional strength of character.

These are the women fighting for their children's individuality to be respected, who want to find peaceful solutions and limit damage done.

Then the radical honesty that accompanies these friendships – women of my generation have never pretended to be okay, they acknowledge that days with little children are hard, but they’re committed to capturing the beauty too, in lives that have always been shared on social media.

The beautiful baby carriers contrasted against tattooed skin.

I smile wryly as I think of the little babies whose mental image of ‘mama’ is skin a beautifully coloured canvas for little fingers to stroke, glossy hair tickling them as they feed and shining hoops in a smiling face. I wonder if they think that’s what women look like. I hope they do.

I’m so proud of these rebel girls who have embraced intuitive mothering. And I know that the best way to make them laugh is to ask them what their myspace name was.

The Birth Was The Easy Part

Having recently appeared on BBC Wales News and BBC Radio Wales talking about my freebirth, the thoughts that have been running around my head are along the line of…

“Woman gives birth without any help” – is this honestly news? It shouldn’t be.

The birth was beautiful, magical, empowering, affirming, but I don’t think it should be the exception. It shouldn’t be a spectacle. I think the majority of women are physically capable of birthing without assistance. I know that most would also rather not, and that’s okay too. I think whatever kind of birth a woman has it should be all those things.

When I think about the baby and the journey we have been on in her short life so far, it really feels like the birth was the easy bit. We talk about birth as though it is the main event, the pinnacle of our achievement.

And yet I have been told by women they felt me in the birth room even though I wasn’t there, just from the work we’d done together during their pregnancy. I know some colleagues who barely made a birth and then poured their heart and soul into postnatal care, where they worked themselves to exhaustion like never before.

The birth is the intermission. The pause.

Things that were harder than giving birth…

The stressful pregnancy that nearly broke me where the only light I could see was the one in my womb.

Moving all my belongings, clothing and food, from one refuge to the next at an hour’s notice in the rain and the dark. I hadn’t washed my dishes and the baby was screaming and Judah was so tired but we couldn’t stay a moment longer. Dragging everything through a million layers of security, getting soaked and lost in a strange part of the city.

Making myself officially homeless, involving an all day wait in the housing options centre, overheated and overcrowded, with a fussy feeding baby. Not enough food for me and Judah so I went without. Sweat dripping down me and Judah running riot, biting through his tongue, blood everywhere – but we couldn’t miss our turn. When his tablet ran out of charge just as we made it to the interview room and he growled in my face and knocked his Ribena all over the floor and I couldn’t even hear what the woman was saying.

Crashing another car. Sitting in the car on a hill trembling with fear, tears rolling down my cheeks because I genuinely couldn’t trust that it wouldn’t just roll down the hill while I was in the house.

The endless services - if there's anything that's intolerable to a freebirthing mama, it's engaging with services.

The debilitating migraines and the fear that rises in my throat, still. The dissociation and the ongoing jolts of adrenaline that punctuate my days and nights.

I would give birth again tomorrow if only to bathe again in its innocence and ecstasy.

I would choose that meaningful pain and power over this senseless chaos.

When I felt wise but knew nothing.