When he was born

I had a physically perfect pregnancy with Cyclone. Plenty of morning sickness, tiredness and cravings.

Emotionally it was an awful time. I was still trying to sort the financial settlement from the breakup of my marriage and my brother died in an accident. My partner (Scorpio) lost his house in a fire and moved in (which obviously resulted in Cyclone coming along) with his daughter, dogs and bird. Changing schools, teen angst, insurance company battles, hospitals, funeral all on top of mothering a 9 year old and working full time…ACH!

Cyclone was an easy birth physically, again mentally it was awful. I do labour fast, and although I told the midwife this was really it, apparently she didn’t believe me. I was stressed because I wasn’t being listened to, didn’t feel safe and couldn’t get into a zone. The midwife squealed when Cyclone was emerging and told me to stop pushing. He shot out 30 seconds later and she yelled “stop, he’s too small”….. He wasn’t too small, he was just under 7 pounds. But the misplaced hysteria in her voice rang in my head for months afterwards.

I handed him to visitors asking them if they thought he was too small, when I spoke to people on the phone I asked if they thought 6pd 9oz was too small. Are you sure? Really? I’d be reassured constantly but I was so nervous all the time. For some reason I kept thinking he might die. Makes no sense and I couldn’t help those thoughts.

Let me say here – that I am (or I used to be) pretty chilled out, laid back person. This wasn’t first time mum nerves, I’ve done this before – pretty much sailed though with my daughter. This concept was totally foreign to me.

However I must mention how thrilled and full of joy I was for being the mother of a son! He was just perfect with the longest legs I’ve ever seen on a baby. He was placed on my tummy straight after birth and literally ran up my body and attached to my breast. I later asked who moved him up to my boob and my sister said, “no one, he did it himself, he gave 2 huge frog kicks and pushed himself – I couldn’t believe what I was seeing”. Awesome, wonderful, perfect.