HEADING OUT WITH A TINY HUMAN

The thing about life with a baby is that everything takes so much longer to get done, so you need to calculate accordingly. Due to this, it's not often that I leave the house for more than an hour without Chris simply because it takes too long to prepare and I have limited time in between feeds to pack everything that's needed and get changed out of pyjamas without the help of another person. Theodor can't help me out so much seeing as he's hardly mobile and only just learned how to roll over onto his stomach. Pretty impressive, yeah, but not super helpful.

So, when Chris does have time off work, we often try to go out with the kid at least once a day, because there ain't nothing quite as nice as some fresh air and sunshine when you're a new parent and your fun-time activities are limited to anything that won't freak your baby out.

I wasn't feeling great last week. I was suffering from a bit of motherhood-induced cabin fever and felt constantly restless and unlike myself. Chris, with his brilliant ideas, decided the only thing to do was to go for one long ass walk to an area we very rarely visit and, despite the weather, I had a really, really lovely day. Something as simple as being outside and getting some fresh air seems to help revive me so that I can continue putting in 100% into my new role as the milk-machine, cuddle supplier and human burp-cloth to Theo. 

The one thing that's fucking fantastic about this kid (and I'm sure literally every parent thinks their kid is in some way fantastic), is that he's the chillest little dude to hangout with. As long as he's fed, he's pretty darn happy regardless of where you take him. Since we're heading to Sardinia soon (the first time this kid will travel!), I'm hoping his relaxed temperament will persist.

We walked nearly 10km, ate Italian food and got caught in the rain. It may not sound like much, and certainly I would've agreed with you a year ago, but it was one of the most fun days I've had in a while (perhaps since Theo was born even).

Slowly, very slowly, getting the hang of life as a parent. Learning how to enjoy the simplicity and complexity that comes with sharing your life with a child. I still can't quite wrap my head around the fact that I'm a mother & Chris is a father, because the idea of it is so mind-blowing, you wouldn't believe it.

Until next time.
x

A REFLECTION ON MY "MOM-BOD"

I carried a child in my womb for 10 months. I withstood the pain of labour and gave birth to my son. I appreciate that my body is strong and capable beyond my own understanding, but boy do I hate the way it looks.

My stomach is now a deflated balloon, surprisingly soft and squishy in the center. I remember the first time I felt my stomach post-partum – it felt tingly to the touch, still tender from what it had been through. Nowadays it stores fat in the most unflattering way, so I have a small pouch of blubber below my belly button that looks stubborn as fuck and irritates me to no end. I have no idea how I will get rid of it.

My skin is ravaged by stretch marks. I have earned these “tiger stripes”, like my mother before me, but that doesn’t make them any less disappointing when I undress. Not to mention that dark line that develops during pregnancy, crawling vertically down your stomach. That hasn’t faded yet and I read an article yesterday that said sometimes it never goes away. Just another thing I have to look forward to, I guess.

And my boobs. These things. At least they have a function. They help me feed and nurture my child, and that really is something, but I cannot stress enough how taxing breastfeeding is. In the beginning, it felt as if my nipples were on fire, and that’s not an exaggeration at all. When I would dry myself off after a shower, it was as if someone was rubbing sandpaper over my skin. Theodor once spat out blood, and that blood came from me. I stuffed cold cabbage leaves in my bra. How attractive is that? The sweet scent of dry breast milk and wilted cabbage leaves. I leak through my bras, I leak through my shirts. If it’s not baby spit that ruins an outfit, it’s my cow udders being a bitch. So, I’ve said goodbye to dressing nicely, because what’s the point anyway? When getting ready for my day, I ask myself, “how easily can I pop a tit out of this? Gotta feed the kid.” That’s where I’m at now.

My hips span from here to China, that’s how fucking wide they’ve gotten. You could relocate the Trans-siberian Express along my waistline, although I’m not sure it truly exists anymore because my profile looks like one massive, ugly potato (a description I recently used to illustrate my figure to my partner). I wear mom jeans now, but not in a hip or trendy way, but because they’re the only jeans that fit me anymore.

I walk around feeling like a worn out mother (I literally am that). When people stare at me, I’m afraid that’s all they see. I don’t feel young or vibrant or attractive anymore, and as an extension of that, I feel awkward when my partner touches me. I don’t want to look into the mirror and I hate seeing full-body photos. I often wonder when it is that I’ll get to be myself again and I realize, much to my dismay, that I really don’t know if I’ll ever be who I was a year ago.

There are a lot of things I’m going to have to re-learn about myself. I can’t promise that I’m going to love this body any time soon, but if it can give me a kid like Theodor, then I guess it can’t be all that bad.

Hell, this mom thing is really exhausting.

x

INTRODUCING THEODOR & HIS BIRTH STORY

Meet Theodor. Theo, for short. He was born on a warm Bremen morning at 10:10am, weighing in at a healthy 4.2kgs. He came into this world in one of the simplest ways: in blood, sweat, and a whole lot of screaming. As I write this now, he’s sleeping peacefully next to me in the center of our bed. My little bean, made up of all the love I could ever hold in hands that are beginning to look more and more like my mother’s.

Early labour began on Wednesday 10^th May, the day he was due to be born. Our morning began like any other. We woke up, had breakfast, and went to my routine check up where we were told that I showed no signs of labour. When I left my doctor’s office with faint stomach cramps, I brushed them aside as simply being mild pregnancy discomfort. Being new to the experience of giving birth, I was waiting for some kind of clear sign that labour was here, but there was no water breaking, no bloody show. So, I waited.

I waited through the entire day and early evening, all the while not convinced that any pain I was experiencing was a sign of labour. It wasn’t until about 2am that things began to sink in. The dull ache I had been experiencing hours before had evolved into something deep and aggressive. So, in anxiousness and not a wink of sleep, Chris and I headed to the hospital.

I’m not going to lie and say that my birthing experience was ‘amazing’, because the little that I remember of it still frightens me and I’m glad that we don’t plan on having more kids any time soon. My body welcomes the break, because this pain that women speak of – it has momentum and it has no mercy. For me, it was a landscape of suffering that radiated throughout my entire body, carving out the insides of my stomach. It felt like pure, intense torture. Like somebody wanted to rip the limbs off my body, Game of Thrones style.

We had gone into the delivery room with the hopes of having a water birth, but in my mind I held no pride in how I wanted things to go (or so I thought). The baby’s life and mine were the only bottom line, the only non-negotiable. That being said, when I was told that I wouldn’t be able to have a water birth because I had a fever temperature and the baby’s heartbeat was elevated, my heart sunk. I’ve never felt so disappointed in my life. Everything after that point has become a blur. Time no longer existed in my mind, all that I was aware of was the pain and uncertainty of how much longer I might be able to endure it.     

It’s hard to write about now, two months after birth, because my body has turned those memories into faint and foggy pictures in the back of my mind. I remember being on the floor, looking up at Chris and begging him to help make the pain go away. I remember the feelings of desperation and hopelessness, watching the sunrise from our delivery room, Chris’ face as he told me to push. I remember the last few hours of Chris and I, just the two of us.

I remember seeing Theodor for the first time.

Chubby-cheeked, purple skinned and covered in blood but every inch the healthy baby Chris and I had waited months to finally meet. As I picked him up off the delivery bed and held him against my naked chest for the very first time, my body had undeniably calmed. He was here and he was healthy and I was so preoccupied with staring into the eyes of this little human I had somehow squeezed out of me that I barely registered when I was told to push out the placenta and the entire time they were stitching me back up (yes, I tore down there), I felt absolutely nothing. It was as if my entire world had gone quiet and all that existed was me and this baby and the gentle knowledge that I was now the mother to someone so perfect.

It took approximately 15 hours of labour and 2-3 hours of pushing to give birth to Theodor, and through those giddy first contractions to the ones that had me screaming in agony, Chris was by my side. He stayed awake for every second of it (which, if you know Chris, means a lot). He was my constant comfort in the searing pain. In moments where I would doubt that my best might not be enough, he would be there.  My heart swells with love and pride when I think about it. It’s another thing that makes me want to cry, and I want to cry a lot these days because post-partum hormones are so, so real.

I had myself fractured and broken into pieces that day, but to experience such a moment is somehow such a pure expression of love.

And, just like that, I became Theodor’s mother.

x