Snippets

• I went back to teaching part-time after Christmas. Shinejil is right. It is extraordinarily difficult to juggle motherhood and academia. Fitting in all the preparation and marking nearly did for me. But I also learnt that, much as I love being a mother, I also need to think, and write and teach.
• Little Miss is now fourteen months old. She's just at that inbetween stage: not really a baby any more, but not yet a toddler either. She doesn't want to go in the buggy, but isn't yet steady enough on her feet to get out and walk. She doesn't want to be spoon fed, but hasn't quite mastered self-feeding. All this leads to much frustrated screaming.
• But she is nevertheless the most enchanting little being. I don't think that I will ever take the miracle of her being here for granted. Things could have so easily worked out very differently for us.
• We went away on holiday to Cornwall, where I discovered that I may be turning into a gardener. I made notes about planting combinations, and fretted about how my nasturtiums were doing in my absence.
• Which leaves me with a dilemma about what to do about this blog. Increasingly, what I want to write about is my garden and the other things in life that give me pleasure. But there are also things that I'd only feel comfortable saying to others in the IF community. So I was wondering, if I started a new blog, would you all come and visit me in my new digs as well as continuing to read this one? Could I maybe try cross-posting from time to time? How might it feel to maintain two blogs?
• If I am going to start a new blog, should I stick with blogger, or maybe try wordpress? Any thoughts?

On Losing Your (Blogging) Mojo

Sooo. It goes a little something like this. You spend years and years longing for a baby, and then you finally have one. And despite the fact that you've had all that time to think about it, you discover that nothing can really prepare you for life with a newborn. The first few months whip by in a blur; you barely have time to clean your teeth, let alone shave your legs. And then it slowly begins to dawn on you that it's been a really, really long time since you were intimate with your husband. You make a bit of an effort to initiate things in that regard, but you're tense because you're worried that the baby's going to wake up at any minute, you're still healing after a c-section, and it just hurts. And so you think to yourself that you'll try again in a few weeks' time, but somehow the right moment never quite arises. And the longer you leave it, the more of a big deal it starts to seem. You make excuses - you're tired, you want to finish your book, you fancy a soak in the bath. You begin to notice yourself tensing up every time your husband touches you, in case that innocent cuddle turns into something more.

And it's really rather similar with blogging. The longer you leave it between posts, the more difficult it starts to seem to write anything, and so you're reduced to writing slightly odd posts in the second person. You feel similarly awkward about commenting; it's been so long since you did so that you now feel almost as if you're butting in on conversations to which you're no longer party.

Mr H took a lot of video footage during the first few months of Little Miss's life. I remember thinking at the time that he was like one of those foreign tourists in the Louvre, who are so preoccupied with videoing the Mona Lisa that they do not stop to look at the painting itself. I decided that I did not want to be like that - to be so busy trying to document my impressions of my daughter that I failed fully to live each moment with her. But now I find myself completely transfixed by that early video footage. As mothers, we spend so much time with our children that the changes in them are so gradual as to be nearly imperceptible. It is only when I look back over those videos of Little Miss that I can really grasp how much she has changed over this first year. How on earth did that tiny baby kicking about on a play mat turn into a little person who can empty an entire box of tissues out onto the floor in the time it takes me to pop upstairs to the loo, and who can devour a huge bowl of stew and mash for her tea?

In some ways, I do regret not having written more about the first year of her life. My memories of those first few heady months are already beginning to seem increasingly hazy. But I feel determined not to let any more time slip through my fingers, and so this is my first attempt to regain my blogging mojo.

Resurfacing

Hello. Is there anybody still out there?

I'm a little shocked to discover that it's been over four months since I last posted - and this isn't because I have nothing further to say on the experience of either infertility or motherhood, but more because I simply haven't had time to transfer my thoughts from my head on to the page (I know that I've also been pretty lax with regard to commenting, but have tried my best to keep up with those whose stories I've been following for a while and have been thinking of you all).

Even though I'd spent years longing for a baby, I was somehow ill-prepared for the reality of life with a newborn. Throughout my pregnancy, I found it difficult to believe unconditionally in the idea that there would definitely be a baby at the end of it all. It really wasn't until they first handed Little Miss to me just after she was delivered and I looked down at this tiny little creature that I first realised that I was henceforth going to be a mother. And yes, it is more wonderful than I could possibly have imagined, but also more terrifying than I could possibly have imagined. Those first few weeks were truly hard. Mr H went back to work after his two weeks of statutory paternity leave, and was away throughout the working week. Little Miss H suffered from colic, and so we spent night after night pacing up and down, up and down - her screaming inconsolably, me crying with pain from the c-section.

But now the blurry intensity of those first few weeks, when day and night seemed to meld into one, has begun to fade. I won't go so far as to say that we are in a routine, but there is at least some rhythm to our days. Little Miss is now almost five months old, and it goes without saying that she is a source of extraordinary joy to both her parents. She smiles and laughs, coos and gurgles, and is intensely curious about the world around her. She is (for the time being at least) sleeping through the night, but the trade off for an unbroken night's sleep appears to be that she does not nap much during the day - she will only sleep when out and about in the buggy or car, and so I find myself doing endless circuits of the park while thinking about all the things I should/could be doing/writing if only I were at home.

But now I long to be writing again. I'm itching to get back to my work, and to finish the dissertation. I also have a series of posts in varying states of completion - my birth story, some thoughts on how it feels to be repeatedly asked when I will be having another baby and, since this is now inevitably going to turn into a 'parenting after infertility and loss' blog, one on my current obsession - weaning. What would you like to hear about first?

A sharp reminder

I returned home from hospital with a new-born baby... and my very own sharps bin. Because I had a Caesarean section, I had to have daily injections of an anti-clotting agent for a week after giving birth. Before I could be discharged from hospital, the midwife looking after me insisted that I be shown how to administer these injections myself. Confidently, I hitched up my nightdress. 'I've been through two cycles of IVF,' I explained. 'I know what I'm doing in that respect.' But as I sat there, roll of thigh in one hand, syringe in the other, poised to inject myself, the full gamut of emotions associated with those two failed cycles came flooding back. I remembered the hope and the fear, the mounting sense of despair I felt as each attempt seemed to lead me further and further away from ever having a child of my own. And as I gave myself those daily shots, I thought of all the other women who were, at that very same moment, but for very different reasons, also psyching themselves up to inject themselves. I thought of the mixture of optimism and steely determination that had led them down this path. I thought of the boundless strength and courage of so many of my friends here in the blogosphere, who have been through more than I can imagine. And, once again, I thought of how lucky I am to have been given this chance at motherhood.

As I lay in bed this morning, nursing my daughter and watching the sky turn from darkest navy to palest blue, I wondered whether having a baby can be considered a 'cure' for infertility. It can, I think, go some way towards healing some of the emotional rawness. And yet it does not entirely negate all I went through to get to this point. Just as I carry the physical scars from both a laparoscopy and, now, a c-section so too do I carry with me the emotional scars associated with a six-year struggle to conceive and carry to term a child.

Baby girl

Little Miss Heathen finally came into this world at 4.16 on Sunday morning, weighing in at 7lbs 10 and a half ounces. She was delivered via emergency Caesarean section a mere fifty three hours after my waters broke (my birth plan had by that stage pretty much gone out of the window!)

I will post more in due course, but at the moment am beyond tired, utterly besotted with this extraordinary little being I have produced and feeling unbelievably lucky to have been given this chance at motherhood.

Better Out Than In

At 39 weeks and 3 days, a strange air of expectancy has settled over the Heathen household. Although I have treasured every moment of this much longed for pregnancy, I am increasingly uncomfortable, and anxious to meet this as yet unknown little being, who seems to spend much of his or her time kicking me under the ribs or else bouncing up and down on my bladder. Our tradesmen, who have heroically re-arranged their work schedules so as to do as much of the outstanding work on the house as possible before my due date, greet me every morning with the words, 'so you're still here, then.' I have had a couple of bouts of what feel like bad period pains, ensuring that Mr H is on a permanent state of high alert (he is now thankfully at home after several weeks away in London, although hogging the home computer after breaking his laptop - hence the blogging silence). My hospital bag is pretty much packed, my birth plan written, and labour is suddenly starting to feel something that I will - no matter what the outcome may be - definitely experience, rather than a mere hypothetical.

It strikes me that there are two very different ways of approaching giving birth. Either you can see it as something messy, bloody, painful and potentially dangerous, which needs to be sanitised away as much as possible; or you can view it as one of the most profound things you will ever experience as a woman. Within western culture, birth, like death, has become something from which we are largely insulated - for most of us, our own labour is the first we will experience – yet both are an inevitable part of the life cycle. Given our long struggle with infertility, conception became a hugely medicalised event – what is generally a private act instead required the intervention of doctors, nurses, embryologists and anaesthetists; what is generally an invisible bodily process was instead played out on screens for all to see. It is perhaps for this reason that I would like my birth to involve as little intervention from the medical profession as possible.

It is, however, a fine line to tread. As much as I want to trust my own instincts, and to believe in my body’s ability to birth my baby, I am also aware that sometimes things do go wrong, and that urgent medical intervention is required – for some women, having a Caesarean section is not a question of being ‘too posh to push’, but a life-saving procedure. Too many of the women in my yoga class appear to see the medical profession as the enemy, and determined to have a home birth, even when they have been warned that they are at risk of significant complications.

All of this does, of course, come down to a matter of personal choice; any woman will labour best in the environment in which she feels safest. But, having been through so much to get to this point, I am not willing to put either my baby or myself at what I feel to be unnecessary risk. If things go according to plan, I am hoping to give birth in a midwife-led birthing centre, which to me feels safer than a home birth. We went to look around the centre a couple of weeks ago, and both felt very comfortable with the level of care they offered. There has been much adverse publicity about the provision of maternity services within the NHS – basically, there simply aren’t enough midwives to go round, and postnatal care in particular is patchy to say the least. At the midwife-led centre, however, I am guaranteed one-to-one care during labour and delivery, which isn’t the case in my local hospital, where the chances are that one midwife will be trying to look after two, or even three, women at a time. I will also have my own private bathroom facilities (call me picky if you like, but I don’t particularly want to be trekking off down a hospital corridor in order to visit the loo in the middle of labour). Where our local hospital has only one birthing pool, each of the labour rooms at the centre has a pool. If things do go wrong, I will be a short ambulance ride away from hospital, during which time I will be accompanied by the midwife who has been looking after me up until that point. Although I had to sign a form accepting that I had understood that I was at increased risk of having to transfer to hospital owing to my advanced age(!), this seems a small price to have to pay for what seems a far more personal and homely experience.

So now, all we have to do is wait.

Thoughts On Mother's Day

Mother's Day is fast approaching, and the nation is in the grips of the usual sentimental idealisation of the maternal role: daytime television shows compete to find 'Britain's best mum', while the shops are full of cards, gifts and flowers.

For those mourning their mothers, and for those who are remembering a lost child, however, this slow buildup to Mothering Sunday serves only as a painful reminder of all that they are missing. Just last week, Prince William gave a moving speech about the continuing impact of his own mother's death. "Never being able to say the word 'Mummy' again in your life sounds like a small thing. However, for many, including me, it’s now really just a word - hollow and evoking only memories." The Prince was speaking on the occasion of the launch of the Child Bereavement Charity's 'Remember on Mother's Day' campaign, which asks people to spare a thought for those mothers bereaved of a child, and those children bereaved of their mothers, this coming Sunday.

Yet it is not only these significant anniversaries that can serve to remind us of what we no longer have. Sometimes the most trivial of events can precipitate us abruptly back to an earlier loss.

Last summer, a fantastic new cafe opened around ten minutes walk from our house, serving the most wonderful cakes, pastries and coffees. We went there for Saturday brunch a few weeks ago, and I had a plate of pancakes served with maple syrup and fresh bananas. Earlier this week, I found myself dreaming about those pancakes. I tried to put the craving behind me, and to plod on with marking my final round of undergraduate dissertations, but to no avail. By eleven o'clock, I had managed to convince myself that I was craving pancakes for a reason - that this was my body's way of telling me that I was dangerously deficient in potassium. Clearly, the baby urgently needed me to eat a further helping of those pancakes and bananas! I grabbed my coat and set off.

It was only after I'd found a seat and ordered my pancakes that I realised that the cafe was full of women with small children. Even in my vastly pregnant state, I still had to fight those old familiar feelings of exclusion - of stumbling across a mysterious club that I would never be part of. Yet this time I noticed something different. Many of these women were accompanied by their own mothers. Looking around at all these grandmothers, mothers and babies, the question suddenly hit me: Without my mother to guide me, how will I know how to take care of my own child? How am I going to mother in the absence of a mother?

For the past few weeks, I have been attending antenatal classes. The other women in the class talk about how their mothers have offered to help out after the birth. For some, the thought of having their mothers on hand in this way is an evident relief; for others, it seems an intrusion or irritation. Would I welcome the help and guidance of my mother, or would I be adamant that I wanted to find my own way of doing things? The truth is, I simply don't know. She died during my late adolescence, at a stage when I was struggling to assert my independence from her. I never had a chance to rebuild my relationship with her from the perspective of an adult woman. Yet this gap, this lacuna, does not stop me fantasising about what might have been. And so I find myself grieving anew for my mother. And not only that. I find myself grieving on behalf of my child, for the grandmother he or she will never know.