All posts tagged: #motherhood

Endometriosis and Motherhood

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I always knew I wanted to be a mother. Right from when I was tiny, I fed, bathed and bedded my dollies and teddies, and wouldn’t let anyone do up the top buttons on their tiny clothes in case it choked them (this could have been an early indicator of OCD, in hindsight). I gravitated toward anyone with a baby in their arms, and when my parents finally delivered on a sibling for me when I was 11, my poor little brother essentially had three parents all over him, all the time. I even attended antenatal classes with my parents, and remember thinking “this will all come in handy for me one day.” There were many things I wanted to do in my life, and having babies was always part of my grand plan. Despite practicing for “becoming a woman” long before my time (generally by trying on Mum’s bras and stealing from her boxes of Tampax so I could watch them puff up in water), I was completely blindsided by puberty. Health class showed …

Baby Shower (no actual showering involved)

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The two year old was devastated I wasn’t taking her with me to a baby shower (because, seriously, unleashing Tornado Tilly in the home of an uninitiated mother-of-twins-to-be just seemed cruel). Luckily the five year old set her straight on how mundane the event would be: “Tilly, you don’t want to go to a baby shower. It’s just a whole lot of women together, and they help the pregnant lady to have a shower, then they all take turns giving each other showers all afternoon. Bor-ring.” Great. So then my husband was suddenly interested in coming along, too.

She’s learned from the best

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Told Tilly it was time to eat her toast and get out of her pyjamas so we could get going. “But I can’t have toast and go anywhere!” she shrieked as she pushed her unwashed hair out of her eyes, “I’m still giving my baby a bath and then there’s SO much cleaning to do!” A series of grumbles and frustrated grunts followed. Isn’t it just so beautiful when you hold a mirror up to your child and see all the best parts of yourself reflecting back? #JustLikeMama 

The Indignity of Motherhood

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I heard the phrase “you check your dignity in at the door during childbirth” bandied about a few times when I was pregnant. Sure, I’d seen the antenatal class photos and thought I knew what was up (and down, and sideways, and is-that-even-part-of-a-human-body?!), but after four endometriosis operations, a myriad of tests and a round of IVF, I already felt like my dignity was that unclaimed suitcase you see going around the luggage carousel at the airport. “It’s okay – you’re growing a baby!” Pregnancy introduces new levels of embarrassment to women the world over. Maybe you opened a car door and threw up in the gutter of a busy street while in the throes of morning sickness. Perhaps you kicked your shoes off under the desk at work then found yourself unable to cram them back on your swollen tootsies when it came time to attend a meeting. It’s not unusual to burst into noisy sobs during TV ads. Inappropriately timed and completely unexpected burps that rival those of a drunk first year university …

Rumbled.

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For nearly five years I’ve been secretly performing an elaborate regular ritual of making sure the stunt-double Snuggly looks the same as the Snuggly about to be put in the washing machine. My heart beats a little faster on swap-over day, ready to field suspicious questions: “Mum, does Snuggly seem a little…pointier nosed than usual? Does the bit of his hat I chewed off look…different to you?” Etc. Today during the Snuggly swap over I got rumbled by the cat. Now I feel like I’m the mother in a “Switched At Birth” made-for-TV-movie where a plucky young journalist knows he’s uncovered a Hidden Secret and is about to break his first Big Story then get hired by the NY Times. I’m going to have to buy Frankie’s silence with grated cheese and tuna brine (dolphin friendly).