All posts tagged: #pregnancy

Parenting by online committee

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In this current age of what feels like parenting by online committee, I’ve seen many a mum taken out by commenters shout-typing their opposing opinion and take that mum down a peg or two for daring to share her thoughts. On the flip side I’ve seen some incredible support and rallying, often sparked by those exact same women or by very similar topics, in carefully monitored groups. A group I’m in, The Motherhood Project, recently shared an article written for Stuff by one of the group members, Rebecca Goodhue, about how relentless she’s finding motherhood because her baby is a non-sleeper. I read her article and completely related because I knew that non-sleeping life. It’s exhausting, it’s hard, it’s lonely, it takes the shine off the moments that everyone says you must treasure, and you feel like you must be doing something really wrong because your baby isn’t doing the things with sleeping that everyone says theirs is doing. I thought thankful thoughts about Rebecca on behalf of the mothers of other non-sleepers, because there’s …

Shape Shifters – Exercise after Having a Baby

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I had a chat with the exceptionally clever and lovely Stacey Law, physiotherapist from Leto Women’s Health in Auckland, to write this article for Little Treasures Magazine. Stacey helped put me and my diastasis recti (I won’t lie, I always have to google the spelling of that one) back together after my second pregnancy, and is a go-to guru for post-natal bodies. She’s a big fan of being kind to yourself and grits her teeth when she reads headlines about celebs ‘getting their body back after baby’, and I love her for it! You can read the article in this pdf here: Shape shifters Or jpgs below.

The name game

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Before I had my own babies, I couldn’t understand why people would say “still deciding on a name” in their birth announcement. What? You’ve had nine months to prepare for this moment! How hard it is to choose a name? Er, actually harder than it looks, I discovered when pregnant for the first time. Jeremy (my husband) and I had decided not to find out what we were having, so we needed options both ways. We set perimeters on name-choosing rules, such as checking there were no notorious criminals with that moniker, no names of ex-partners or meanies from school, and making sure it wouldn’t sound silly with our last name (when we got married, I was keen on having one family surname, but filled out the forms somewhat reluctantly because my married name makes me sound like a drunk Irishman). We both loved the same boy’s name. Sorted. A girl’s middle name would be Clare, after my mother. BAM, we were nailing this naming thing and I was only about eleven minutes pregnant. But …

Secondary Infertility & IVF

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This is part two of a blog originally written for If Only They’d Told me, about endometriosis, IVF, and (spoiler alert) motherhood. You can read part one here I’ll just do IVF I remember breezily thinking in my twenties, “oh, I could always just do IVF if I don’t get pregnant naturally.” The reality of IVF was a little more intense than I anticipated. The first hurdle was All The Needles. I’m a needle-phobe. I turn into a gigantic child in the face of injections, IVs and blood tests. I’m fine with actual surgery, but not the needles that come with it.  You’d think after three surgeries for endometriosis (which involve IVs and drainage tubes) and Amy’s caesarean delivery I would have gotten over myself. Nope.  I had to do my first injection about an hour before we were leaving for Jeremy’s 40th birthday dinner, which was probably for the best as there was no time for stuffing around. We’d already decided that for the sake of our marriage it would be best for me to …

The upsides of the massive front side

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A few friends are pregnant with their first babies at the moment, which has propelled me into a surge of nostalgia – combing through our newborn photos, and getting teary about little socks that I can’t face giving away. My pregnant friends agree that yes, tiny clothes are gorgeous and perusing Moses baskets online is a worthy cause for reaching their data cap, but they all look at me like I’m drunk at 10am when I say, “and isn’t being pregnant just so wonderful?” Flicking through my pregnancy diary, there are tales of sore hips, exhaustion, uncomfortable nights, and all-day sickness, but I think Mother Nature suppresses those recollections so that the human race continues. Or perhaps the sleep deprivation after Tilly (my youngest) altered my brain function. Either way, the upsides of having a massive front side are dominating my memories. The clothes I loved maternity clothes, that wonderful comfortable world of elasticised waist bands and stretchy tops. Seriously, jeans that appear normal, but with little elastic inserts where no one can see? Genius! …

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.

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 …