Welcome Mia Alison Waghorn-Combi: Reflections of a first-time Mum.
To those who follow, you might have noticed a bit of lapse in content – I didn’t make a big song and dance about it, but I had a baby on the 08/02/2024 – hence, the reason for lapse in content. She’s a beautiful baby girl we christened Mia Alison Waghorn, and she has black hair, blue eyes and a hearty scream, and with all due acknowledgment perfection doesn’t exist in nature, she’s pretty damn close.
It seems fairly requisite now to say the birth was traumatic – every celebrity in the parenting space seems to have a traumatic birth – but whilst not close to some of the tragedies and hardships playing out across the world – I think a 4-day labour, baby in neo-natal for three days, and then (me) having a serious brush with sepsis qualifies as an ‘unrelaxing’ birth experience!
I have no real intention of wading into the parenting space, there are too many voices and influencers there anyway and I’m more needed in the #GenA and #GenZ space, as that’s where my real expertise and research lies.
All that being said, and perhaps more for myself than anything else, thought it might be a good opportunity before going back to teens and pre-teens to get down a few immediate post-birth reflections.
1.) After birth, you feel oscillate between feeling like Courtney Love in her zenith and a handmaiden in Gilead. On the one hand, you have just done the most rock-n-roll, (lady) balls-to-the-wall thing a human body can do and just achieved the vaginal equivalent of scarpering up Everest – and that makes you feel powerful. However, five minutes later, with the endless questions, prodding, sympathetic tilts of the head and tea and biscuits, you feel like pulling up the blanket over your head and wailing ‘I’m not worthy!’ I’m told this passes in time – but the hormonal Jekyll and Hyde stuff can make the sturdiest of women feel a tad discombobulated.
2.) If he/she asked more than once, you’d probably show your vagina to the postman. Before, during and post-birth, so many people want to look at your nether regions, you become distinctly less discriminating about who you show the content of your knickers to. Luckily (for the postman), my other half has thus far taken care of our post.
3.) You will loathe the person who takes blood from your baby and makes them cry more than you have ever loathed anyone. They are just doing their job and are probably lovely, but seriously, F*** them.
4.) You will love your partner more than you ever thought possible and this seems reciprocated – which is pretty cool considering they have recently seen you look like an extra from the Saw franchise.
5.) Tired, tired, tired, TIRED – ‘nuff said.
6.) You will have endless strange visions about bad, improbable things happening and how you will overcome them. In the last week, I’ve googled how to make a rope ladder out of bedsheets should the house catch fire and looked up car-jacking statistics. I’m told this also passes.
7.) You feel so in love with your new baby and your partner, it bruises your heart and makes you both swell and feel slightly diminished. I’m told this never passes.
8.) Absolutely everything makes you cry, including the very irritating Meerkat insurance advert, because their name reminds you of your new daughter.
9.) You will know with absolute certainty from here on in, who really loves you and matters whether friends, family or people you previously thought were mere acquaintances – they will be there for you in ways you never could have foreseen or comprehended and this means everything.
10.) SO many people are in a rush to tell you the negative about having a baby, and I think this is because people want to soften the blow of the landing. But it’s also wonderful. You created this beautiful new life, and it’s like living with a tiny and demanding miracle, who does something miraculous every day. As demanding as it can be, enjoy the ride and the miracle – it makes all the other hard and scary stuff somehow make more sense. The world is a dark, scary place but your baby will make you believe, it’s a good place and one worth fighting for.
#NewBaby #FirstTimeMum #Parenting #BabyMia #Miracles #Postman