Kate On Thin Ice started this meme and I thought it was timely to look back over what was a rather remarkable year. For the rest of the world, 2012 was all about Jubilees and sporting triumphs while in our household it was rather more personal though ultimately just as magical.
1. What was your happiest event?
I want to say the birth of our boy but his actual arrival was rather fraught. Taking him home, with the red arrows flying past in celebration, was probably the highest point, followed by many mini milestones since.
2. What was the saddest thing to happen?
One of the lovely mums in my online groups succumbed to severe post natal depression, leaving behind a bereft husband and a four month old boy who will never know his mum.
3. What was the most unlikely thing to happen that actually went ahead and did?
I gave birth! (do you see a theme here??) Never had thought that it would happen but I found a lovely man, and a couple of weeks after our wedding we unexpectedly found ourselves the possessors of a positive pregnancy test. I’d sort of given up thinking I’d be a mum.
4. Who let you down?
Some people who don’t really ‘get’ children or how unreliable they can make you. Or perhaps everyone else in the entire world is more organised than I am?
5. Who supported you?
Old friends who answered all my stupid questions about children, gadgets, what nappies to buy. Family, who continue to be awesome.
New friends, mainly NCT buddies and the local Twitter mums. They were there in the run up to the birth, hell some of them were in the hospital at the same time. They still keep me sane on a weekly and sometimes daily basis.
My online group of mums. We started out as a private group on a parenting forum and we’ve formed a tight knit group. We’ve met in real life and supported each other through all sorts of trials and tribulations including poorly babies, breastfeeding nightmares, post-natal depression and ironically, tokophobia. The last day that the majority of us met, in Oxford, another of the mums represented us all at a funeral in Scotland (see question 2).
6. Tell us one thing you learned
Ask for help. And for clarification, when needed.
7. Tell us one thing that made you laugh
My husband. When really needed, usually in the middle of the night.
8. Tell us one thing that made you cry
When my husband came back into my room after going to visit our boy in special care. It was the first time we’d seen each other on our own, and everything hit at once. The enormity of our baby being here, but not with us, was hugely sobering, even for a woman with all the drugs in her system.
9. Tell us three things your child or children did to make you feel proud.
Well, he’s only been with us five months, but I’d say deciding that he was going to join us in the world after six minutes of being resuscitated; and taking to solid food like he’d been born with a soft silicon spoon in his mouth.
10. Tell us one thing that made you proud of yourself.
Going to Britmums with a massive bump and meeting some lovely people.
11. Tell us one challenge you overcame.
Breastfeeding. We had a shitty start with it and it took us until he was ten weeks to really get it established, expressing along the way, and seeing what seemed like every health professional for miles around. Then I started suffering with vasospasm, like another slap across the boobs frankly. But with pumping he was almost exclusively fed breastmilk for the first three months and had at least a couple of breastmilk feeds up until 23 weeks. Teeth at twenty weeks kind of put paid to it – bitey baby.
12. Tell us three things you would like to change about your life in 2013.
Blog more.
Lose the baby weight.
Get the boy into a sleep routine so I can get some time to myself.
I’m tagging lovely Perfectly Happy Mum and Owls and Pears should they choose to participate!
One Million Gold Stars 