Parenting: The First Year

Happy First Birthday Little Man

September 19, 2012
Little man just after birth

It’s hard to believe, but this time last year we had just met our beautiful baby boy.

It was the end of 9 very long, hard months with a pregnancy that threw us challenges from start to finish. It was also the end of a difficult labour and I spent the next few hours throwing up, sleeping, being whisked off to theatre, and being monitored and gradually unhooked from everything I was attached to as my body stated to recover.

But to be honest, the thing that remains with me the most is the feeling of shock and awe as the midwife handed me my (massive) baby and I realised that the dream I had been holding on to for so much of my life had finally come true.

I don’t think it sank in at all to begin with. It was so strange. I mean, I loved him with all my heart from the very first moment I saw him, but I didn’t know him. And I certainly didn’t know what being a mother truly entailed. I felt out of my depth and rather baffled by it all to be honest, especially when I was taken up to the post-natal ward at gone 11pm and suddenly left on a darkened ward with my sleeping baby. I sat and looked at him and thought “well, what do I do now?”

It’s so hard to think back and realise that we didn’t know him then and he didn’t really know us. We fell into family life very quickly. I mean you have to, don’t you? But it was far from plain sailing.

This year we have had different challenges to face, but we’ve made it through the first year of Little Man’s life and it seems so strange to think that there was a time when he wasn’t in our lives. How can that be?

Though I would never say that anything is worth the trauma of HG (because nobody deserves to go through that!), there is a big part of me that looks at my baby boy (who is outgrowing the title “baby” far too quickly for my liking!!) and feels that he really is worth absolutely everything we went through. I can’t put into words how much he means to me and how blessed I feel to be his mother.

I’ll try and post up a slideshow of his first year sometime soon. That’s if I can figure out how to make one! But for now I thought I’d leave you with a photo from the day he was born.

Little man just after birth - newborn baby boy

Happy Birthday, darling boy!

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