Becoming a family

I was reading an article recently which talked about the difference between figuring out how to be a mother and figuring out how to be a family, and that the two are really quite different. It got me thinking, so here’s my take on that. Heads up, it’s going to be unedited, and at times, it’s going to be soppy. And apparently, long, sorry about that.

I brought my baby into the world as part of a team. I didn’t make him alone, I didn’t grow him alone, and I didn’t birth him alone. Throughout my pregnancy, my husband was there to share in my worries and my excitement; we saw the ultrasounds together, heard his heartbeat together, felt him move (and hiccough) in the womb together. Being pregnant was a journey, the next step in our relationship that we always hoped we’d get to experience. It was the start of the shift from couple to family. I’ve always been very clumsy, but when my husband told me to be careful during my pregnancy, he expected me to be even more careful, for our son. He was more gentlemanly, more protective; I was being spoiled and pampered, but it wasn’t for my own sake.

We looked to the future as a family with the same dreams and the same fears, knowing we’d be doing it as a team. We discussed how we wanted to bring our baby up and we agreed (mostly!) – at least on all the important things. When the day finally came for our boy to join us, my husband leant me his strength to get to the end. Because I asked him to, he stayed with me through the long induction and birth, in an uncomfortable situation and an uncomfortable chair, getting no sleep (but we know new parents don’t get sleep anyway!). And when our boy ended up in the NICU, we were thrown in the deep end to find our feet as a family. It was far from the home we’d been waiting to bring him to, working out how to be parents while being afraid to even open up the incubator and touch our baby, not knowing where the nurses roles ended and our own began as we watched our baby struggle to breathe. It was a time when we needed each other as a couple; I don’t know how either of us would have coped through the stress and the emotion without the other by our side, knowing exactly how we felt without having to say a word. We shared our baby and the time we were allowed with him, taking turns for cuddles, nappies, bath time and all the other firsts. It was special to do those things myself for the first time, but it was also special to watch my husband change his first nappy, have his first skin to skin cuddle, feed Isaac for the first time. It meant as much to me to become a Mummy as it did to watch him become a Daddy. I remember arguing with him the first time we got to hold Isaac, both wanting the other to take the first turn, and when we did get that cuddle I was still looking to him, because only he knew how I felt in that moment; the family we’d been waiting for but in the circumstances we’d hoped to avoid.

While I was loving watching my husband stepping up to being a Daddy (even the NICI nurses said it was great to see a Dad actually have skin to skin cuddles as apparently it doesn’t happen much!), he was full of admiration for me. He saw me getting straight up after labour to see my baby in special care despite being exhausted and recovering. He watched me sitting on stitches for hours to be beside my baby, letting mealtimes pass by waiting for doctors rounds. He watched me set alarms and conquer broken sleep to breastfeed and express milk day and night, recording, labelling and storing the milk properly, washing and sterilising the pump parts each time, and fighting with slow weight gain for the right to go on breastfeeding. I would have done these things anyway, because they were important to me being a Mum and important to Isaac, but it felt good to know my husband was appreciating them too, supporting me and understanding that I was giving Isaac the best nutrition he could get with the antibodies he really needed, gentle on his tiny stomach. It was good to know (especially in a time and place where it is so easy to feel so lonely) that someone was on my side.

Then we brought Isaac home and that’s when we really learned. When we could do it our own way, with no one looking over our shoulders. Just like I knew he would, my husband worried every second for about three months. New parents, figuring out how to do it all together would be hard enough, but let’s throw in pure exhaustion and mental hormones just for fun. We’ve been together nearly ten years, we agree on most things, and yet when Isaac is crying and the things we’re each trying isn’t immediately soothing him, we still snap at each other. I think that is kind of what makes us a family; Isaac and his happiness comes first, before ourselves, and before our partner. All we care about in that moment is him. In the early days when Isaac woke every few hours to feed my husband would be shouting at me to stay awake while I fed him, and I’d be shouting at him about the gross unfairness of it all, even though he was, of course, right. The newborn stage is kind of cruel though, we don’t know what to do, baby doesn’t know what’s going in in this whole new world, and then there’s all these extra things like colic and wind and how rubbish newborns are at maintaining their body temperature which you don’t have to worry about a couple of months down the line.

We had that time in the beginning, while he was on paternity, to learn how to be a family. Then he went back to work and I had to learn how to be a Mum, how to do it on my own with nobody to double check the bottles of milk and the baths weren’t too hot and nobody to just hold this thing or grab me that thing (or make me a cuppa and bring me some food!) while my arms were full of baby. Discovering motherhood meant working out how to get baby settled in the sling (link – slings are your friend) so I could cook a meal or wash the dishes, getting used to eating that meal with one hand, how to go to the loo with a baby who won’t let you put him down, or how to survive the crying while you do, how and when to shower when there’s nobody to hold the baby for you to do so, or brush your teeth and hair (all hopes of styling or make up became suddenly unimportant). Most of all, discovering motherhood meant discovering I couldn’t predict what would happen in ten minutes or in two minutes. I didn’t, and still don’t really with any accuracy, know when Isaac will want to feed, or sleep, or play until the moment he does. I have always been a planner, and if I say I’ll be there at 8 then I will (or better still, ten to 8), so it was a big change for me to accept that if Isaac decided he was feeding at 8 I wasn’t going to stick to that schedule. As he’s got older this has become easier to predict and avoid, but I also become (at least a little bit) more relaxed.

So here we are, a family. A Mummy and a Daddy. Does that mean we’re not a couple? Does that mean I miss my husband? Absolutely not, I get to watch him be Daddy every day; giving our boy cuddles, playing with him in a silly way that just doesn’t come naturally to me, spoiling him with rusks and biscuits, and worrying about him – telling us when he leaves for work every morning to look after each other, because he’d rather be here looking after us too. I’m still his wife, but I get to be the mother of his child too, I get to be admired, appreciated, and he gives me the greatest gift every day by going to work, the gift of having all the time with our son. We love each other as a couple in even more ways than we ever could. And after all that, he still gives me the best slice of cake.