A Mother is Born
The day I rang my younger sister in England to tell her I was pregnant, she said “Err? you don’t like kids!” …
Mm OK, I think perhaps I need to explain myself! I am a mother of three boys and an angel baby, and this is my story.
I’m not even really sure how to start this story. Perhaps I do have to explain that I am a sensory person. I now know that about myself, way back then, I really didn’t. I studied two big things at university and one of them was nursing. The other was socializing, think I may even have a PhD in that actually.
So, what my darling sister meant to say was, “When we used to hang out at weekends. I completely understand that you may have been feeling a little under the weather…therefore, was totally normal that raucous ‘child ology’ noises were a little let’s just say ‘hard to handle’”.
Funnily enough, I’m still someone that struggles with high pitched squealy noises, even now. And most definitely the really loud ones, thanks for those neuro diverse genes, Dad!
I remember when I worked in critical care, it was an adult unit. When an infant or child became critically ill, we would stabilize them and await the specialist team to arrive, scoop and fly for specialist care.
I was pretty good looking after adults, but the little people with all those teeny-weeny tubes and wires scared the be jitters out of me. On many an occasion, I would say to said Doctor, absolutely, bring that baby in here.
“However, you don’t get to leave me, not even for a moment, you go to the bathroom, me, baby and ventilator come too.”
Fast forward a few years, I met and married my husband when I was 35 apparently that’s a ‘geriatric’ pregnancy age sigh.
So, I was a late bloomer, like whatever!
Our first pregnancy sadly miscarried, I never truly imagined that could ever happen to me and in hindsight should have given myself longer to grieve. Because Bam! (Sorry for the visual) a month later not only was I pregnant again, terrifyingly I was actually pregnant with identical twins. Yeah, that’s a bit out there, even for me.
In full fashion of the drama queen, I apparently am in life, they were born 11 weeks premature at 29 weeks. Now that really was a tough pill to swallow for this Nurse. There we were in the neonatal ICU with me fully understanding all the XY and Z of it all. It’s worse when you know, you wouldn’t think so. You’re just going to have to trust me on that though, it really is.
We finally got home, four days before their due date. Then the next 12 months are a complete blur. I am pretty sure I was in overdrive, charting like a crazy ICU nurse. Amazingly though, we got through it, I just have absolutely no recall or idea how we did.
‘Blows raspberries’ at all the experts that told us, after a multiple premature birth you’ll end up divorced.
We actually didn’t, so neh!
Fast forward again, we clearly didn’t learn because when the twins were two, we had another baby, so yeah 3 under 3 was a really big ask.
My poor Sensory Brain!
Whilst I ‘Mummied’, I became a Playcentre supervisor, and in full Nicky ‘high achiever’ mode, studied the early childhood education diploma, well most of it. Because of course I did.
During those times, I also sporadically work as a Nurse, our registration demands that, but clearly not to the level I had previously. When they were a bit older however, I put my big girl pants back on and threw myself back into nursing and then post-graduate study (face-palm).
The local community baby Nurse where we lived, was just about to retire, so an opportunity and a new direction for this past ‘allergic to little people’ Nurse came about.
