From the beginning
12 December 2017 : Conception
It would be fair to begin the tale of Lochie from the very beginning of his conception.
At the end of 2017, once we had completed all our planned babymoons for the year, we decided to start trying for a baby. I downloaded the Flo app, did a bit of math to work out the correct conception period and researched all of the required numbers. We made love at the beginning of that cycle and, just as planned, I knew in that instant that something had happened. Not to get too superstitious about it, I can’t say “I knew for certain”, but I kind of did. I knew I would look back on this moment as the moment of conception of my first child.
A day or so later I ovulated, and had a strong feeling that it had taken. It affected me instantaneously. I felt unusually lethargic. Over the next week I developed a wolverine sense of smell and craved ramen noodles. We spent Christmas Eve with my husband’s parents and I savoured my last sips of vintage wine from father-in-law’s cellar. We spent Christmas Day with my family and as my sister put up Christmas decorations, I was peeing on a First Response pregnancy stick in the bathroom.
I stared at the plastic window so intently and with so much desire, that I practically willed into existence the second line. And… there it was, fading slowly into existence. A faint red line, growing darker. The most beautiful and promising red line in the world.
I carefully packed away the precious pregnancy test (should I frame it?) and tiptoed out of the bathroom to inconspicuously whisper the news to my sister, whom I adored, and chose to be the first person in the world to be the bearer of such news.
She squealed in excitement. The Christmas bauble fell out of her hand and smashed on the floor. She poured a glass of apple juice into my champagne flute then and for the entire evening, making a point of protecting my secret until I was ready to share it myself. Given the high risk of early miscarriages, we agreed without even speaking to keep this a secret until the pregnancy was more certain.
I was staying the night at my parents’ place but Don had to drive home to meet his friends. Pinterest is packed with so many creative ways to announce a pregnancy to one’s husband! But as I sat with him in the car parting ways, and my mind was breathlessly flipping through the creative ways that I could surprise him, my hands reached into my bag and handed him the pregnancy test.
Sunshine entered our car. His face lit up in ecstatic excitement. A particular expression of cartoon-like innocence and happiness. Later I would see this same expression again and again in the face of our toddler, when he was at his happiest moments of play.
The first trimester dumped on me nausea and fatigue, which I addressed by indulging in multiple daily croissants. There was also the wolverine olfaction-superpower that I should have used to build a perfumery business.
Best of all, though, was a strong influx of happy hormones. Glowing hormones! Now, I have suffered from depression in the past, used SSRIs, and have always been on the lookout for hormonal changes on my mood. What a surprise it was to discover that pregnancy did not throw me around hormonally, but quite the opposite – it balanced me and made me happy. Years later, my Mother told me that the time that she had seen me at my calmest and happiest was when I was pregnant.
And so, in this first trimester, everything changed inside me. I was already at a good spot in my life – marriage, career, self confidence. But this was something else. I began to feel purposeful, content and flowing with the very grain of life.
Did I mention my olfactory senses? Seriously, my sense of smell evolved to a level rivalled only by my cat, Whiskey, who can smell from the comfort of our library’s couch if I so much as have the intention of opening a can of tuna. Here I was, with the ability to smell people from another room, distinguish the component ingredients of cooked dishes, and determine the use-by-dates of our fridge’s contents.
This olfactory superpower made me feel invincible, and it was coupled with a sense of “the bigger picture” that made previously-annoying issues at work seem insignificant. I became calmer, more focused, and more loving. When I finally announced the news to my parents, we grew closer almost instantaneously, and, instead of work, we started talking about the pregnancy. I felt like my womb was the epicentre of the world and I was growing something so, so very special. I felt special. I felt that I was “in my element”, flowing with the world, finally doing what I was always supposed to do.
The second trimester was about nesting. How can I bring a child into this world with that hideous lamp hanging over our stairwell? And those broken tiles in our laundry? Why, what will he think of me? This absolutely will not do. I rearranged every room, rebuilt our laundry, installed new lights and ended up in a debt that my parents had to rescue me from. Nesting – the struggle is real, girls.
As expected, in the sandwich trimester, there was a bounty of energy. Hormones had settled down, nausea and fatigue had gone away, and I was still small enough to move around briskly. Quick, what do I need to do before I sign off and resign to maternity? I was super productive at work, at home, organising and planning. Planning what I would do with all that spare time once I was finally on maternity leave. I would write a novel. Publish my teenage diaries. Learn to play the guitar. Create my wedding album. I may not have had much spare time to work on these creative projects as a jobless university student with 10 weekly contact hours. But I sure would get them done in the peaceful hours while my baby softly sleeps!
In the third trimester, fatigue returned and back pain knocked on the door. I walked a lot on doctor’s advice, slept on my side (which is only unpeasant if you are forced to do so instead of choosing to do so) and slept as much as I could. My flexible joints relaxed a bit too much and I developed strong hip pain and pelvic pain. The pregnancy yoga instructor had to single me out in every class with specific reduced-movement options. The pregnancy physio told me that it’s spreading my legs that got me in trouble (no, really, keeping those knees together would help with the hip pain!)
My baby was sitting in breach position, his head squashed against one side. I waited for him flip, engage and drop, but he refused. My tummy finally popped and I could not stop staring at the spectacular basketball encapsulated by my skin. My skin stretched gloriously over the bump with no stretch marks in sight. As I waddled around work (and I really did waddle like a penguin), I enjoyed the swaying a bit too much and felt special every time I breathed. I felt like the world was watching and marveling at the rare sight of a female bursting with baby. (Rare? Oh yes, women sport popping bellies for very short periods of their long lives, so it really remains a rare sight out in public.) I enjoyed breathing and struggling to breathe, I watched for the slightest signs of going into labour (not knowing what to expect), I allowed myself endless excuses for everything.
I was also very stressed at work. I was trying to finish off projects and feeling a sense of urgency not shared by my team, and constantly at the brink of exploding. I thought I had to finish everything before embarking on the new journey and in a way I was right. I was so stressed, in fact, that my obstetrician told me that I had to take maternity ASAP.
Pregnancy brain is a thing. Even though I was on a roll, at the peak of my capabilities and able to churn out enormous amounts of work quickly, I hit the pregnancy brain wall pretty hard. Things got muddy unexpectedly and I would forget half way through a sentence what I was so passionately going on about. Anybody who continues working after 30 weeks is fooling themselves – or their employer. There’s simply not that much that you can do. The brain is preoccupied (rightly so) with the challenging task of creating new life, which, let’s be honest, is a little more complex than anything else you can possibly be doing with your conscious brain. Understandably, most mothers want to maximise their maternity leave to occur once the baby is born, but many (that I have spoken to) would prefer to stop working t in an ideal world they would quit work at , most mothers take maternity leave days before the baby is born to maximise In Australia, maternity leave options vary by company and we don’t have (or don’t allow) ourselves the luxury of longer maternity leave with/without pay,
So I signed off at 32 weeks officially and continued to work from home until 36 weeks, racing against the fatigue and the visibly diminishing memory. I was under no false impressions that things were about to change. (I just didn’t know it would take 3 years. As I’m editing this 3 years later, a month from returning to work officially and well ready to resume life as myself, I realise that the maternity period is mystical and magical and has a beginning and an end. Like all of life’s chapters if they are fortunate to be so well defined.)
I nested madly. It seemed crucial to me that my firstborn enters his first home to a renovated laundry and new rose-gold pendant lights… irregular-shaped shiny bubble lights that took me a year to select. (Years later, I would liken my poor son’s torticollis-misshapen head to the spherical perfection of the pendant lights.) I obsessed about the house renovation knowing that it would soon be irrelevant.
With the lighting, bathrooms and laundry upgraded, I felt a sense of control. We managed a quick trip to Tasmania for a final pre-baby holiday. As I approached due date, we travelled by boat one way but were almost not permitted on the flight back for fear of going into labour mid-flight. The trip was filled with long slow walks, lunchtime naps, and mournful longing for wine and oysters that I could not have. We visited the Mona museum and in an enormous empty white room, set up as modern art, I posed as a beach whale. I loved my bump. I could not stop touching it. People did not ask to touch it, as I had expected them to, but I would not have objected. My skin stretched beautifully and left no marks, not a single one. It was olive and buttery and I had never felt more beautiful in my life than I did pregnant. Rather than sucking in my stomach, as I had been doing for years to hide the flabby belly I earned during our gastronomous honeymoon, I now pushed it out with pride and gusto. It was a guilt-free body, free of judgement or concerns, full of promise and hope. It was winter in our Meltarctica, so Mum and I escaped to the Gold Coast for the weekend as a “last trip” before babyhood. It was belly bikini time with mocktails, large appetite but small eating capacity, and hypervigilance to remain within 20 metres of a toilet at all points in time.
At 35 weeks I hosted a baby shower which was themed “80s babies” in celebration of mothers young and old. We decked out the living room in metallic blues and pinks, the girls dressed in glitter and neon, I wore pink and black sequin, and bopped my watermelon to Skrillex. The main playlist for the night, however, was called “Hello fetus”. Instead of food cravings, I developed an insatiable craving for 70s, 80s and 90s music and cheesy old songs. I used this playlist again for Lochie’s 100 day celebration and for many of our breastfeeding sessions. These songs weren’t in my repertoir until then, but they suddenly felt full of meaning and character. The birth of my baby signified for me a rebirth of self, a chance to reinvent myself through the eyes of a brand new being, to become the human that my baby deserved me to be. The playlist signified this. These were young artists in their prime, fresh, hopeful and energetic.
Link to song list
The baby room was in disarray but after we took stock of the baby shower gifts, it was a final sprint to organise the room in line with Pinterest inspirations, and pack a hospital bag. It’s embarrassing to admit just how much of my time was wasted on this.
A day or two later, we went to the cinema “for the last time”. I was drying my hands in the bathroom when I felt slightly wet. I started cramping as soon as we returned home, but I had heard about false cramps so this did not alarm us. I was 36w and 5 days. At 2am the cramps became stronger and I paged my obstetrician, who told me to go to hospital for observation. By 4am the doctors decided to keep me overnight and sent my husband home. I just started falling asleep when a loud POP! woke me from slumber. Nobody warned me about this – nobody except for my cousin, who has a comical way of presenting such information. I found blood in my pad and pressed the “nurse alarm” button in the bathroom. I was still sitting down when the door swung open and 4 frantic faces stared at me.
Since my baby was in breach position, they called my obstetrician, the beautiful Neil. He assured me I would be having a baby that morning so I best get my husband in. It was 5am. I called Don on the mobile and received no answer. His phone was on silent and he had passed out from a late night. Think, think! Nothing is open at this early hour in Melbourne. Nothing except for some 24-hour McDonalds. A breakfast burger delivered by Uber Eats would wake my husband! Thirty minutes after I had placed my order, the McDonalds store advised me that they could not deliver the order since they were not ready to cook anything that early in the morning. I told them to just pay the Uber driver and tell him to deliver my husband the news instead.
Bless the poor Uber driver. He knocked and knocked until a groggy Don opened the door at 5:45am and the Uber driver uttered, “Sir, your wife is in labour, sir.”
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By 7am my contractions were painful and frequent. The cesarean would take place in an hour, so they offered me gas for comfort. Laughing gas. What an incredible, wonderful gas it was. As soon as I chugged on it (and I chugged with all my might), it made me giddy with laughter. The pain faded and I was no longer in a rush. I flirted with everyone, I thought I was hilarious, and I offered everyone a puff of my happy gas. I think they blacklisted me as a “high risk of drug abuse” patient, because in the next pregnancy, they outright refused to give me any gas at all.
At 8am they took away the laughing gas (the nerve!) and the labour pain returned. They kept asking me to repeat my name and address, and I could barely remember either, but by 8:15am the epidural went in. It was easy. Sweetness and warmth took over my body. For the first time in months there was no pain. It was incredibly restful and peaceful. I was giddy with excitement and drugs, nauseous, nervous and overflowing with happiness, all at the same time. Everything in that operating room was beautiful. I was warm and there was so much light! It was like lying in the sunshine on the beach. There was a curtain across my chest, below which the obstetrician operated. The operating lamp had a metalic mirror surface, and I could almost make out them cutting me open. Almost. I did not look, I did not want to see my organs shuffled around (do they take any out, and do they put them all back in?) It took just 15 minutes to make the incision, remove the baby, and seal me. Don cut the umbilical cord, they weighed the baby, and handed it to me.
Lochie was 2.54kg. I had never seen a baby this small. He had one open and one closed eye. I asked why they gave me a one-eyed baby. I cried. Lochie smelt of heaven. I heard that babies smell good but I didn’t expect this. He was perfection. He had perfect skin, perfect eyes, perfectly round head, how could it be so well shaped? Whispy blond eye lashes and a hint of eyebrows. Red and tanned (slight jaundice) skin, not a pimple or rash in sight, and a full head of hair. He was scrawny, like a frog. He had miniature frog legs. I just held him on my chest and warmed him. I didn’t want this moment to end. Everything about him was perfect. I could not get enough. Every millimetre of his body was perfectly formed. I didn’t know babies could be this beautiful. I was high. He was not of this earth. (A few years later, I look back on the photos and I still think this way. But less angel. More alien, part frog?)
The nurses took the baby, wrapped him, gave him to Don. I was wheeled off to recovery and observation. In a cold and heartless room, they brought me the baby and a nurse pushed his head onto my breast. His miniature, barely developed lips knew just what to do. He opened wide and began to suck instantly with a force you would not expect from this collection of cells. It was comical and it was strange, and it was exciting. I was dizzy and coming down from the drugs (it would take many hours). After hours of annoying blood pressure and temperature checks, the nurses finally wheeled me into a room and provided a heat lamp for the baby. It had been 48 hours since I had slept, and it would be much longer still. It is incredible what the body is capable of.
Over the next 4 nights the baby stayed next to me almost the whole time. I barely slept. I should have slept but I was too excited and too nervous to do so, and faded in and out of consciousness with my baby on the breast.
