The Beginning

Parenting is the wildest, most constant, beautiful, and exhausting adventure a person could ever have. Don’t get me wrong—I’m not one of those people who thinks everyone should have the experience. If you don’t want them, you don’t want them. That’s okay. Kids are pretty great birth control sometimes. They’re gross, loud, and often covered in food and boogers. Every day, when they wake you up at 6 a.m. (and anyone else whose kids wake them up later than that can suck it), you don’t wonder if a tornado will strike that day, but rather how bad the damage will be when it’s over—the aftermath and evidence of the children’s existence in your living room that you JUST made spotless 24 hours ago. They wake up and see a blank canvas. Like peeing all over pure white snow. But instead of snow, it’s a freshly vacuumed carpet. And instead of pee it’s crumbs, toys, maybe some drool—and, what the hell, probably a little bit of pee too.

There are endless beginnings when you are a mother. There’s the first child: nine months inside you. Ultrasounds, gender reveals (not the OTT ones), preparing the nursery, nesting. You’re an incubator for nine months, carrying a teeny sesame seed with a fluttering heartbeat that grows into a weird, skinny alien that kicks your bladder and punches your rib cage—then into a crying, squishy, gooey thing that you have to squeeze out of your tiny hole, all the while being told to push like you’re taking the biggest dump of your life. Then there's the second child: more of the same, except you're on survival mode keeping you and baby alive, plus your toddler who is jumping on you like a trampoline and demanding snacks even more than the baby feasting on your every meal via placenta, leaving you wondering why you're already hungry even though you just ate 2 cheeseburgers. You also don't really prepare the nursery, you just recycle the same furniture if you can, or get the cheapest replacements you can find. At this point, you don't care if it's aesthetically pleasing, you just need a comfy box for your baby to sleep. Then it's the same squishy, gooey thing that you squeeze out of your tiny hole. The same, yet completely different. The personalities shine in different ways, down to their movements in your belly. Even the way they enter the world sort of shows what they'll be like.

It’s really a magical, unique experience. This is about 25% sarcasm. I didn’t mind most of the labour.

I was fortunate (sort of), because I was induced for both pregnancies (I had gestational diabetes both times), so I felt more or less in control of my labours. I knew when it was all going off (as long as the babies weren’t early), and that feeling of control went a long way. I was as cool as a cucumber, really. I didn’t mind the long wait in bed. My children’s father, on the other hand, was getting on my tits—complaining that he was uncomfortable, saying it was unfair that dads only got chairs, trying to lay in my bed, whining that it was taking too long. Welcome to labour, dear.

Otherwise, it went smoothly in my eyes. Particularly with baby number two. I got epidurals for both inductions, because many women told me that the hormones used to spice up labour hurt like a son of a biscuit. Both epidurals were amazingly done, and I have no complaints—I’m very thankful for that. My blood sugars apparently dropped to almost dead, and the midwives were scratching their heads, wondering why I didn’t feel terrible. But I was awake, talking, laughing, playing Mario Kart, showing no signs of hypoglycaemia. I even slept okay in spite of my belly tightening every few minutes. My second daughter was teeny tiny. She didn’t want to settle into place in my pelvis and kept bobbing up and down like a damn apple. Eventually, she decided to join us, and I needed to push.

Poof! Three pushes later—1:59 a.m.—a 6 lb 5 oz potato came rolling out of me with enough uterine waters to hydrate Africa. The baby goat-like cry filled the room, she was placed on my chest, and there she was: Evie Ruth Franks.

Then I felt sick. My hearing started to fade. My vision went black. The midwife gently swiped baby Evie out of my arms and handed her to Dad.

The next thing I remember is the sound of a crash bell. I heard the alarm going and was concerned that somebody needed help. It took me a few seconds to realise the crash bell was for me. The bed had been tilted so that I was lying with my head down and feet up. I saw the light above my bed blinking orange, signalling that the midwife had pulled the alarm. My hearing and vision started coming back, and I could see a few staff members around me, wondering if I was dead. At some point, they had strapped a blood pressure cuff onto my arm and were constantly inflating it to get a reading. I looked up at the monitor. 74/26. Hot damn. Maybe I was dead. The doctors checked under the blanket at my freshly squeezed vagina to see if I was bleeding buckets of blood. Thankfully, all they found was a little poop nugget I had passed during labour. I felt bad for them—that tiny nugget smelled terrible.

They were satisfied once I came around and my colour looked less Casper-the-Friendly-Ghost and my blood pressure less close to dead. All was well. I even changed my bedding myself because my people-pleasing, poopy ass didn’t want to bother the midwives, and I couldn’t stand the stench of that nugget anymore. We moved to the postnatal ward, and Evie and I got better acquainted.

Then Evie caused mild panic among the staff there because her blood sugars kept dropping. They thought she might have to go to NICU to stabilise. They told me not to bother breastfeeding for the time being and to give her formula instead, since it would bring her sugars up faster. So I did just that—not having a clue how to feed such a tiny newborn a bottle. The midwife helped me and fed her. She looked so ridiculously small on the midwife’s lap. I stared at the two of them, fighting the urge to cry and sleep. My uterus was contracting back, and the pain was worse than the contractions I’d had before the epidural. Her blood sugars eventually stabilised, and we stayed put to recover from the trauma of labour (mine was a gentle trauma compared to others’ experiences).

I had forgotten everything. How sticky and black the first poops were. How small the newborn cries sounded. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how to swaddle her in a baby blanket. I forgot how much newborns sleep and was convinced something was horribly wrong. I forgot the angst that came with breastfeeding. I was constantly on edge. I wanted to cry every minute I was awake. I took about 250 pictures and videos of what I now know looked like a swollen red blob with one eye stuck shut and a little tongue poking out. It’s miraculous that we find these helpless little things so intensely precious and beautiful. And if I had another one tomorrow, I’d feel exactly the same.

The anxiety, though—that I remembered far too well.