The Birth of a Human

We've all heard that parenthood will change your life and that you fall in love with the little person you created (or adopted), the moment you see them for the first time.

But no matter how many times you dream about that moment, or how many times you rehearse that moment as a child through role play, nothing in the universe can really prepare you for it. Not a single thing. That is because when that moment finally arrives, you are born as a parent too. You hold on to that moment with every possible thing you can and you want it to last forever.

Time stands still for awhile. You lose yourself in a space that you never knew existed and for a moment you look into the eyes of eternity and everything in the moment makes perfect sense. You understand unconditional love for the first time and you experience beauty like you have never seen it. A lot of us want to believe that we love our significant others unconditionally but you don't really understand the meaning of unconditional until you have a child.

As I said, in that moment, everything makes sense and NOTHING ELSE will ever make sense again. Nothing else will ever compare to this no matter how hard you try. It is the greatest privilege you can ever have to be a parent and the biggest responsibility that you can ever carry.

I always knew I wanted to be a mum. When I was a little girl and we played make believe, I was always the one with the most children. I fantasized about having a big family and a loving husband. The husband was always less important than being a mum. I was designed to be a mum and there was a tiny mum shaped space carved into my soul that would wait to be filled some day.

I met my husband a little bit later than a lot of people. I was thirty three when we met and thirty four when we married. I am married to a wonderful man and we both knew from the start that becoming a parent was one of the most important dreams we each fostered individually. Yes, we considered the possibility of what would happen if we weren't able to have children of our own. There is always a chance of that happening and we both believed that you should marry someone because you love them and not just because they would make beautiful babies.

That concept sounds great on paper but in reality it's very much like youth. We are always told to value our youth and that not everyone is fortunate enough to grow old. The concept of dying makes no sense to a child. And the concept of never having children makes no sense to someone who hasn't faced difficulty.

My only difficulty was finding the one before I ran out of time. I didn't want to marry just any man and risk having to raise kids on my own (although I think single mums do a wonderful job). I wasn't brave enough for that. I also know that not everyone gets to choose to be a single parent so no judgement there. I wanted to be married first and finding the right man was tricky and felt like it was taking forever.

When we finally met we assumed that it would take a while to fall pregnant. Most of our friends were going through rounds of difficult IVF and we didn't want to waste time we both felt we didn't have. So we decided to try as soon as we got married.

I fell pregnant on our honeymoon, which is really quite romantic thinking about it now.

I couldn't be happier. I can remember running home from the station one day because I felt so overwhelmed by love for this little human I was carrying inside of me and so immensely blessed that I wanted to cry. When I arrived home, I closed the door behind me and stood in front of our kitchen window looking out onto the garden and just sang.

My son wasn't really rushing his way into this world. We were so excited to meet him.

When I was finally able to hold him, he looked so different to the way I had imagined he would. I imagined he would have dark hair and look like my husband. He looked nothing like my husband and he was as fair as a cloud.

I was certain I could smell heaven on his breath. After a week in hospital due to his infection markers being high, we were about ready to go home. We were in a private room and I decided to play the song, "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face." My son looked up at me as he was taking in the music and I started crying a river.

He was staring at me, and I knew he knew that I was his mum. It felt like I was catapulted into eternity in that moment and I could never be torn away from this little person for as long as we lived. Not even death could separate us.

I read that a child's DNA stays in the mother's body for the rest of her life. That didn't surprise me. I wanted to give him everything, protect him with everything in me and be with him every second. When he was sleeping, I didn't sleep, but instead stared at him and how perfect he was to me.

I still can't quite grasp how privileged I feel to be a mother. It is truly the most beautiful thing in life to me. Sometimes I feel that other people find it annoying that I love my kids so much. I make a point to praise them a lot, hug them as often as I can and to tell them I love them and that I'm proud of them every day.

But I believe that every child born deserves to have at least one person in the world to which they mean the entire world. They deserve to have one person who can love them unconditionally through their worst moments. They deserve to have one person who thinks that they are the most beautiful and smartest kid in the world because that is what will make them into the best versions of who they can be.

I am an annoyingly proud mother and I will never apologise for that. A child coming into the world and landing in the arms of his/her mother is the most beautiful thing in life.