Now We Are Five – what I’ve learnt since becoming a mum

Kerry Thomson - 27 Mar 17

My eldest son Angus has just turned five. For some reason this birthday has hit me in a way that his others haven’t. It feels significant, a marker in the sand. I can feel him moving further away from me and yet at the same time, pulling closer. I want to savour every moment with him before he goes to school. Before he stops needing his mummy quite so much.

9.07am on 14 March 2012 – this was when my life changed forever. This was when I became a mum. Angus arrived like a hand grenade into our lives. Forced early into a world he wasn’t quite ready for because my body was failing him. I still feel the guilt five years on.

Out he came, a hot slimy tangle of arms and legs and squashed head and all the pain and the fear just stopped. Like someone had flicked a switch. We spent the next week in hospital – holed up together in a small side room with the curtains drawn. He didn’t sleep, I didn’t sleep. We both cried a lot. Every morning I would lift him up to the window and show him the world outside. When the time finally came to go home, I was terrified. How would we survive outside these four walls?

But we did. We have survived five years together and he now has a beautiful sister and brother. I am not the same person I was before. Motherhood has fundamentally changed me in ways I never imagined. But what have I learnt during the last half decade as a mum?

• The art of patience – something I struggle with daily.
• I am much stronger than I thought. That when the shit hits the fan I can grit my teeth and keep going.
• Sleep deprivation is hell. Being up with a baby in the middle of the night can be soul crushingly lonely but you can also catch up on a hell of a lot of TV – six years worth of Downton Abbey, an entire series of Strictly and lots of obscure BBC4 documentaries.
• Sleep is key to everything. If you sleep your brain functions better, you are happier, you look better, your relationship is better. Sleep really is the most important commodity and the one that eludes me the most.
• Baby books are rubbish, don’t read them. I remember reading ‘The Baby Whisperer’ in my first few weeks as a mum and freaking out because I couldn’t identify my baby’s cry. Listen to your gut and follow your instinct. Nobody knows your children like you do.
• To see the joy in little things. Having children is an opportunity to relive your own childhood games, songs and memories. You get to see the world through a child’s eyes and realise that most of it is pretty awesome.
• The importance of eating together. We eat together every night and have done since Angus was 18 months old. Food is always thrown, someone always declares the meal disgusting, a drink is always spilt. But we talk, we laugh, we all eat the same food. There is a proper sense of coming together as a family. I love it.
• Spontaneity is dead. My husband is a planner while I’m more of a fly by the seat of the pants kind of girl. Everything needs to be planned when you have kids. This has been a hard lesson to learn.
• It’s hard making new friends. When you become a mum your social network changes. Making new mum friends is like dating. You get talking to someone at a baby group, you’d like to see them again, you get up the courage to ask for their number. You’re terrified on that first meeting – what shall I wear? What will we talk about?  Will she like me?  Sometimes you click and sometimes you don’t. Persevere because mum friends are essential. They are what get you through each day. Choose them wisely.
• Your body is incredible. Since becoming a mum I have found a whole new respect for my body. Yes it’s got wobbly bits and isn’t quite how I would like it to be but it’s produced three amazing children. It still blows my mind to think I have grown three human beings inside me and pushed them out. That I have then continued to be their sole life source until Ella’s Kitchen was able to take over. The female body is a wonder and we should treat it as such.
• Listen to your children, they are incredibly perceptive and often very, very funny.
• Always have time for cuddles.
• Don’t feel bad about losing it sometimes. Everyone does and if they say they don’t they’re lying.

All the time I was pregnant with Angus, I wondered who was inside me – who was this little person?  Would they be a boy or a girl?  What would they look like?  The most powerful thing for me when he was born was the overwhelming feeling that he wasn’t a stranger. I felt like I knew him. I did know him. I’d felt his every move inside me for the past nine months. He looked like all my family – everyone I had ever loved.

When I was in labour I had a whacking great dose of diamorphine in a lame attempt to ease the pain of a back to back labour. According to my amazing midwife I told her that all my grandparents were in the room, standing at the end of my bed. ‘Can’t you see them?’ I asked her. Who knows if that was the morphine talking or if indeed they really were there in some way, handing over bits of themselves to this new soul who was about to emerge. How I wish they were still here now to see their spirits live on. How proud they would be.

Last night I lifted the birthday boy out of the bath. As I pulled the towel around him, I felt the weight of him and his long limbs wrapped around me. I sat down on a chair and cuddled him into me. ‘Mummy’ he said as he put his head on my chest and lay quietly against me. I felt tears pricking my eyes. I couldn’t help but think back to five years ago. Back then I had just hopped on a roller coaster that I couldn’t get off. I had no idea what was ahead of me – the joy, the fear, the frustration and the love, the incredible, visceral love. Love like you have never experienced before. Because that’s really what I’ve learnt in these last five years. That love, actually, is all around. That love really is all that matters.

Kerry Thomson

I'm Kerry, I live in the sticks in Scotland with one husband, three kids, one dog, six chickens, 200 cattle and 2500 sheep. You can read more about me and my gang on my blog www.postcardsfrommykitchentable.com

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