From Beaches to Babies - My experiences in becoming a Mother
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Motivation & Inspiration
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From Beaches to Babies
The glow of the fading sun draws thousands of soul searchers
I am one of them.
I walk across the sand
And place my foot into the mild Mediterranean sea
I step up from the water onto a cratered rock, and then another
As I tip-toe further away from solid land
The warm winds pass across my cheek, and I take a breath
The island air fills my lungs, I hold onto it, then gently let it go
I am free
It was the summer of 2008, and I was living on the beautiful island of Ibiza. Before this time, I had always felt like a bit of an outcast. Even at primary school people thought I was a little strange; I remember finding two paving slabs at the bottom of the playground that were set aside from the rest, and telling the other children that they were ‘dreamstones’, and that if you sat on them, held hands, and made a wish, you would be transported to a land of your dreams. Well for me, Ibiza was that land. It felt like home, and I knew it was going to be special to me. Six years on from that first visit, I was working my second summer season on the island, with my boyfriend; Mick. After months of all-night fiestas, sunset boat parties, sun rises on the cliffs & hedonistic exploration, the summer sun set for the last time that season. We decided to spend the winter in the French Alps, and managed to get a job as a chalet couple in La Plagne. After the season ended, on the sixteen-hour drive back to England, I realised my period was late. A few days later Mick and I saw the life-changing words on a tiny digital screen; ‘PREGNANT 5-6 WEEKS’. This new adventure was going to be our biggest one to date. Having a child is life-changing for anybody, but for me, it was monumental. It was the single, most normal thing I had ever done, yet it felt like the most peculiar.
Labour certainly didn’t feel natural to me. I was four days past my due date when I awoke at 4am with an intense tightening in my stomach. 42 hours later at 9.49pm on New Year’s Day; my 7lb 11oz baby was pulled out of my stomach via emergency C-section, and I was barely conscious enough to see her. My body had not wanted to let her go, and had almost put us both in danger by holding on so long. She was lucky enough to have her Daddy there to love her in those first precious hours, and once I was put back together again she was placed into my arms. I am sure many have tried, but the feeling you get when that precious little thing is given to you is indescribable. Love is strong in many forms, but nothing can compare to the instantaneous, unconditional love that you feel for that wondrous thing that you created. As her teeny brown eyes looked up at me, I knew that she would have my heart forever.
A few days later we were home in our little flat, and we settled into family life easily. Bella was a content and peaceful baby, who took to breastfeeding well and barely cried at all. Those early months were blissful, and being a mother felt like the most natural thing on earth. She never gave us any worries or struggles, and Mick and I wondered how we could have been so lucky to have created such a perfect being. We were married in the September, with Bella as our flower girl. As Bella grew into a laughing, playing toddler, my womb grew her a baby brother, and two years later, our son was born. After the traumatic experience of my first labour, we decided to have a planned caesarean, and I worried that I wouldn’t feel the same bond that I had done with Bella. After you have experienced the immense love that you feel for your first child, it is impossible to imagine that you could ever feel something so strong for anyone else. I needn’t have worried. Oliver was born at 12.27pm weighing just an ounce less than his sister, and pierced the room with his shrieking cry as they placed him on the weighing table. Just half an hour later he was laid upon my breast, filling himself with milk, and looking up at me with a face that could melt the Arctic.
My recovery from Oliver’s birth was quick and almost painless, and after two days of him being home, we felt like the luckiest family alive. We wondered how it was possible to have brought two such peaceful beings into the world – but things were about to change. On the third day, Oliver awoke from an afternoon doze and began to cry uncontrollably. I tried to settle him, I fed him, changed him, rocked him in my arms, but nothing could soothe his cries. I began to worry. I had never heard anything like the sound he was making from Bella, and I thought something must be wrong. The midwife was due to check in on us anyway, and when she arrived she found me stood up, rocking him from side to side, him still screaming out as if in terrible pain. “Oh dear” she muttered, indifferently; “Seems like you have a little one with a bit of colic.” Colic. The word itself still makes me tremble. For the next four months, it was to take complete control of our lives. After visits to the doctor, it turned out that Oliver had not only colic but also acid reflux, sometimes silent, and sometimes messy. Night and day, Oliver would bring up his milk and scream out in pain, sometimes for hours at a time, with absolutely no respite. We tried warm baths with soothing lavender. He had colic drops before each feed. We learnt baby massage, and gave him at least one per day. We tried circling his little legs in the air as if he was riding an invisible bike, we even tried a chiropractor. But there was just no relief. I was breastfeeding, and tried altering my diet, cutting out dairy, windy vegetables, anything that anybody thought may help – but nothing did. We tried formula milk, but this just made him sicker. Over the next few weeks, the confidence we had felt as parents slowly drifted away. There is nothing to make you feel more like a failure, than to hear your tiny, precious baby, cry out as if in unbearable pain, almost constantly throughout the day and night.
Seven weeks in, and I had to take my first year exams at university– how I passed these I simply do not know. We were used to staying awake at night, but in the past the days that followed had been slow and easy; with colic, there is no break. We were both so tired that we barely left the house. Night after night we’d sit up for hours; taking turns at rocking and swaying, massaging Olly’s tummy and even taking him for drives in the car. It felt like it was never going to end. Poor Bella became confused and uncertain. She had been used to having us all to herself, and now this loud little creature had entered her house, and taken over her parent’s lives. We barely had any time with her, and when we did we were so fatigued that we were irritable and inattentive. We tried our best to make her feel like we were still there for her too, we took turns with Oliver, and one of us would spend time with Bella, but she was now a two-year-old lady, and she too had her tears and tantrums. As we spent every night up handling Oliver, we tried to make time for dealing with Bella’s needs, but we were completely out of our depth. Far from the blissful days of Bella’s early months, and even further from the easy summers on Ibiza beaches. We spent any free time we found reading parenting manuals, colic advice, toddler behaviour tricks and online help forums. Any confidence we had felt before had slipped away, and we felt that if we were going to make it as parents, we were going to need a lot of help. For the first time in my life, I lost my own identity, and became an emptied sponge, soaking up methods of parenting. Nothing seemed to make any difference.
Eventually, Bella too grew irritable, and began to act out in a wild bid for our attention. I will never forget the day that she bit him. Oliver had been having a short nap, and I had been reading stories with Bella. We were having some lovely bonding time, and it felt wonderful to just sit and read with her, holding her in my arms and listening to her chatter about the ducks in the book. I needed to use the toilet, and the second I sat down, Oliver woke up. “Just coming!” I called. As I walked into the room, there my little girl stood, with my four-month-old son’s arm in her mouth. “WHAT ARE YOU DOING!!!!” I bellowed at her, as his ear-splitting cry filled the room. But I didn’t wait to hear her response. I took one look at the deep white teeth marks in his tiny arm, saw tiny specks of infant blood appear, and dragged her out of the room. I sat her in a separate room on the bed, and tried to comfort my screaming baby. Poor Bella sat sobbing in the next room, and I myself began to cry. I felt as if I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. I wondered what had ever make me think that I could handle being a parent, coming from the life I’d led before, and longed for the easy days past where my biggest worry was if I was going to finish work in time for the bus to Evissa Town. I felt as if I had completely failed as a Mother, and I was trapped in a never-ending dark tunnel with no way out.
Gradually, things got better. Oliver’s colic eased up slightly, and he began to pay more attention to the world around him. Night-times were still the same, but the days got easier. At five –months-old, Oliver made his very first sound of laughter, and it was Bella who inspired it. After the biting incident, Mick and I had worked extra hard to make her feel important, and to see that she was still just a baby herself. We involved her as much as possible in Oliver, and she took it upon herself to try to make him laugh. For a while, all she could get were happy smiles, until eventually, she cracked it. She climbed up onto the arm of the sofa, and jumped down onto the cushions shouting; “BOO!!” and there it was, the happiest, most encouraging sound, full of hope for the future and a promise of joy to come. We decided it was time for a holiday, somewhere warm and sunny, and not too far away for the kids. Knowing it as well as we did, we decided to take them to Ibiza. We didn’t want to go anywhere new as we were still apprehensive about Oliver, and as our first family holiday we wanted to feel comfortable in our surroundings. We took them to Portinatx, a beautiful, unspoilt area in the north of the island. For the entire ten days, Oliver was like a different baby. He smiled, laughed, played with things and explored. It was as if the contentment we’d once felt there was flowing into him. He and Bella really began to bond with each other, and anytime she looked at him he would respond with a great big smile. Mick and I relaxed, and we finally felt as if everything was going to be okay. For the first time, we knew we could be our true selves as well as be Mummy and Daddy. On our last day on the island, we took the children to our special spot in front of the Ibiza sunset. As I sat on the silken sand, and looked out at the image I had been captured by so many times, I saw the marvellous change. An image I had once thought so perfect, was now even better than before. The background was the same, the warm orange sun, the tame, turquoise sea. But in front of this picture, were my two, fascinating children. Bella was collecting sea shells, and Oliver was sat picking up the sand and letting it slip away gently through his fingers. I picked him up, and took Bella’s hand in mine, and led them to the water.
The glow of the fading sun draws thousands of soul searchers
I was once one of them.
I sit settled on the sand
With two beings on my knees
Once part of me, now alive, and free
We place our feet into the mild Mediterranean sea
I let my toes caress the cratered rocks
As I let the warm winds comfort me, on solid land
I take a breath, the island air fills my lungs, and I release
I am complete
The glow of the fading sun draws thousands of soul searchers
I am one of them.
I walk across the sand
And place my foot into the mild Mediterranean sea
I step up from the water onto a cratered rock, and then another
As I tip-toe further away from solid land
The warm winds pass across my cheek, and I take a breath
The island air fills my lungs, I hold onto it, then gently let it go
I am free
It was the summer of 2008, and I was living on the beautiful island of Ibiza. Before this time, I had always felt like a bit of an outcast. Even at primary school people thought I was a little strange; I remember finding two paving slabs at the bottom of the playground that were set aside from the rest, and telling the other children that they were ‘dreamstones’, and that if you sat on them, held hands, and made a wish, you would be transported to a land of your dreams. Well for me, Ibiza was that land. It felt like home, and I knew it was going to be special to me. Six years on from that first visit, I was working my second summer season on the island, with my boyfriend; Mick. After months of all-night fiestas, sunset boat parties, sun rises on the cliffs & hedonistic exploration, the summer sun set for the last time that season. We decided to spend the winter in the French Alps, and managed to get a job as a chalet couple in La Plagne. After the season ended, on the sixteen-hour drive back to England, I realised my period was late. A few days later Mick and I saw the life-changing words on a tiny digital screen; ‘PREGNANT 5-6 WEEKS’. This new adventure was going to be our biggest one to date. Having a child is life-changing for anybody, but for me, it was monumental. It was the single, most normal thing I had ever done, yet it felt like the most peculiar.
Labour certainly didn’t feel natural to me. I was four days past my due date when I awoke at 4am with an intense tightening in my stomach. 42 hours later at 9.49pm on New Year’s Day; my 7lb 11oz baby was pulled out of my stomach via emergency C-section, and I was barely conscious enough to see her. My body had not wanted to let her go, and had almost put us both in danger by holding on so long. She was lucky enough to have her Daddy there to love her in those first precious hours, and once I was put back together again she was placed into my arms. I am sure many have tried, but the feeling you get when that precious little thing is given to you is indescribable. Love is strong in many forms, but nothing can compare to the instantaneous, unconditional love that you feel for that wondrous thing that you created. As her teeny brown eyes looked up at me, I knew that she would have my heart forever.
A few days later we were home in our little flat, and we settled into family life easily. Bella was a content and peaceful baby, who took to breastfeeding well and barely cried at all. Those early months were blissful, and being a mother felt like the most natural thing on earth. She never gave us any worries or struggles, and Mick and I wondered how we could have been so lucky to have created such a perfect being. We were married in the September, with Bella as our flower girl. As Bella grew into a laughing, playing toddler, my womb grew her a baby brother, and two years later, our son was born. After the traumatic experience of my first labour, we decided to have a planned caesarean, and I worried that I wouldn’t feel the same bond that I had done with Bella. After you have experienced the immense love that you feel for your first child, it is impossible to imagine that you could ever feel something so strong for anyone else. I needn’t have worried. Oliver was born at 12.27pm weighing just an ounce less than his sister, and pierced the room with his shrieking cry as they placed him on the weighing table. Just half an hour later he was laid upon my breast, filling himself with milk, and looking up at me with a face that could melt the Arctic.
My recovery from Oliver’s birth was quick and almost painless, and after two days of him being home, we felt like the luckiest family alive. We wondered how it was possible to have brought two such peaceful beings into the world – but things were about to change. On the third day, Oliver awoke from an afternoon doze and began to cry uncontrollably. I tried to settle him, I fed him, changed him, rocked him in my arms, but nothing could soothe his cries. I began to worry. I had never heard anything like the sound he was making from Bella, and I thought something must be wrong. The midwife was due to check in on us anyway, and when she arrived she found me stood up, rocking him from side to side, him still screaming out as if in terrible pain. “Oh dear” she muttered, indifferently; “Seems like you have a little one with a bit of colic.” Colic. The word itself still makes me tremble. For the next four months, it was to take complete control of our lives. After visits to the doctor, it turned out that Oliver had not only colic but also acid reflux, sometimes silent, and sometimes messy. Night and day, Oliver would bring up his milk and scream out in pain, sometimes for hours at a time, with absolutely no respite. We tried warm baths with soothing lavender. He had colic drops before each feed. We learnt baby massage, and gave him at least one per day. We tried circling his little legs in the air as if he was riding an invisible bike, we even tried a chiropractor. But there was just no relief. I was breastfeeding, and tried altering my diet, cutting out dairy, windy vegetables, anything that anybody thought may help – but nothing did. We tried formula milk, but this just made him sicker. Over the next few weeks, the confidence we had felt as parents slowly drifted away. There is nothing to make you feel more like a failure, than to hear your tiny, precious baby, cry out as if in unbearable pain, almost constantly throughout the day and night.
Seven weeks in, and I had to take my first year exams at university– how I passed these I simply do not know. We were used to staying awake at night, but in the past the days that followed had been slow and easy; with colic, there is no break. We were both so tired that we barely left the house. Night after night we’d sit up for hours; taking turns at rocking and swaying, massaging Olly’s tummy and even taking him for drives in the car. It felt like it was never going to end. Poor Bella became confused and uncertain. She had been used to having us all to herself, and now this loud little creature had entered her house, and taken over her parent’s lives. We barely had any time with her, and when we did we were so fatigued that we were irritable and inattentive. We tried our best to make her feel like we were still there for her too, we took turns with Oliver, and one of us would spend time with Bella, but she was now a two-year-old lady, and she too had her tears and tantrums. As we spent every night up handling Oliver, we tried to make time for dealing with Bella’s needs, but we were completely out of our depth. Far from the blissful days of Bella’s early months, and even further from the easy summers on Ibiza beaches. We spent any free time we found reading parenting manuals, colic advice, toddler behaviour tricks and online help forums. Any confidence we had felt before had slipped away, and we felt that if we were going to make it as parents, we were going to need a lot of help. For the first time in my life, I lost my own identity, and became an emptied sponge, soaking up methods of parenting. Nothing seemed to make any difference.
Eventually, Bella too grew irritable, and began to act out in a wild bid for our attention. I will never forget the day that she bit him. Oliver had been having a short nap, and I had been reading stories with Bella. We were having some lovely bonding time, and it felt wonderful to just sit and read with her, holding her in my arms and listening to her chatter about the ducks in the book. I needed to use the toilet, and the second I sat down, Oliver woke up. “Just coming!” I called. As I walked into the room, there my little girl stood, with my four-month-old son’s arm in her mouth. “WHAT ARE YOU DOING!!!!” I bellowed at her, as his ear-splitting cry filled the room. But I didn’t wait to hear her response. I took one look at the deep white teeth marks in his tiny arm, saw tiny specks of infant blood appear, and dragged her out of the room. I sat her in a separate room on the bed, and tried to comfort my screaming baby. Poor Bella sat sobbing in the next room, and I myself began to cry. I felt as if I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. I wondered what had ever make me think that I could handle being a parent, coming from the life I’d led before, and longed for the easy days past where my biggest worry was if I was going to finish work in time for the bus to Evissa Town. I felt as if I had completely failed as a Mother, and I was trapped in a never-ending dark tunnel with no way out.
Gradually, things got better. Oliver’s colic eased up slightly, and he began to pay more attention to the world around him. Night-times were still the same, but the days got easier. At five –months-old, Oliver made his very first sound of laughter, and it was Bella who inspired it. After the biting incident, Mick and I had worked extra hard to make her feel important, and to see that she was still just a baby herself. We involved her as much as possible in Oliver, and she took it upon herself to try to make him laugh. For a while, all she could get were happy smiles, until eventually, she cracked it. She climbed up onto the arm of the sofa, and jumped down onto the cushions shouting; “BOO!!” and there it was, the happiest, most encouraging sound, full of hope for the future and a promise of joy to come. We decided it was time for a holiday, somewhere warm and sunny, and not too far away for the kids. Knowing it as well as we did, we decided to take them to Ibiza. We didn’t want to go anywhere new as we were still apprehensive about Oliver, and as our first family holiday we wanted to feel comfortable in our surroundings. We took them to Portinatx, a beautiful, unspoilt area in the north of the island. For the entire ten days, Oliver was like a different baby. He smiled, laughed, played with things and explored. It was as if the contentment we’d once felt there was flowing into him. He and Bella really began to bond with each other, and anytime she looked at him he would respond with a great big smile. Mick and I relaxed, and we finally felt as if everything was going to be okay. For the first time, we knew we could be our true selves as well as be Mummy and Daddy. On our last day on the island, we took the children to our special spot in front of the Ibiza sunset. As I sat on the silken sand, and looked out at the image I had been captured by so many times, I saw the marvellous change. An image I had once thought so perfect, was now even better than before. The background was the same, the warm orange sun, the tame, turquoise sea. But in front of this picture, were my two, fascinating children. Bella was collecting sea shells, and Oliver was sat picking up the sand and letting it slip away gently through his fingers. I picked him up, and took Bella’s hand in mine, and led them to the water.
The glow of the fading sun draws thousands of soul searchers
I was once one of them.
I sit settled on the sand
With two beings on my knees
Once part of me, now alive, and free
We place our feet into the mild Mediterranean sea
I let my toes caress the cratered rocks
As I let the warm winds comfort me, on solid land
I take a breath, the island air fills my lungs, and I release
I am complete
