To say I didn’t rush into motherhood is an understatement. Although I’ve been married for 14 years, I had my daughter, Dree, only 18 months ago, at the tail end of my thirties – a time when questions like, “Do you want children?” begin to dry up, because the consensus is your ovaries probably have.
The truth is, I never particularly pined to be a parent; sure, I thought it might happen one day, but I was never in any hurry, mostly because the idea of pregnancy and delivery had always terrified me. (For unexplained reasons, I’m always the person everyone tells their labour horror story to.) And then I was pregnant. (As it turned out, I was fortunate to have an incredibly easy pregnancy, only really feeling or looking pregnant in the last eight weeks, while a planned C-section – which I highly recommend – soon scuppered crippling labour fears.)
I didn’t read one pregnancy book, download a trimester app, change my diet or attend a single antenatal class. I went about my life as usual (just eating a lot more oranges, my only craving).
And then she arrived, my instant best friend, all 8lb 4oz of her, and life as I knew it ceased to exist. Well, not entirely. Yes, spontaneity flies out of the window – I’ve had to get to grips with schedules – but it changes as much as you want it to. I still work (after seven months’ maternity leave wearing nothing fancier than a tracksuit, I came back to a promotion); I still travel for the twice-yearly ready-to-wear collections. Dree sometimes comes with me to Paris, if only for a weekend.
Sleep deprivation is real – and I’m lucky, Dree has slept through the night for a solid 12 hours since she was three months old; but weekend lie-ins are a distant memory. I miss them.
But it’s a small price to pay to discover that your favourite scent in the world is that of your newborn’s wispy, super-soft hair; the best sound those creaky baby dinosaur noises they make when they are sleeping at a few weeks old. She’s exhausting. It’s exhausting. But an hour after she goes to bed, when I have a longed-for moment of freedom, I always feel like waking her up again, just so we can hang some more.
