Learning to Live with Baby

4 days old

On the 3rd of August 2014 at 16.01 I gave birth to my beautiful baby boy Sebastian Noah Ian Francis. I waited in excitement for 9 long months just desperate to meet him and now that he is here he is simply more amazing than I could ever have imagined and I love him to pieces with all my heart.

This is however, one of the biggest emotional roller coasters I have been on for a long time. It's almost like being a teenager again!

2 weeks BEFORE giving birth I started to panic. What have I done? This is such a huge responsibility, am I ready for this? My life is going to change completely, will I like my new life? And I felt guilty for having these doubts and began to hate myself for having them. It became a vicious cycle, but one that I knew was all down to my crazy hormones rushing through my body. Luckily for me, my mum was always on the end of a phone to calm me down and knock some sense into me.

2 weeks AFTER giving birth was a completely different story. I was (am) utterly in love with this tiny person and literally just spent hours watching him sleep to see what kind of cute little face he would pull next. The lack of MY sleep did get to me though, and if anything I felt like that was one of the main causes for randomly bursting into tears when my husband would arrive home after a long day of work.

The thing that upset me the most was the way I gave birth. My husband and I had decided to try for a home birth, but in the end I was taken in for an emergency C-Section (that's another story)! I suppose I felt slightly cheated after reading Spiritual Midwifery by Ina May Gaskin. These womens' birth stories sounded amazing and I visualised my own amazing birth. Little did I know you can never EVER plan a birth no matter how hard you try. In the end I knew that all that REALLY mattered was that my little one was here safe and sound.

7 weeks old

And how grateful I am that he is! After 8 weeks together we have settled into a nice little routine. We have been out and about meeting friends for coffee, going for walks, taking the train into London to visit Granny and do some shopping. He is an absolute dream and I couldn't ask for more, but lately I find myself wondering...where am I? WHO am I? I am scared to loose my identity and I can see myself focusing all my attention on him. I can't help it I love him so! But I also need to love me, and I love the life my husband and I have built for ourselves. I don't want to live my life vicariously through my family. I want to add something to it and feel like a whole person who can inspire my son to want to do things for himself and be creative.

This is why I have come back to my blog. After 3 months or so away I can see why it is so important for so many to have that outlet. And although it is nice to have readers and receive comments, it is essentially about pleasing me and not about pleasing others. So my aim is to write about whatever I feel like in this space and to see what it turns into, if anything.

Thanks for reading x