I fell pregnant relatively quickly.
Now, I don't say this lightly and I realise the immense luck and privilege of falling pregnant and then carrying that baby to term- I truly do- but what I wasn't prepared for was how hard those first few (16) weeks would be.
I was a notorious spewer after a few too many champagnes, so I knew I would be pretty green around the gills in the beginning, but I spewed all day, every day for about 16 weeks.
During this time I fought with myself knowing how lucky I was to be pregnant but also wanting to lay in bed (or around the toilet) and feel sorry for myself. I constantly felt like I should be grateful and enjoy the pregnancy because there are people out there who want and deserve nothing more than to have a baby. I was excited, but I also downplayed my experience so as not to offend others in the process.
I'm a fit, athletic build and didn't really show a bump until about 20 weeks. This in itself opened the gates for comments about how "small I was" and "where is it" and the dreaded "just you wait"
These comments probably helped prepare me for what was to come. Everyone has an opinion on motherhood, pregnancy and babies- and they're pretty eager to tell you.
My pregnancy was fairly bland other than the all day sickness in the beginning which I learnt was a very good thing in pregnancy. I did Pilates almost every day and continued walking our 50kg dog. Not much changed and I felt like I was coming to terms with what lay ahead.
LOL.
My waters broke at 34 weeks on the dot. No warning, no pains- just thought I'd wet myself and all the pelvic floor exercises had failed me.
Off to hospital we went- no real bags packed, no nursery finished, a week left of work, birth classes and hospital tours scheduled for 7 days later. Oh- and I didn't have an obstetrician at that point as mine had gone on personal leave suddenly the day prior.
For someone who loves control, I was getting a hard and fast lesson that it was Rudy's world and we were just living in it.
Rudy was born via emergency cesearean section 3 hours later and spent the first 17 days of his life in the neonatal intensive care unit- NICU. This was something that was not even on my radar to research and prepare for. I had prepared myself (as much as you think you can) for a vaginal birth, a cesearean, the recovery period following birth, the photo I was going to take in the going home outfit and the sleep schedule I was going to follow once we were home.
Joke was on me. Perhaps it was also life's way of telling me the reigns had been handed over and I couldn't prepare with spreadsheets or listen to podcasts about what was to come- every single journey to motherhood is different.
I just had to hang on tight and survive to tell the tale.
Rudy was delivered and subsequently whisked off to NICU after a quick and surreal hello along with my husband while I lay there being stitched up thinking what the fuck has just happened.
I wasn't sad or happy- I think the main emotion was shock and disbelief that I was now a mum. None of my podcasts talked about what happens with a very premature baby or NICU so I didn't know how to process what had just happened.
I tried to be polite to all the doctors and nurses working on me waiting to be told something.
I was wheeled into recovery where I remember signing the financial consent form and willing my toes to wriggle as the epidural continued to work its magic and my husband finally returned.
He looked shocked and sad.
He said "the baby is ok I think. He's tiny. He's hooked up to lots of machines and I just tried to stay out of the way, I don't really know what's going on"
An hour or so passed, and we went up to the ward. I still hadn't seen the baby. I had a few photos my husband took but it still felt weird. I'd given birth but hadn't really seen the result.
6 hours later I was finally able to go down in a wheelchair and properly see my baby. He was ventilated- I would learn later this is serious and the scariest machine of all in NICU- it was literally breathing for him. We were instructed not to touch him as he couldn't afford to expend any unnecessary energy. All I could think of was how am I supposed to do skin to skin when we physically can't touch him, how is he going to know I'm his mum and holy shit-
We've got a baby.
The next few days consisted of milking myself- a task I took great pride in and walking those carefully prepared and labelled bottles downstairs to Rudy every 2 hours. I didn't use a wheelchair after that first visit. I was determined to push on and treated this new job the same way I do life- find the solution and crack on. I later realised I only had panadol and nurofen for pain relief after the first day- I guess I was proving to be kind of tough.
Rudy slowly reached milestones in the NICU, like moving from ventilator to the CPAP machine, tube feeds to suck feeds and bottle sucking to breast feeding.
He reached his birth weight after nearly a week and it was then we realised it was going to be a hard slog.
I was discharged from hospital and so we had to commute to hospital up to 3 times a day to see our baby and take the pumped breastmilk.
Only the parents were allowed down there so that was isolating in itself. It's not a place where you take a coffee and chat to the neighbour. Everyone is down there observing the doctors keep their baby alive and get them thriving enough so they can go home and learn how to be a family and parent without the close eye of the midwives.
Day 16 arrived and we knew he had to do 6 suck feeds over a 12 hour period- no tube.
We pushed our little man (gently but full of hope and desperation) and fist pumped when we read his notes stating the feed before last was a suck and another suck- going home was becoming a real possibility and he did it! The last suck feed he did like a little champion- all of the midwives were cheering him on and we were on our way to the mothercraft room the next night.
Mothercraft is like having training wheels and taking them off one at a time. We weren't in the NICU- we were in our own room just off to the side so if anything happened to the baby or we needed help we opened the door and our midwives were right there.
We spent the first night as a family in the mothercraft room and it was so surreal.
This tiny little human was ours and we had to keep him alive.
We were discharged the following morning and home we went to learn how to parent and relinquish any sense of control we thought we might have.
There was no handbook.
It was Rudy's world and we were just living in it.