I've woken up to a rainy Bank Holiday Saturday. And I'm smiling. Not because its raining - FFS I have six bored children to occupy and am thanking my lucky stars for Nintendo and Netflix if I'm honest!
No, I'm smiling because I remember a rainy bank holiday 20 years ago when DH and I decided the time was right to try for a baby.
At the time we had been married for over a year. I had moved down the the Home Counties from the Black Country a month before the wedding and started a new job at a local group of newspapers.
The plan was to wait til I had been working there two years to get the full maternity package. But the UK Press Gazette had been making worrying noises about our group, our Editor was looking ever more stressed and most of us were job hunting elsewhere to get out before the axe fell.
Sure enough, the group was bought out and we had a day from hell where names were called - those who were being made redundant and those who were staying. I was shocked to be in the very small group to be staying, and with my own house in the Midlands in negative equity was very relieved to still have an income.
But Mother Nature was tapping her fingers in impatience, I was broody as hell and I could not bear to wait another two years - so on a rare day off together when DH was home from his global travels with the hot air balloon company he worked for and I was not shut away in a windowless office writing copy about a town 30 miles away we went to the zoo and talked babies. The outcome of that scary conversation was that we could not see an ideal time in the near future to start a family but we didn't want to wait for years that day so we might as well throw caution to the wind and go for it.
And that brings me to that rainy bank holiday. DH's balloon flights scheduled at a local show had been cancelled due to the weather. I was at home. Nothing on TV. You get the idea.....
It seems odd sitting here now, mum to 7 gorgeous children, some of whom are now taller than me.But I remember being terrified at the thought of just one baby. I was scared to death of needles - how was I going to cope with pregnancy blood tests? I didn't even know about epidurals then luckily or I would never have slept!
Would I cope with the delivery? Would I be able to look after a tiny human? Would I be be able to leave that human with a childminder and go back to work. (Answers - Thanks to my body's failure to dilate after days I had an epidural and a Caesarian so yes with help. Yes I could and no I couldn't.)
Of course it all worked out, and I have been blessed apart from the fact I have never managed what the world terms a "natural" birth. I didn't plan to be a madmumofof7 - I'll tell you more about how that panned out another day. But my life as a mum all started on a rainy bank holiday. So I'm smiling.
No, I'm smiling because I remember a rainy bank holiday 20 years ago when DH and I decided the time was right to try for a baby.
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| My first baby- taller than me and just as mad. |
The plan was to wait til I had been working there two years to get the full maternity package. But the UK Press Gazette had been making worrying noises about our group, our Editor was looking ever more stressed and most of us were job hunting elsewhere to get out before the axe fell.
Sure enough, the group was bought out and we had a day from hell where names were called - those who were being made redundant and those who were staying. I was shocked to be in the very small group to be staying, and with my own house in the Midlands in negative equity was very relieved to still have an income.
But Mother Nature was tapping her fingers in impatience, I was broody as hell and I could not bear to wait another two years - so on a rare day off together when DH was home from his global travels with the hot air balloon company he worked for and I was not shut away in a windowless office writing copy about a town 30 miles away we went to the zoo and talked babies. The outcome of that scary conversation was that we could not see an ideal time in the near future to start a family but we didn't want to wait for years that day so we might as well throw caution to the wind and go for it.
And that brings me to that rainy bank holiday. DH's balloon flights scheduled at a local show had been cancelled due to the weather. I was at home. Nothing on TV. You get the idea.....
 |
| DS#3 and DD#1 visiting newborn DS#5 |
It seems odd sitting here now, mum to 7 gorgeous children, some of whom are now taller than me.But I remember being terrified at the thought of just one baby. I was scared to death of needles - how was I going to cope with pregnancy blood tests? I didn't even know about epidurals then luckily or I would never have slept!
Would I cope with the delivery? Would I be able to look after a tiny human? Would I be be able to leave that human with a childminder and go back to work. (Answers - Thanks to my body's failure to dilate after days I had an epidural and a Caesarian so yes with help. Yes I could and no I couldn't.)
Of course it all worked out, and I have been blessed apart from the fact I have never managed what the world terms a "natural" birth. I didn't plan to be a madmumofof7 - I'll tell you more about how that panned out another day. But my life as a mum all started on a rainy bank holiday. So I'm smiling.
