OUT FOR AS LONG AS SHE WAS IN

‘Are you ready for the baby?’

‘Err…yeah, I think so…’

This week marked the point where Pickle had been on the outside for as long as she was inside. 9 months feels like forever and no time at all, all at once. So much can happen in the space of 40 weeks.

I had one of those apps on my phone which tells you each week of your pregnancy how big the baby is. Normally it compared the baby to fruit, although the app I had included some more rogue options. At ten weeks, your baby is the size of a Lego figure. At fifteen weeks it’s the size of an avocado. At twenty weeks it’s the size of an axolotl. I particularly enjoyed twenty five weeks. ‘Your baby is the size of a Fougasse.’ ‘A foo what? Oh, wait, that’s the bread thing they made on Bake Off last week. Great…’

12 Weeks vs 12 Weeks

In the last couple of months of my pregnancy I was frequently asked ‘are you ready for the baby?’ Most of the time I would reply with ‘Err…yeah, I think so…’ After all, we had the cot and the pram and the moses basket and some gender neutral clothes and…and…and…(so much stuff!) I’d written my very vague and very non-committal birthing plan. My bag was packed from 35 weeks. I was ready, right?!

I think in many respects I was as ready as I could be, at least for the actual birth. Materially I was ready and had everything I needed. Mentally I was ready. I felt prepared for the task ahead of me, and thought I had a pretty good idea of what was going to happen. I was ‘ready.’

But here’s the cliché. You can never be ready. You cannot ever fully prepare for everything that parenthood throws at you. You might try and tell yourself that you’ve got it all sorted, but I can tell you now that it doesn’t work like that. Sorry to burst your bubble. If there’s anything I’ve learnt over the last nine months, it’s that you should always have a muslin to hand. No, wait…wrong life lesson. It’s that something will always take you by surprise. Good things. Not so good things. Adventures. Challenges. Babies aren’t given the handouts to read before they arrive, so they don’t always play by the rules. And that’s ok. You just need to learn to roll with it. It’s really difficult – there’s a good chance that you’ll cry at some point. I know I have. A lot. But it’s also beautiful.

28 Weeks vs 28 Weeks

I’m going to say something now which will probably make me sound really stupid, but here goes. Throughout my pregnancy I found it really hard to reconcile the fact that the thing inside me was our baby. I knew I was pregnant. I knew there would be a baby. I knew that I had to give birth. I was fine with all of those facts. But I found it really difficult to get my head around the fact that they were connected – that the thing I could feel moving around inside me, kicking and punching and swishing, was the actual baby who would soon be on the outside in my arms, and who will one day be a toddler, a child, a teenager, an adult. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not naïve. I understand biology. I know how it all works. I just found it hard to connect the concepts of pregnancy and baby. In my head they felt like two separate and distinct things. Even now, looking back, I find it really hard to comprehend that the small person who I now know to be Pickle was the very same thing that caused my insides to flutter in the middle of the night all those months ago. She was literally inside of me. Anybody else find that mindblowing? Am I the only one who can’t get their head around that? I mean, it’s incredible. The human body is absolutely amazing. My head hurts just thinking about it.

What a difference 9 months makes…

That squiggly little thing that was inside of me is now a beautiful, babbling, bubble-blowing, bouncing nine month old, and those nine months have flown by. If I’m completely honest, I’m a little terrified by how quickly she’s growing up. It really does seem to be a case of ‘blink and you’ll miss it.’ She amazes me everyday. She frustrates me frequently. Just when I think I’m getting the hang of it (because surely nine months makes me a pro…) I realise that it was just another phase that she was going through and that someone has changed the rules again.

In the grand scheme of things nine months is nothing. And I’m really glad about that, because I know I still have so much to learn. Who knows what challenges parenthood will throw at me next? I’ve got a feeling it might involve baby-proofing the house though…

Laura x