-Oscar Wilde
I have a sleeping baby in my left arm. My sleeping baby.
I have a fiancé too. He’s also asleep… upstairs… in our
comfy bed.
If I could travel back in time two years and say to myself ‘In
a couple of years you’ll be writing a blog post about your baby and fiance’ I
would NOT believe myself. And if I could somehow persuade myself that I WAS
telling the truth, I think the two-years-younger-me would probably cry with
joy.
At 30, I lived alone, I was single and had been single
officially (putting aside that ongoing on-off-friendship-relationship) for six
years. I worked from home and rarely met new people outside of my own group of
friends. I’d finally gone to the doctors for a medical opinion on my weird
periods and chronic illnesses, and had been diagnosed with ovarian cysts and a
hormonal imbalance. I even had a spirit reading done (a letter from the
spirits, channelled via automatic writing) which gave me the undeniably stark message
of ‘your purpose in this lifetime is to learn about your true self. It is a
very difficult lesson to learn. Can you be happy without the partner, family
and career you desire?’
I decided, at that point, to learn to let go of my dreams
which were, deep down, to fall in love and have a family. And it was a really
REALLY difficult thing to do. I worked through it with my therapist. I did
artwork. I wrote about it. I cried… a lot. I mourned the loss of what I had
expected my life to be since I was a little girl. I tried to picture the rest
of my life as a single woman: what I would do with my time. I tried to
visualise a life of freedom, travel, food and fun. I never quite convinced
myself it would be better to be alone… but it was a start.
In my head, at that point, reality was pointing me in one
direction: my fertility was questionable, my love life was a mess, my life was
solitary and the years I had left to have children were decreasing like grains
of sand in the metaphorical hourglass of my existence. Ok, alone it was then.
At some point during this process, I had a fairly profound
experience. Magic or coincidence; I’ll let you judge for yourself. For me, it
was a blessing.
I had a vivid dream one night. I can still picture it now
and almost feel how it felt. I was called outside to look at the night sky, and
looked up to see golden stars showering down like glimmering raindrops. It was
such an overwhelmingly beautiful sight, I cried in my dream.
When, a few days later, I found out there was going to be a
meteor shower, I got the lovely tingly feeling I always get when something
falls into place in my head like cogs aligning. I knew I had to get outside and
see it happening.
So when the time came I wrapped myself in a blanket, made a
hot drink and sat outside the front of my cottage, and I watched the sky. It
wasn’t quite like my dream, but I did manage to catch sight of 4 falling stars
that night.
The last one was the most poignant. I suddenly remembered
that when I was little, I was always told to make a wish if I ever saw a
shooting star. But I’d had enough of wishes that didn’t come true, so this time
I didn’t wish. I made a statement to the sky. An affirmation. I said ‘Some day
soon I will meet a man, and he will fall in love with me, and I will fall in
love with him, and when the time is right, we will have a family.’ As I finished
my monologue, I was given an answer: a star shot across the exact patch of sky
I was looking at. The universe had said ‘I hear you’
I didn’t get hung up on this experience or the announcement
I had made that night. I dropped it when I made my mind up to let go of my
dreams and replace them with other ideas for a fulfilling life. But deep down,
the hope was still there.
I could write (and may still write) whole entries on what
happened between then and now, but to keep things simple, I’ll just fast
forward.
I met a man. He fell in love with me. I fell in love with
him.
In a weird way I felt it coming. I just had a feeling
someone special was around the corner. It wasn’t quite love at first sight, but
I still fell in love with him in about a week… something I was fairly
conflicted about at the time; the logical part of me refused to believe it was
possible. I remember saying to a mutual friend ‘I’m so happy… but I’m trying
not to get too excited’ and she replied ‘why not? Just be excited!’
She was right, of course. I had every reason to be excited.
I’d been hoping and praying for this exact relationship: someone who loved me for
every part of me- not just me at my best. Someone who I knew would help me grow
as a person rather than expecting me to be perfect. Someone who was willing to
talk issues through and compromise for the sake of both of our happiness. Not
to mention, I totally fancied him!
Six months later we accidentally made a baby. Two months
after that we got engaged.
A month ago, our baby was born during the height of a meteor
shower. He kept me waiting 16 days after my due date, and 3 days after my
waters broke, just so he could be born at that exact time; just to round the
story off and prove that my prayers had been answered.
My life was now complete
and we all lived happily ever after. The end.
Except (dammit) Oscar Wilde, as usual, has a point.
A couple of weeks ago, the realisation hit me that this new
person in my life: this dream-come-true; was actually the culmination of every
difficult lesson I had attempted to learn in the last five-or-so-years (as I
fought to eliminate depression from my life).
I have never been through anything as testing as the last
month of my life.
It began with the birth. 3 days of contractions and
sickness, until I couldn’t cope any more and needed to be put on a drip. And
when your baby’s born you think ‘thank
god that’s over, now for the fun part.’ And that’s REALLY when the difficult
bit starts!
This wonderful little dream-come-true has taken every inch
of the life I had made for myself, and turned it upside down.
I’ve left my little cottage in the countryside and am now
living at my fiance’s Mum’s house, the other side of the country to my family,
and to the friends I had become close to in recent years. I have virtually no
time for the business I was trying so hard to get going.
Our baby cries most of the time. He wakes up crying. He
cries after I’ve fed him. Sometimes he cries while I’m feeding him. He often
refuses to fall asleep, as if he has something very important he has to be
awake for. This will eventually lead to him being SO tired and SO grumpy, he
just cries more, because he no longer knows what he wants.
The only way I’ve found to stop him crying, or to help him
fall asleep, is to cuddle and breastfeed him. If it wasn’t for my finance
stepping in and taking the baby from me, he would literally breastfeed 24 hours
a day. I’m lucky if I have time to go for a wee.
3 weeks after our baby was born, my fiancé desperately
needed to get back to work, which is when he started sleeping separately. I now
sleep whenever I can, mostly in 30min/1hour snatches between night-time feeds,
and the odd 2 or 3 hours when my fiancé is able to take the baby.
I do NOT function
well on no sleep.
I’ve battled loneliness, I’ve battled self doubt . I’ve
battled regret. I’ve thought ‘I wish things could just be like they used to be’
and hated myself for thinking it. I’ve battled anger at my fiance for sleeping
soundly at night while I stay awake feeding our child. I’ve battled my fiance’s
anger at me for giving in to melancholy rather than finding solutions to the
various problems caring for a newborn has thrown up.
And I’ve found myself contemplating Oscar Wilde’s admittedly
pessimistic statement: ‘When the gods wish to punish us, they answer our
prayers’
Because the thing is, it’s often true. We can create a world
in our minds, the way we wish things to be. But there’s nothing in life that
simply makes everything better. There’s no alternative happy carefree life out there
waiting to be found. Life will always throw up sadness and difficulty, because
they are just part of the experience! So when our dreams come true we expect so
much from them. We’ve put them on a pedistool, yearning after them, praying for
them! And then they’re just as complicated, just as hard work, just as full of
sadness, anger and regret as anything else.
That’s not to say they’re not wonderful too! My son is the
most incredible gift I’ve ever been given. I am so overcome with love for him I
sometimes find myself with tears in my eyes just at the thought of it. I feel
the same about my fiancé and I’m grateful every day that I have them in my
life.
But it is not easy.
