Memoirs
A Beginning
The news - There are some phone calls that are never going to be easy. And so it was I found myself talking to my mother, one Wednesday, at lunch time, eleven months ago...
A big year
This has been the biggest year of my life… bigger than leaving my whole existence in the UK a half-world behind and bigger than becoming a wife. This was Oliver's year...
A day in the life of a not-so-yummy Mummy
As I crawl back into bed after breastfeeding my seven-month old cherub Greta, I glance at the clock. 5.25 am. I can see early morning daylight through the curtains and straining my ears I can hear the heavy breathing of two year old Nedand his three year old brother Finn...
A gift of love
I was born in an era when every young girl owned two dolls – a baby doll and a bride doll. I still remember discovering my bride doll in my Santa sack early one Christmas morning...
A lesson learnt
Together with our twin boys starting school this year, I also ventured back into the hectic world of the ‘working mother’. I was scraping the bottom of the confidence barrel during my initial return to the workforce, after living the life of a contented ‘stay at home’ mum for quite some time...
A letter to Emily
I’m on the plane now, and I still can’t stop thinking about you. You, tiny, 12 days old, asleep in your mother’s arms as I said my goodbyes and blinked back tears. Emily. My niece...
A little scar
It was more than 30 years later that I found out my life meant something to a stranger. In a cramped little room, the walls dripping with cables and boxes of glittering electronica...
A matter of choice
“I want a natural birth,” I said to the obstetrician, Dr M. She sighed, peering sternly at me through her moon-like glasses. “You are going to have to accept,” she said coldly, “that if your scar ruptures it will be catastrophic, and we probably won’t be able to save your baby...”
A more fulfilled life
I want to say upfront that I love my son. We make a great team. He is three years old, and so much fun to be around...
A Mother’s Tears
Waking up on Wednesday 3 October 2007 was like any other day, but now I had to wear a pad, the discharge was thick and I did not want it showing through my clothes...
A new kind of perfect
After six years of medical school, one year of internship and two years of being a resident doctor I stood draped in a blue gown, my brow sweaty with effort, and smiled as I heard the newborn cries of the baby I was holding...
A second child first
They already had a child, a daughter. She was four and he was not her biological father. “He’s not your sperm Dad,” is what they told her, in a way that was both bold and technical – rather like their daughter who would grow to become a chemical engineer...
A special place for Jonathon
We walked them out the front with Jonathon clinging to my neck, his face buried into the side of mine. “Say bye Jonathon,” I coaxed but he refused to look. We waved goodbye and came inside with a sense of gloom as to what would happen now...
A story of triumph and survival
My daughter is fourteen now and I am fifty. That we have made it this far is a minor miracle but we go from strength to strength every day...
A woman’s wasteland – Part I, The Journey Begins
Barren. Infertile. Sounds like a wasteland, doesn’t it? Like a desert. Well that’s how it feels when you’re there. When you yearn for a baby that doesn’t exist, it’s not like being a six-year-old...
A woman’s wasteland– Part II, Out of the Desert
ART (Assisted Reproductive Technology) always strikes me as such an ironic acronym for something which can be so utterly clinical, so totally without soul...
Adopting from Romania (Extract from ‘How many planes to get me?’)
By the time the plane taxied into Bucharest I had a raging headache. The journey had taken two days with long stopovers in Singapore, Bombay and Zurich, and now I felt nauseated and my legs were swollen...
All the colours of the rainbow
I never gave much thought to what life would be like with children. My life as a thirty-something professional woman was so far removed from the life I live now, that the breadth and depth of the transformation would have been unfathomable...
An aunt’s view
My family recently experienced a change in the core of our identity, in the way we think about ourselves, in the way we perceive the world...
An overdue insight
As the birth of my fourth child rapidly approaches I find myself considering all sorts of maternal issues to do with both myself and my mother. In particular how I have only recently settled myself into the role of mother...
An unexpected journey
I think that deep down I always knew that I wanted to have children one day, but like so many others it was not something I thought much about until my wife Susan and I decided we would start trying...
Attachment parenting is for non-working moms
Attachment parenting surely led me down the wrong path. Freshly pregnant, I was innocently reading about different ways to parent, wondering why it all left me so indifferent...
Babbles of a shop-a-holic
Growing up in the late eighties and early nineties, I rarely visited a mall nor experienced the teen shopping frenzy that seemed to exist among many of my peers as a routine symptom of adolescence...
Baby within
Holding my gorgeous baby girl, I gaze at her in wonder and remember how close she came to never being. I take the time to cuddle and love her, and just watch her, asleep in my arms, with all her myriad noises and fleeting moments of emotion...
Be careful what you wish for
'It's just the routine ultrasound I have to have at 20 weeks,' I told my husband that morning. 'No need for you to come.' As if I needed him to hold my hand...
Becoming Mum
Another parent nestles into the well-worn seat and tells me she can't remember life before becoming ‘mum’. I nod in agreement...
Best for baby… but not for me
I have a confession to make: I didn’t like breastfeeding. Somehow, that bold statement feels like a shameful admission, and some of the old guilt has returned...
Birth
I’m not aware of much at all – just my body and the being within me, straining, urging to get out. And the pain...
Bittersweet
Thanks to my in-laws, Thursday night is date night. My beloved and I have a favourite little Italian place that serves the best gnocchi in the world and has the tables squeezed so close together it would be impossible to take the kids...
Breastfeeding
Everything I do is always ‘by the book’. I like to plan each aspect of my life by researching exactly what is supposed to be done. We are expecting our first child and the path is perfectly planned out according to my extensive pregnancy and infant care library...
Breast feeding
Who knew it would be so hard? Every article I read on breast feeding was accompanied by a photo of a zen mother, meditating on world peace while her child suckled...
Bringing the baby (or taking the tot) to San Francisco
If you have a partner who is always off to conferences in thrilling locations, why not accompany him to the next one – and bring the baby. I wasn’t going to be left out this time, not even with our fourteen month-old, and not when San Francisco was the venue...
Broken Nights, Full Heart
I have never really understood the expression ‘To sleep like a baby’. I’ve heard people using this expression to describe their own sleep. When asked how they’ve slept? They’ve replied, “Slept like a baby.”...
Change your attitude – set the tone
Shortly after I was separated, my oldest child, aged 12, said to me, “Why are you always yelling at us when we come home from Dad’s...
Chat story
Sylvia and I laugh as we study Rudi’s wedding photo on the wall. Four years ago, a family friend told us that the only way our shy, computer-obsessed son would ever find a girl was if she jumped out of his monitor...
Cherish
The paediatric surgeon has quickly located another identical case on her laptop and is showing me photographs, sketching anatomical diagrams and finalising paperwork for surgery later in the week...
Children
One of my biggest regrets is not having more children. It hits me when I see other people with children around the city. I always thought that I would get married and have a big family. Unfortunately, that did not happen...
Choose your own adventure
It’s a multiple choice question to go into the draw to win something amazing, rewarding and life changing: “If you could choose your own adventure, what would it be?”
Conversations with Gran
“I’d hate to be old,” she said with just a touch of sympathy. I was picking up my granddaughter who was going to spend the day with us. “Why?” “Because you can’t run.” “It’s not so bad. There are really good things about being old.”
Daisy’s trip to hospital
It was the most horrible moment of the long, drawn-out day. “Quick, this little boy needs to be with his mother!”...
Daddy’s first bottle
Sam’s murmuring wakes me from a soon forgotten dream. Intelligible words are a few months away but his vocalisations have recently grown in variety and regularity. And insistence. Not surprising...
December is for crying
I couldn’t control my sobbing. Weeks before Christmas, I was on the floor of my bedroom closet crying harder than I had ever before. Although he was there, my husband was unable to console me...
Eclipse
I don’t know where the rage comes from. Or perhaps I do but I don’t want to admit it. It bubbles and seethes, spitting from between my teeth and strikes those I love most...
Enough fun
We all know that the working-class don’t breastfeed. (To quote Katie Price, it’s a bit unnatural, innit.) The big question is why. And the answer is pretty simple: it’s because breastfeeding can give you orgasms...
Every age and stage gets better and better...
A few years ago, during my carefree pre-school-mummy days, I found myself at a park with the kids having yet another fabulous playtime... almost a daily event back then...
First born
She measures out her life with nappy changes, nappy changes and breast feeds. In a haze she goes through the motions of her life, broken up into three hour intervals through both day and night...
Flame of hope
We were parents at last – but parents of a tiny creature whisked away at birth, put in a plastic box and given a fifty per cent chance of survival...
Free fall
Under a watchful summer moon of heavy silver, I birthed her. I stood at the lip of the plane, loosened my grip on everything that was familiar, and fell fast...
Giving childbirth respect
I’ve come home from the hospital after giving birth to our second child. She is a beautiful little baby girl and she has given my husband and me more joy than we could ever possibly imagine...
Going to pieces
A friend of mine is currently sitting on the sidelines – as all men do – as his wife sets about the important business of carrying their first child. He confided that he is trying not to get too excited...
Happy World
My 10-year-old daughter Grace has been cleaning out her bedroom. She calls it Happy World and its flag is a painted, smiling sun, wearing shades. On every horizontal surface there are tigers, dolls, bears, gollywogs, fairies...
Hey, there baby – who are you?
My darling, gorgeous boy: I’m sorry, I don’t want to make you puke, but he really is gorgeous, delicious, a delicious pumpkin of a boy. Smug, glorious, radiant...
Holding my breath
The mantle of ‘mother’ has never sat easily upon me. Whilst the entry of my children into my life has filled me with moments of breathtaking joy and contentment, I cannot say that the transition of my identity, my definition of self from who I was pre-children to that of mother was an easy one...
Home alone
Pigs were flying, the moon was blue and the gods were smiling on me. An until-then unheard-of combination of an interstate business trip, scout camp and birthday party sleepover...
Hope has no expiry
After circling down into the hospital car park, I was now in its very depths. Turning off the ignition, I stared through the windscreen. A tangle of pipes hung suspended overhead...
Hope in our hearts
Before the pregnancy test was dry, there was already hope. It was almost Christmas 2007 and we decided to keep our secret to ourselves. Christmas Day seemed like a good day to share our magical news...
How much time?
Recently my fourteen-year-old daughter said, “You spend all your time with your boyfriend.” I’m a bad mother, flashed above me like a neon sign. Usually I heard from the teenagers, ‘don’t hang around me; it’s not cool’...
How we mould our little ones
I didn’t like my daughter much as a baby. My husband and I were very excited when we found out after nearly two years of trying for a baby that I was pregnant and we were finally going to have the baby we had dreamed of...
How would you like your eggs?
I was emptying out my bedside drawers the other day when I stumbled across a half-empty box of oral contraceptives. It seemed like a lifetime ago that I had taken them and so I flipped the packet around to have a look at the issue date. 2001...
I saw your heartbeat, baby
It’s Christmas morning. We’ve been up since six a.m. It’s been exciting. The children all love their gifts. Charlie, two, is causing trouble as he tries to demolish everyone else’s presents before they get a chance...
I’m not telling
The socialization process on us as children is powerful. Perhaps one of the most powerful is toilet training. As a teacher, I discovered that there lay in nearly all children deep dark secrets relating to failures in their early attempts to control their bladders...
IHOP
“Can we go to IHOP today?” Finn asks me. “We’ll see, buddy. Maybe after swim lessons,” I say. IHOP is a twenty minute drive across town. In contrast, Bangkok West, which shares a parking lot with Imperial Courts, offers a buffet for $6.95...
It’s a girl thing
For a while there I had visions of my daughter and I being just like The Gilmore Girls, Rory and Lorelai. I mean, I didn’t fantasise that I might become a single mother running an inn and kissing my daughter’s teachers or anything like that...
Just the two of us
Beneath the day-to-day rituals of feeding, coping with tiredness, rinsing out pooey nappies, 5.30pm cranky time and thinking up new ways to amuse, there is something more wondrous happening...
Katy’s birth day
Each year I mark my daughter’s birthday with feelings of guilt, regret and pain. As much as I try to pretend I am fine I still become grey in the days leading up and ghostly on the day itself...
Kindergarten misfit
It was hard to know which of us was most looking forward to Stephen’s first day at kindergarten; himself or me. “I’m going to kindergarten!” he announced to anyone who telephoned us or visited...
Letter to a pregnant friend
Today a long-time friend phoned to tell me her and her husband are expecting a little boy in May. She mentioned she’d been receiving the usual clichéd responses from people when she told them the happy news – of the “make sure you enjoy your sleep while you can” and “your life is never going to be the same again” variety...
Letting go
Suddenly, my big tall boy, who’s always looked so much older than his few years, had shrunk. I watched him through the blurred filter of tears I knew he mustn’t see...
Life cycles
They are intertwined with my earliest childhood memories. My grandparents, great aunt and uncle were always there. Smiling at me, dangling a teddy bear, gazing adoringly at the very first child of the family’s next generation...
Life with autism
I never dreamt I would grow up to be the sort of woman who cries at the drop of a hat. I always despised women who rode a huge rambling rollercoaster of emotion...
Loving Liam
The longing to join the exclusive club of mothers is a strange phenomena and one I entered into without any real awareness of what I was signing up for...
May contain traces of fear
The winter chill was fading, buds eager to pop colours of spring, when her olive skin turned pink and white. She was about three months old...
Memoir
I was never one of those women with an innate need to have children but I met and married a man who had always wanted children so I knew that one day I would become a mother.
Memoir
The one thing that all the self-help books and all the well-meaning people in the world don’t tell you about childbirth and parenting, is how traumatic it is...
Message to self
“Liam has a neurological disorder called Tuberous Sclerosis. It’s a lifelong condition. There is no cure and no treatment...”
Miraculously my own
I reach out and nervously embrace this precious gift. I wait for her cry; instead, her striking blue eyes take in every inch of me and our souls connect...
Missing
I dial Triple 0. This is the moment I have dreaded. This is the moment I have lived many times over in my imagination. I have seen it on the news, I have seen it in the newspapers and I have seen it on all those cop shows...
Mommy guilt
I expected the morning sickness, the cravings for strange food (even chalk), the tiredness and the bursting into tears at Panadol ads. What I didn’t expect was guilt...
Mommy-fication
I can’t get a conversation I recently had with an associate of mine out of my mind. “Well, it’s all gonna change when the second child gets here,” she said...
Mornings
It is 8.04am. I am doing the dishes while reciting today’s to do list. My eldest daughter is playing happily, her school uniform lying untouched next to her...
Mornings with kids
My favourite brother-in-law, Ron, (OK, my only brother-in-law) was chatting with me the other day as he folded clean laundry off the sofa. He was bemoaning the fact that the ONE thing that I am really, really obsessive-compulsive about had not been included in my sister’s DNA...
Mother of an identity
When did I start feeling like a mother? Was it the moment I stared, open-mouthed, at the positive pregnancy test? Was it that first Mothers Day that I proudly posed, babe in arms, at the camera...
Motherly love
Becoming a mother is a life changing experience on many levels. When you hold your own child and are bursting with happiness you begin to understand just how much love your own mother has for you...
Mothers behaving badly
Am I a bad mother if I admit that I don’t like children’s birthday parties? I can’t stand them. Hate them even. The appearance of a brightly coloured, child friendly invitation in my child’s day care pocket or my daughter’s school bag sends shivers down my spine, and they’re not shivers of excitement...
Moving day
I never expected to cry when my first child started school but as the big day draws closer it’s becoming increasingly apparent that I will...
Moving on
It’s time to leave home. I know it sounds like a silly thing for a 37-year old woman to say. Shouldn’t you have left home years ago?...
Moving on after a miscarriage
There is blood dripping into the toilet. I watch, wide-eyed, as fifty-cent-sized blotches of deep red blood sink to the bottom of the ceramic bowl and slowly melt into the water. I am nine weeks pregnant...
Mulberry trees and garden wees
Before becoming a mum I lived in a fantasy world of manners and mores, where children ate their meals in the seated position at a table. Where children said ‘please’ and ‘thank you’...
Mum’s the word
There is an unwritten rule when one becomes a parent, that one must never, ever say out loud how much they may hate being a parent. I know, I’ve seen the expressions on peoples’ faces at Tupperware parties...
Mussel man
My twelve-year old son, Conor, patiently walked around Rome all day in the pouring rain, sharing my umbrella or traveling like a sardine on the packed subway...
My boy and his daddy
The first suggestions of sunlight sneak through the gap between the curtains. Daddy is standing next to the cot willing its sleeping occupant to wake up. A light kiss on the cheek stirs the little man but not enough to release him from slumber...
My breastfeeding career
We fell in love with each other over breastfeeding, my daughter, Makela, and I. It happened during the many long hours we spent staring deep into each other’s eyes during feeding time...
My darkest day
It was 14 December, 2004. I remember the day clearly, like it was just yesterday. I had been experiencing stomach pains overnight and was feeling very unwell. My fiancé found me sitting on the edge of the bed, sweating and in a lot of pain. It was a week early...
My darkest edges
At about half past midnight on a hot January night in 2009 I sat bolt upright in bed with chest pains. A golf ball was quickly forming in the middle of my chest...
My first child
My first child was born in May 2003. We named him Rusty. Not only did he have a playful and adorable personality early on, he was also quite the looker – beautiful blond hair and matching golden eyelashes...
My motherhood manifesto
I am really angry. I have come home from a visit to the doctor’s surgery with my firstborn, for his four-year-old check up. I am pleased that everything is going well for him, but the doctor’s attitude to motherhood has really floored me...
My own type of mother
I waited a long time to become a mother, and thankfully, by the time I was ‘mentally’ ready, my time ‘physically’ hadn’t run out. Why did it take me so long to realise I did want to become a mother...
My Perfect Rosie
Her fuzzy little head nuzzled closer to the warmth of my breast, intense eyes locked into mine. The doctor took her chubby arm and tapped the thread of veins in the nook...
Naming Rico
When you’re not pregnant, babies’ names all seem temptingly romantic: Isobel, you think, yeah, Isobel, or Patrick or Christian or even Isolde, Greta, Courtney, Sebastian. Juliane. Kate. Nina. Daniel. Rosa...
Networks
My computer got me pregnant. Well, my husband helped out a little, but our beloved 18-month-old son is well and truly a product of the information age and the Internet has been an integral part of his short life to date...
New Years Eve
It was New Years Eve 2008 when I thought that my whole world was about to come crashing down. My beautiful almost-four-year-old boy, on the verge of heading to pre-school...
Nimby
‘They’re putting a parole office next to the school. I’m scared of walking by myself. I want to go to a different school.’ My eleven-year old was greeting me after school one Friday. By Monday I had learned a lot about our town...
No, not today
“Tuesday ugh,” I groan preparing for the challenge from my two year old as we fight to get out the door to day care. “No! Mum, no. I want to stay here. I don’t want to go to day care. Don’t like it there,” he pouts, desperate for me to stay home and play with him...
No stork bites
It was in the early hours of 25 November 2001 when the midwife handed me Danielle, wrapped snugly in a blanket, only her face showing...
Off to school. Back to work
It came out of nowhere. A giant green tree-like creature leapt out of the mashed potatoes and in to the grasp of my horrified son. “Whadda?” enquired 18-month-old Max. “Why, that’s broccoli,” I answered...
Oh, son
Angels are all around us. And without these helping hands from God, life would be much more difficult. It wasn’t so long ago, my wife and I hurried down long corridors of polished floors at London Psychiatric Hospital...
Once was lost
I didn’t know that I was lost. It had never occurred to me. Early thirties, successful career, friends, married to a wonderful man – I had planned, studied, worked, worried and planned some more...
One child’s words
The first English language word spoken by my son reflected his healthy appetite for food: Yum. Since then, I have been jotting down his increasingly complex utterances...
One of these mums is not like the other…
Mention childcare and sooner or later someone asks what makes a real mother.
My mum was a real mother. She still is. More than that, she’s a real grandmother...
One of those days
It had been – cue deep breath and big, tired sigh – one of those days. Those days. Where normally cheerful children are decidedly less so and normally wholesome mothers are thinking about alcohol by morning tea time...
One of those women
I was always one of those women who would never have a kid. I glared at little girls who cut the line in public restrooms. Why couldn't they hold it? I had to go, too...
Only, not lonely
At a party recently, I ended up in a circle of mothers who were exclaiming their gratitude for being done with childbearing. They all had two children and their husbands had vasectomies...
Our boys
It’s my first ever World Cup not in England.
You can’t imagine what it’s like in England in the weeks leading up to the World Cup. They bring out every expert in the whole country, we’re talking vicars, doctors, brain surgeons, plastic surgeons, tree surgeons...
Out of the mouth of my babe
“My cat died today and she’s in the ground turning into dirt!” Lachlan announced proudly at the cafe. He knelt on the chair; his green-grey eyes wide, rimmed with long dark lashes...
Outnumbered
When I first got married I was so idealistic. I thought nothing of the idea of having six kids. After all a big family would be close and loving and helpful...
Paving the road to independence
It was my turn next. My heart gave a little lurch, but I calmed myself enough to turn and give you, my nine-month-old baby, a kiss and a hug, to tell you I was having a big sleep and I’d see you when I woke up...
Postpartum
He sleeps. I do not try to touch him. I look at him. I look at long, dark lashes brushing a curvy cheek. I watch a chest rise and fall with whispery, baby breaths as light as magic...
Pretty and picked on
My daughter Khari is remarkably beautiful. At two years old, she knows how to flaunt her good looks too, poking her heart-shaped lips out and gazing out of her Bambi-big eyes angelically as she begs for something that’s been pulled out of her grasp...
Profundity
“It’ll be the most profound moment in your life,” said the white-gowned doctor, his face hidden behind a mask. I was stunned to silence at the stupidity of his remark. The doors swung open and we were in the operating theatre...
Ready or not
Hot tears are streaming down my red and puffy face. I wipe them away with trembling hands. My husband pleads with me to tell him what’s wrong. The words fly out of my mouth before I can stop them...
Rhyme and reason
Life, a series of choices. We chose that I became pregnant. Lucky me. The end will be nigh in late summer, but the season stretches lazily ahead with promises of heat and high humidity which ultimately result in fat feet, low energy and pure exhaustion...
Sanyata’s first day in grade one
This morning Sanyata nudged me awake at 6.30am, saying “It’s morning time.” I begged for a few minutes more, mentally noting that the birds have not yet begun singing outside our bedroom window.
Schooldaze
As a university Arts Graduate, I am looking forward to completing my final year of secondary school. That’s right! I am re-doing my senior years of schooling...
Secondary (in)fertility
It wasn’t always this way. I remember being normal, unscalpeled, unscarred, mostly intact, as I had come into the world. But it all changed when I became part of a peculiar battalion of women-turned-mothers...
Self-reflection
It’s a quarter to ten in the morning. My little girl is dancing around the lounge to Hi-5. My little boy is asleep in his cot. Although I have been up since six, I still haven’t made it to the shower...
Shaking up the dream
In the beginning there was me, and you were my ego-bump. You were a blank slate of dreams, my fantasy baby. You led me on a curvaceous journey rich with contented hormones and belly-gazing...
Sit up straight
One of the more interesting things you can do with your life is take a child on an overseas trip. It’s a real test of all you’ve accomplished as a parent...
Skin to skin
It all started with a dream. A dream that remains both profound and lucid even now, some six years after it came to me one wintry night. This dream changed my life forever...
Snapshot of Harry at 15 months
Running on wobbly legs, my fledgling, my sweet smiling boy with your trusting grin from ear to ear. Your blond hair tousled in all directions, tickling your ears, soft against my neck as we hug...
Snapshot of Harry at 19 months
Crinkly nose, eyes wide in shock and the ‘o’ mouth, Mr Lip and the howl, laughing eyes and grin from ear to ear… so many expressions! Our play-actor, mime artist, show pony...
Snapshot of Harry at 26 months
My baby is almost grown up now! You are most definitely a toddler – striving for independence but not quite able to do things for yourself; desperate for attention and often clinging like a vine to Mummy’s legs...
Snorkeling with stingrays
‘Come on, Mum,’ my daughter Rebecca moaned. ‘Just do it.’ ‘All right, I’m going, I’m going,’ I said. As I slipped into the sparkling, blue Caribbean water, a wave knocked me back towards Rebecca who’d followed me in. I hung onto the side of the boat as my feet grappled in the sand to find their footing...
Soapbox tumbles
Parenting is a journey. Some days it is like sipping champagne watching fireworks in Paris on New Year’s Eve. Other times it is more like cold dim sims in a Footscray milk bar on a Tuesday night...
Somebody please tell me what to do
Pregnancy (breathe in), a time of being totally in tune with my body, (breathe out) of minute by minute self assessments (breathe in), of ‘this is how I feel now’. These notifications culminate in one day of labour: the intensified, exaggerated experience of self that declares “THIS IS HOW I FEEL NOW!”...
Something we make
I didn’t love my son when he was born. I didn’t love him by the evening of that first day either, or by the end of the week, or indeed for a good few months. He was a planned baby, a much-wanted baby, a settled, healthy, ‘good’ baby...
Surrendering to motherhood
It’s 2.36am. I am sitting in the dark, in the nursery, breast-feeding my baby. The night is still and all I can hear is the suck, suck of my baby on my breast...
Teen driving me crazy
The basis, the essence, the very core of being a parent is the eternal struggle between wanting to hug your child and wanting to pound his or her ass...
The compro-mum
Will she love me, love me not...... I agonised, as I confirmed with my employer that I would, indeed, be returning to the work-force, full-time and permanently...
The curse
My mother cursed me. She pointed at me, summoned all her strength, and hurled the most heinous words she could summon straight into my little five-year-old eyes...
The delicate art of sleeping
I have wandered along the Great Wall of China, I have plumbed the depths of caves deep in the Pyrenees for prehistoric art, I have scaled the cactus-covered cliffs of a buffalo jump...
The eviction
We didn’t handle that very well did we? Too much blood all together. And from what I remember, quite a lot of pain...
The first day
I didn’t expect to feel like this, this rising tension, this fearful anxiety, waking at five in the morning wondering: ‘what if no one will play with him?’, ‘what if there’s no teacher around and he falls from the play equipment?’...
The first day
Today is going to be a good day. Correction – today is going to be a GREAT day. Today my twins start school. No misty-eyed moments for me this morning when I drop them at their classroom...
The first separation: Portrait of Georgie at 21 months
Your last taste from me was more like a bite. It’s not how I wanted your weaning to be. I’d imagined it being a gentle, gradual lessening of desire...
The first step
The Grove Clinic. A pretty name, leafy, greeny, pretty name for what everyone knows is a hospital. A mental hospital. A place for loony mothers and the children they can’t love...
The green-eyed mother by Kylie Ladd
My husband has never been a particularly demonstrative man. I have no doubt he loves me, because his actions consistently bear this out, but he has always found it difficult to say the words or display his emotions...
The human hot-water bottle
Berlin winters are cold. It doesn’t matter how many layers you drape over yourself – hats, scarves, gloves, coats, jackets, waistcoats, tights, stockings, thermal vests, old curtains, old buckets, duvets, blankets, it doesn’t matter...
The last time
I suspected I might be putting on too much weight when the toilet seat began to squeak as I sat down on it. I was in my ninth month of pregnancy and alternating between feeling constantly tired and constantly hungry...
The lightness of dark
It’s not often you get to wake up with the absolute knowledge that today will be the worst day of your life. But let’s not start there. Let’s start back when all was good. All was easy...
The Lord of the swings
Swings are amazing things! I’d never really noticed it until today. They have an amazing ability to create such happiness, and there’s nothing to them really...
The old gum nut up the nose trick
It happened late one winter’s day as I was busy lighting the Conara. My daughter came up to me and said proudly, “Got a gum nut up ‘a nose Mum.”...
The path of parenthood
“What’s the Taj Mahal, Mum?” Miss Ten asked recently, as we strolled side by side through the local shopping centre. “It’s a building in India,” I replied simply, relieved I wouldn’t have to do any major geographical research to answer her question...
The Perfect Mother Myth
As a first-time mum at 36, I embarked on motherhood full of wisdom and life experience, with a comfortable home, and a freshly painted nursery with Huggies nappies and Bonds suits neatly lined up in anticipation...
The picture
Your third babysitter, in as many weeks, is Czech. I will forget her name tomorrow but remember her strong accent for years. I will forget her face but remember the way she pronounced your name...
The proverbial five-letter word
Sleep is a five letter word. The proverbial five letter word, for those sharing a house with an infant. First time parents in particular can often be heard saying, “Will we ever sleep again?”...
The (real) amazing race
It’s only 6.30am and the room is still dark. The alarm hasn’t gone off yet, but my daughter Alessia is already awake, half an hour before her due time...
The real first three months
My son, now six months old, is a beaming tubster. He wouldn’t hold anything against anyone. He sleeps. And yet, for much of his first three months, I thought that having a child was nothing but an albatross around my neck...
The room next to mine
In the room next to mine there used to be a Turkish woman with two kids, eleven and four, who’d wake up in the middle of the night to scream and wail...
The shape of love: Snapshot of Harry at nine months
You wake about 6.30am, refreshed and smiling after a ten hours’ sleep; we can count on as many fingers these nights though, as ‘sleeping through’ is a recent phenomena that feels an impossible luxury, unimaginable a year ago to regard eight uninterrupted hours’ sleep as a godsend...
The sunset
Last night I was reminded of the importance of being still and living in the moment by an unlikely person – my energetic four-year-old daughter. It was past Abbie’s bedtime and I was seated at the computer in the hallway outside her bedroom...
The surprise and shock of motherhood
I never knew that motherhood would be this way. I never knew the extremes of joy and pain in childbirth. I never knew that I would have two Caesareans...
The sweetness of crumbs
Dear sweet child of mine, In a few hours from now, as the clock ticks and the stars gently doze across the inky sky, you will reach yet another milestone and grow another year older. Every birthday is a signpost but it is easy to forget this behind these facades of pink glitter, butter-cream frosting and sparkling candles...
The top ten things a five year old has taught me that no adult ever could
When I became pregnant at 19, I was convinced my baby would save me from myself. I had visions of rose gardens and Baby Bjorns, of receiving this child into my arms like a gift...
The wheel thing
My son likes cars. Actually, he doesn’t so much like cars as eat, sleep and breathe them. Old cars, new cars, anything with four or more wheels, vehicles of every configuration...
The worst housewife in the world
A Russian girlfriend of mine, Lena, is officially The Best Housewife in the World. She hoovers twice a day and, at night, after her baby goes to sleep, she peels carrots and then slices them into handy finger-food-sized portions and freezes them...
The yellow blanket
It’s Sunday morning. The sun decides to hide behind some dark clouds, turning the day quiet and listless. We had just finished a late breakfast of buttermilk pancakes on the veranda...
Things that go bump in the night
Old Mother Hubbard lives in a cupboard in my three-and-a-half year old daughter’s bedroom. And rather than being a figure of kindly benevolence, she has become a terrifying spectre who has caused many an evening of tears, pleas and broken promises...
This new life
I spent the weekend at my parent’s house with my one-year old son, as our new house was being painted. We arrived back home late Sunday morning to be greeted by my husband’s happy smile...
This too shall pass
Who was it that coined the term ‘bittersweet’? Whoever it was, they weren’t talking about chocolate. They were talking about love. About the exquisite agony of complete, all-consuming love...
Those other worlds
I meet him in a bus station café. It’s the first time we meet. He doesn’t know who I am, he thinks I’m just a stranger, a girl on the street. We are calm & polite, we’re gentle...
Three hooligans and a baby
Six weeks slip by when you’re swinging in a hammock on a tropical island. But for a sleep-deprived, new mother who counts down every minute of every day, it is a lifetime...
Three times lucky
“Is it time yet?!” I asked my wife anxiously, my boots half laced and my hand reaching for the car keys as she suffered through yet another contraction...
Tick, tock
The timing was all wrong. We can see that now. Or more truthfully, we can admit that out loud now, for I suspect that we both knew that this was the case, long before we spoke the words...
‘Tis the season to be jolly?
It was Miss 4’s last day of kinder and the day of the big kinder performance. Miss 4 was to be an angel in the nativity play and was very excited...
To market, to market
I was having coffee with two girlfriends when one of them broached the sensitive subject of family size. “You’ve finished having kids, haven’t you?” Jane asked me abruptly as I reached for my second Tim Tam...
To my daughter, dancing
June again, the whirlwind finale to a busy school year. The calendar strains to contain all the playoffs, wind-ups, and cool-downs, but I am a smug June veteran, confident in my ability to anticipate all these events...
Trampoline emotion
While driving home, my body was as wound up as my hands. They were gripped so tightly to the steering wheel, my knuckles had turned white. Betrayed by a blink of my eyes, the tears I was desperately trying to suppress streamed down my face...
Twilight
This parenting gig never ceases to amaze me. Just when I think I’ve got things figured out, my offspring throw me a curve ball that has my precisely set parameters scattered all over the place...
Two more masks
I came to motherhood fairly late. After 37 years of freedom and leisure, having a baby was a shock and I struggled to find my way. Not long after my son’s birth, he, his father and I flew to Hanoi, Vietnam where we lived for more than two years...
Under the influence of children: Offsprings’ impact on the creative process
As I dip sweet pickles into hummus, a culturally normal meal for my locale, per the dictates of my adolescent advisors, I think upon the ways in which my children have been raising me...
Unjustified judgments
I could not believe it was happening to me as I stared at the small stick with two pink lines across it. I was only 17 years old, I’d only been with my boyfriend for 12 months, and he was my first serious boyfriend...
Venturing into the unknown
I was speaking to my dear friend, Nadia, exchanging anecdotes about our boys. A couple of the things that came up were the awkward questions we are asked by our young sons...
Weight of love
The stark black and white text read Relationship to patient with a line to complete. As I wrote the word MOTHER in capital letters, an all-consuming, gut-wrenching, heat filled wave flooded my entire being...
What do you get if you cross a week away with the extended family, squeaking bed springs, the offer of a morning’s babysitting and a secluded beach?
Now before you start getting all Responsible Parent on me, we were in a tropical wonderland. The weather was seductively balmy and our skin was turning the colour of ripening berries in the sultry north Queensland sunshine...
What of the father?
The feeling of motherhood has often been described as a warm, enveloping glow. It is radiated from those who have it without any loss of intensity, as if it springs from a boundless energy source...
What shall we name the babies?
Two babies! There are two babies! I have two babies? My morphine-addled brain was having trouble processing this information after giving birth to my twin girls. My husband, James, and I gazed in amazement at these two tiny beings we had created...
What’s in a name?
I predict a population explosion – of hyphens. Just wait until today’s kids start having kids of their own, and all those double-barrelled surnames are combined into appellations longer than War and Peace...
Where to now?
The inevitable happened this morning and I should have been more prepared.
Deep down I knew it was only going to be a matter of time before the big issue of ‘school readiness’ was going to be addressed, but now that it has the reality of it hit harder than I expected...
Where you were
It’s not supposed to be like this. It’s supposed to feel like your insides are full of warm honey. It’s supposed to be like falling in love, but much, much better...
Why are we afraid to have babies?
I am lying in my soft warm bed. A glimpse of sunlight peeks through the shades. My husband is by my side in a deep sleep, and I lie flat on my back staring up to the ceiling...
Why did my friend try to kill herself?
Recently, I was speaking with a friend at work. He told me about his daughter having a bad time the night before when she found out that her 14-year-old friend attempted suicide...
Why I love the Turks
Everyone in Berlin hates the Turks. Even the Turks hate the Turks. They have orange skin and they wear gold jewellery and plus they poison the drinking water and stuff. Except for me: I love the Turks...
Why would you want to do it?
I think it’s wonderful but why would you want to do it? Do you get money from the government? I’d heard these questions before. The tone and words may change, but not the incredulity...
Wonderwoman
The pathos of my postpartum period did not pause at my perfunctory six-week check-up. In the waiting room of my OB/GYN’s office, I found myself surrounded – stage left, stage right, upstage and downstage – by burgeoning bellies...
Working it out
My youngest child starts school this month. For the first time in almost nine years, large chunks of each weekday will belong solely to me. I have been thinking about this for what seems like an age...
You don’t know what you are going to get…
For all the parents who ordered a different child to the one they received
For all the parents who believed they were right and the teachers were wrong.
For all the mothers who trusted their instincts … and God ...
“Being at home can be fun, insulating, relaxed, boring or isolating ... depending on how the day is going.”*
School holidays are almost over in my part of the world – six long weeks of noise and squabbling balanced by hot, lazy days at the beach or the pool with lots of daring exploits and laughter. Many of our days were spent at home, basking in simple pleasures like baking, playing games or outdoor pursuits – trying to relax the everyday routines of school-morning bustle and ‘having to be somewhere on time’. However pleasant, I must admit to being relieved that life gets back to normal next week, and I can reclaim some of my own time for writing again!
* From Being Mummy by Anne‑marie Taplin published April 2007