Eighteen months

This time eighteen months ago I was lying utterly exhausted in a hospital bed after a long and incredibly painful labour and an emergency caesarean after my tiny little baby became distressed in the womb.

I had a horrific reaction to the drugs used and for a few hours after the birth I was throwing up everywhere and drifting in and out of consciousness. I only vaguely remember a little scrap of a thing being waved at me as I lay on the operating table feeling so awful I thought I was going to die. It was not until around 10 pm (four hours after the birth) that I was first able to hold my little girl, although it was very difficult as I was hooked up to so many different wires.

The Minx was only 5lbs 10 oz when she was born, and looked thin and wasted as if she had been starving in the womb. The hospital suggested that there had been problems with the placenta caused by the blood clotting problems which had previously been responsible for several early miscarriages. Neither of us were very good at breastfeeding, and her weight dropped to 5lbs and she was packed off to the Special Baby Unit for round-theclock monitoring until we were able to establish a good breastfeeding regime. We were only able to take her home a week after she was born.

My most overwhelming memory of the first few months is of endless hours sitting breastfeeding as she tried to make up her weight. One day I calculated that I had spent nine hours with her at the breast as my frail baby spent over an hour on each feed and the rest of the time crying because she never seemed to be satisfied. After three months I was utterly exhausted and depressed and convinced I had made the biggest mistake of my life.

Today, at eighteen months, my little girl is above the 50th centile for both height and weight and is a bundle of fun and energy. She has white blonde hair, a peaches and cream complexion and denim blue eyes. She runs and (more worryingly) climbs everywhere and chats almost constantly. Her vocabulary of about twenty words is growing daily, supplemented by around twenty ‘signs’. I was very sceptical about babysigning to start with but am now a huge fan. Apart from very useful concepts such as ‘more’ ‘all gone’ ‘change my nappy’ ‘hungry’ ‘ow’ ‘where’ and ‘hot’, she can tell us when she sees things like birds, trees, aeroplanes and dogs, so we can really communicate. Reading books is much more interesting when we can sign the pictures together and we know lots of songs full of signs and actions.

The Minx loves to sing (she carries a tune really well, but the lyrics are somewhat approximate) and dance, adores animals of any description, cars and babies and is very adventurous and gregarious. She can be both unspeakably cute and charming and unspeakably pesky – usually both at the same time. She can be both immensely exasperating and immensely fascinating – usually both at the same time. I’m very often bored when I’m with her, as she repeats some mundane thing or word for the umpteenth time, but always miss her immensely when she’s not around. I hate the way she always wakes up around 7.15 (I’m not a morning person) but look forward to seeing her every day. Every day she makes me laugh and she makes me proud. Her hugs are the nicest things in the world.

Motherhood has been without question the most difficult thing I’ve ever had to do, but now every day I’m enjoying it more and more.

All my love and a happy un-birthday little one.