Becoming Mother

Karen Dorrat

One day I had a baby. That wasnt the real story though. The next day was the real story, the real deal, the day I became a mother. You see, like many mothers before me, the whole labour-birth-baby experience was actually much of a blur. But once those drugs wore off and the room stopped spinning, I woke up the next morning and there she was. My daughter. My responsibility. My greatest achievement.

No-one on the planet prepares you for those firsts. You can study those baby magazines and websites 24-7 and still be clueless the moment you realise youre on your own. Besides physically feeling like Id been run over, that first day in hospital as a mother was the first time Id ever really held a baby, the first time Id ever changed a nappy, and the first time Id ever seen that look on my husbands face.

I had to do it all without my own mother, far from home and surrounded by my husband, friends and visitors who knew just how much I missed her. That unspoken connection that equally amazes and frustrates, I just knew no-one else would comprehend what this was like for me, little old me. Each time a nurse came by and reassured me everything was normal, I knew my doubts and concerns would only really make sense to one person and she couldnt be there, not just yet anyway.

Im now convinced that the pride a new mum feels is entirely unrelated to the pain thresholds she has endured throughout labour, but is in fact misplaced relief at simply surviving. It truly is a miracle that women and babies all around the world, every day and throughout history have survived. So many do not, and even on that day of joy my thoughts went out to my friends who held their newborn son, only to lose him 50 minutes later. My heart broke at the thoughts of all those women in West Africa who had come to expect long and excruciating labours, without medical assistance, often resulting in stillbirth or complications that lead to unbearable long term health problems.

That day I found new respect that had been absent before. A paradigm shift occurred so suddenly that my entire outlook on my gender changed in an instant. I had never been the maternal type, and my friends still stand amazed at how my hard heart changed and was melted by the arrival of this little one. While I was at school I had been shocked by the geography lessons that taught me all about the earths problems with overpopulation and the environmental disasters looming up ahead. From a young age Id determined that motherhood (or at least normal motherhood) wasnt really for me. No, I was going to have a career followed by the very practical notion of adoption, therefore not adding to the overcrowding problems on earth.

And yet here I find myself, all of a sudden recognising a tiny portion of what my friends who were already mothers had been speaking about all this time. I was now speaking their language. In with the mother and toddler gang, I now entered a new sphere, the mysterious world where no matter how strange the stranger you found yourself talking to, as long as you shared that common bond of motherhood you felt a certain connection and communitas you never knew existed.

My best friend was with me when the labour began all those days before. She had held my hand, rubbed my back, filled the bath, phoned the doctor, panicked, prayed and wonderfully cared for me. Her words still rang in my ears that soon I too would have my very own birth story. And here I am, a story to tell and a little person to tell it to.

My daughter is already a toddler now, toddling about exploring, learning and making me giggle. Ive changed. And not just fatter. Wiser. Calmer. Concerned for the world. Ashamed of the wrongs. Looking to her future. I remember now when I was little telling my parents my plans to adopt and not clutter the world with any more infants when there were clearly far too many already without parents. Such a simple, honest plan but looking back on that one special day the sincere naivety seems a distant memory. And who knows, I may even go through it all again one day. One day.

Faith for my newborn

Ive never been a woman to say

This or That will happen

Ive never really thought about

My thoughts creating patterns

Sure I took things for granted

But Ive never been one to be greedy

Ive lived a comfortable life here

Never feeling the need to be needy

But today Im required

To reach out of myself

To call on hope for another

This time I need faith for my newborn

For today, Im becoming a mother.