It’s been a while… but the world has changed significantly lately. I survive on blocks of sleep throughout twenty-four hour periods and often wonder ‘is this what sloth’s feel like?’ I have become a mum. After two and half years of fertility treatment, four failed attempts, a major operation and more money than I’d like to admit (so will never add up) I have a baby.
Lemon arrived on my fifth IUI attempt and she is donor conceived. There is no one else. The doctor made me pregnant and at the time he had a speculum and a white coat. Her conception was medical, practical and far from magical but, regardless of how I made her, I have been born into the world of motherhood.
Motherhood comes with a thousand different feelings and a whole new world of learning. After the last five weeks, I have a new appreciation for my school kids when I’m introducing new things. It’s fucking scary. And to all of my ‘other’ kids, when I’ve pushed you to do new things without a little love, I am really, really sorry. But it’s not motherhood that this blog is about.
This blog was always about how I was ever going to get into smaller knickers and if that was ever going to help me find a husband. Well, I’ve got size 12 undies on at the moment and still don’t have a husband, so I’m half way there. However, I can’t ignore the new way that I live my life. But I won’t bore you with tales of my daughter’s constipation, her billy-goat crying or her toothless smiles. Instead, I want to discuss the terrifying ‘mummy blogger’.
Facebook, Google and all of the internet knows you’re pregnant before you do. I was getting advertisements for pregnancy tests on my YouTube account long before I needed them and often during humanities’ lessons when searching for Ancient Egyptian mummy documentaries. Awkward moments. And with the advertisements, come the Facebook and Instagram sponsored feeds of baby products and the inevitable searches through the thousands of mummy instagrammers.
It’s there that I find the most confustion. Amongst the written words that describe the superpowers of new mums, the affirmations of ‘you got this mom’ and the acceptance and encouragement to not judge and compare yourself with other mums are the highly contradictory images. Amongst the words that infer, ‘comparison is the root of all that is evil in motherhood’ are the images of very bronzed, athletic mothers, her bronzed toddlers in sponsored swimwear and frilly rompers on a styled shoot on some beach somewhere I’ve never been.
I get the comparison rule. I’m trying really hard to live by it, but I’m five weeks into this gig and I have no fucking idea what I’m doing and I am rightly assuming that I know fucking nothing and all I can do is try to absorb what I can from those that have gone before me. My absorbing is mostly done from my friends with kids and my family – I’m following their social media feeds and learning from their hashtags as much as I can.
But what they’re not posting are styled photos in sponsored swimwear. I’m so confused. I’m trying to not compare but that’s not at all what I’ve looked like in the last five weeks. I’ve done splash and dash showers, not showered, left my hair frizzy and frazzled and worn my undies and a singlet in the middle of the day more days than not.
We’ve been to the shops a bit and for that I’ve worn shoes, a shirt and even put pants on. But as I scroll through my Instagram feed at 3am with my boob out and a bit of spit on my shoulder I start to dream about what my life will look like when Lemon is two. That could be us. Days on the beach, out to lunch with baby cinos, wearing clothes gifted by websites I’ve never heard of… Life will be better then. When she’s older…
The thoughts last about three seconds. Even in that state of 3am delirium, looking at my brand-new baby, I remember that she’s pretty perfect right now. There won’t be another moment like this one, she’ll only smile at me for the first time once, she will only snuggle with me every morning for a very short while, she will never smell like this again… the list is endless. And my ‘pretty perfect’ baby is just that, pretty perfect right now. Even when she’s screaming and more so – even when I am.
The pictures aren’t real. They are styled photographs. They are art. And we, my dear Lemon, are just another kind of art. We will read those words at 3am, and again in two hours when we’re still cluster feeding like baby pigeon, and I will keep scrolling through those pictures, a girl still needs to shop. Especially at 3am. Those websites might have something good for a woman who now wears size 12 undies.
life in big frilly knickers 