June 5, 2023
Change Your Story
Ten years ago TODAY, Iris was born, and this photo is of my first glimpse of her, snapped by Stuart, who knew how upsetting I’d found it to never see Harriet until she was cleaned up, wrapped in a blanket and wearing a hat. Because without having seen, it felt impossible to me, that she’d come from my body, how one thing had turned into another. Which was part of the reason I tried so hard to have a natural birth with my second baby—not JUST because I wanted things to be different (though I did!) but really because I wanted to understand and to keep whole the many things that ended up broken the first time. All along conscious that maybe I was failing to learn the lesson I’d failed that first time, which is that these are stories that refused to be controlled and managed , and some submission is required. Which sounds TERRIBLE because it is, and so I’m so happy to report back that that is only part of it. Nope, I sure didn’t get my natural birth experience, but what I got instead was the chance to apply what I’d learned from things being so hard the first time to have an altogether better experience the second time around.
This photo was part of that, this magnificent image that will never stop blowing my mind, just like the seconds old baby at its centre never has either. I can’t possibly express what it meant to me to be able to have a new baby and to be happy during those tender blurry early weeks. How I’d envied other new parents who’d been there, secretly wondering if such a thing was possible. But it was, and it was us, and that extraordinary time (my husband took three months parental leave so we could it all together, our eldest was four years old, we’d been very methodical in orchestrating a situation in which I would be supported and not left flailing like I’d been the first time) was one of the greatest gifts of my life. It’s central lesson being that while some submission is required, we also do (to quote a line from Iris’s favourite musical) have the power to CHANGE OUR STORY. And oh, how I love this story so much.
