Part 20 - Sleep Deprivation and Adjusting to Motherhood

There is absolutely nothing that can prepare you for the reality of the sleep deprivation that accompanies night time feeding – and I was most certainly no exception.

Towards the end of my pregnancy I lost count of the number of people who told me to get the sleep while I could. It used to really annoy me because it was nigh on impossible to get any decent sleep due to the discomfort of sleeping with a huge bump and the constant need to pee. I considered it nature’s way of preparing me for what lay ahead, but it didn’t really. It just meant I was tired before I’d even had the baby.

The first few nights in hospital challenged my ability to sleep too. Not only are you woken regularly for the obligatory checks, but I was high on the hormones that accompany birth, and I had drunk a lot of black tea to keep me going following the Caesarean section. Plus, I was acutely aware that Elijah could wake at any moment and I was nervous about my ability to comfort him and prevent him crying.

Thus by the time I made it home I was absolutely shattered; not least from the activity on the ward but also from the surgery and the acute blood loss that accompanied it.   All I wanted was some quality sleep to support the healing process and my recovery from the surgery, but of course this isn’t a reality when you’ve got a new baby, especially when you’re breastfeeding.

There was a novelty factor to the night time breastfeeding those first few days. I tried the ‘watching TV while drinking tea and eating biscuits’ approach but this just made me feel yucky. I tried the ‘check Facebook in the middle of the night’ tactic too, but this meant I got too engrossed in things that I didn’t need to be getting engrossed in. So I opted instead for the ‘stay in bed and put the side lamp on’ approach so that I didn’t wake E in the process.

In those early days feeding took an extraordinary amount of time, because it wasn’t just the feeding but the winding too.  And then if a nappy and clothing change were required, as they frequently were during those first couple of weeks (until I realised that we needed bigger size Naty nappies - skip size one they don’t work, go straight to size two), then I could be up for forty minutes to an hour by the time I’d also managed to settle Elijah to sleep again.

I quickly gave up with the ‘trying to settle Elijah thing’.  I had his Moses basket right beside the bed but he absolutely loathed going in this initially and I found that the only way to settle him was if he slept on my chest with me sleeping virtually upright propped up on pillows.  I’ve since discovered that this is common in those first few weeks and perhaps not surprising given that the baby has been nestled inside you all those months and wants to stay close to you.

I was a little nervous about this at first, given the fact it had been drilled into me in hospital that you must not have the baby sleep with you in your bed (I got told off for doing this one night), but I absolutely needed sleep and this was the only way I could manage it. It was never enough sleep though, and as E returned to work immediately after I returned home from hospital, and as my breasts were frequently required for feeding, I didn’t get to lie in either.

After six weeks of Elijah lying on my chest I was desperate to lie on my side to sleep. By then my shoulders, neck and upper back were aching from all the breastfeeding and carrying of car seats and my awful posture when it came to the night time feeding.  I was often so tired that it was all I could do not to fall asleep as I was leaning over breastfeeding him.  I was severely anaemic and had such little energy.  All I longed for was a good night’s sleep.

I managed to transfer Elijah into the Moses basket, albeit that the Moses basket was placed in the centre of the bed between E and I.  Fortunately, we had invested in a super king sized bed in preparation for his arrival and already this was proving beneficial as it meant we still had lots of space.  It was lovely to sleep as I chose and he was still close by and amazingly it didn’t take much longer to settle him than it had done when he slept on my chest.

It helped in settling him that he slept on his front. We had little choice as he wouldn’t sleep on his back, and I don’t blame him, its not a position I favour either, but we felt hugely guilty placing him to sleep on his tummy, as this once again went against all the guidelines that you’re given in respect of safe baby sleeping.  Still it felt intuitively okay to take that perceived risk, and my Mum and her friends were very much of the opinion that they’d slept their babies like that so what was the big deal and I tended to agree.

I had been keen to mother Elijah intuitively, but when it came down to it, as a first time Mum I was fearful of unintentionally doing something to harm him and often sought validation that what I was doing was okay.  I was a member of various baby related Facebook groups back in those days and would get regular updates from Baby Centre about what my baby should be doing when.

I quickly became aware that there is a myriad of opinions on how best to raise a baby and often mothers would present their opinion and validate it by including a link to a relevant research paper. Now I certainly have no wish to discredit researchers and the often valuable work they do, but research findings can be decidedly biased depending on who’s funding it, the nature of the research subjects used and the manner in which the research is interpreted.

The research would often ignore the fact that every baby is different, every mother is different and mothers should be given an opportunity to go with the flow.  It is my experience that far too often in life we are not given the opportunity, or encouraged then, to truly check in with our intuition and our gut feelings, and trust in these and have the strength to act on them. 

Many women don’t even know how to access their innate voice, because they’ve spent the best part of their life making decisions based on other people’s opinions be that their parents, partners, siblings, friends or society. This lack of connection with natural insight, and our inability to make decisions based on it merely serves to make motherhood an even trickier and confusing time than it is already. 

People would so readily give their opinion, and this took some getting used to.  Even complete strangers would comment on whether Elijah looked hot, or enquire into his sleeping and feeding patterns and offer unrequested advice. Perhaps it’s no surprise then that the majority end up doing things by the book – whatever the book may say at that particular time – even if it doesn’t resonate with that mother or isn’t right for her baby or her immediate family.

I fell into this trap with Elijah. It was ridiculous really because up until that point, at least since I’d been practicing yoga and Reiki, I had been living my life intuitively.  However, having a baby was new to me and I was so extremely exhausted and ungrounded that even if I did experience some clarity, I always felt that everyone else knew better than I did and initially I felt a pressure to conform to what was expected of me as a responsible mother (whatever that meant).

I had been told that babies often start sleeping better at six weeks so I was hanging out for this.  But the six-week anniversary came and went and there was no positive change, he was still waking every two hours and I was desperate for this to change. The fact I was still terribly anaemic didn’t help, nor that I was often having to check the blackberry and keep abreast of developments at work.  I was running on empty and desperate for sleep.

The twelve-week anniversary was soon upon us and with that my return to work. Still the sleep didn’t improve and if anything it got worse. It was like he needed the night time intimacy to make up for the fact I was now parted from him for up to five hours a day. It didn’t help that this coincided with his teething and he would sometimes wake every hour or even more than this at times. 

I felt permanently jet lagged and existed on black tea and dark chocolate in quantities I had never before consumed or indeed since.  The job was demanding as I was on a three month catch up with a never ending inbox and there were lots going on that was time pressured and urgent. Additionally, I now had to factor in time away from my desk to express milk and I had to be really disciplined in taking the time to do this.

It also didn’t help that I now had baby brain and acute sleep deprivation, which created an inability to retain information for longer than five minutes.  I was okay if I could stay in my zone, but the moment anyone asked me a question I would lose the thread of what I had just been doing and sit there staring at my screen completely baffled and incapable of thinking clearly. 

It was the most frustrating experience, so too the inability to remember words so I was frequently asking my male colleague the most ridiculous questions.  Fortunately, he had a young family himself so he was well aware of what I was going through.  But still I had to check and re-check my work because I would make silly little mistakes, which was infuriating for a type A personality! I began to think that I was going mad.

And then I did go mad. 

Well not mad in the sense that I lost my mind entirely, just mad in the sense that as the weeks went on and the night feeding and waking continued at one to two hourly intervals, I found myself on an edge. The cumulative effects of the sleepless nights began to take their toll. I was incredibly angry about the birth, the resulting anaemia and the manner in which this had affected my health with recurring thrush infections and a compromised immune system.

I had completely lost my grounding and with this, I had also lost my footing. I was surviving each day, obsessed with my tiredness and my inability to think clearly, I felt directionless and unsupported and I was angry at the Universe.  The dark night of the soul was upon me. This was not how I imagined motherhood to be, it was exhausting and relentless and was seriously affecting my relationship with E.

My life became one of constant rushing, I’d get myself and Elijah ready for the day, go to work and try and get on top of things, and then I’d rush away from work to collect Elijah, and inevitably I was always running late and aware that Elijah would be wanting breastmilk. I’d feed him at my parents’ house and then return home mid afternoon to washing that needed hanging up, dinner that needed preparing, a house that needed tidying and a baby who would cry unless I was holding him.

My life felt terribly out of control and it was no surprise perhaps that my OCD for cleanliness went into overdrive. It became imperative back in those days that the kitchen floor was spotless and I wasted a good few cumulative hours of my life cleaning this each day. My yoga practice became even more important to me as it provided a life line, a sanctuary, a quiet space without anyone demanding anything of me.   

Really I should have just adopted a gentle practice with a lot of resting, but I challenged myself with a dynamic practice because I figured that that was what my mind needed. I was trying to cling to anything that felt normal, even if, ironically, it was further unbalancing me. Active and dynamic yoga has its place but certainly not in the post natal period and I’m keen that other women don’t make the same mistake on their mats as I did.

It took me until Elijah was two to appreciate my profound tiredness and the need for a gentle and restorative practice and the benefits that this would offer me physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. I’ve since discovered the joy of Uma Dinsmore-Tuli and her incredibly feminine and healing approach to the yoga during the post natal period.

I had started teaching yoga again when Elijah was about six weeks old and it was this that kept me sane.  Yes, I was drained and often running on empty and there is a very strong argument that post natal yoga teachers should wait a good few months before giving to others through teaching, but I experience great joy from teaching, it stops me thinking about anything else and keeps me present.

It was the exhaustion that made everything so challenging. I just didn’t have the same energy for life. I certainty didn’t have any energy for E either. This was another shift. All the attention I previously gave to him, I gave to Elijah and I had absolutely no interest in him touching me. Pre-baby I’d been very tactile but now I felt like my body was for Elijah and I couldn’t cope with anyone else touching it. My libido was at an all time low!

It was a particularly challenging year and there were times when I didn’t think that we would make it. Sleep deprivation brings you to your knees. It’s no surprise its used as a form of torture.  I certainly felt like I was being persecuted at times, and it affected my perception of reality. This wasn’t what I’d signed up for. Motherhood was all consuming and I longed for something to shift, for Elijah to sleep, for E and I to have some fun and for life to become brighter again.

E didn’t seem to understand and was constantly frustrated at my low mood and obsession with how much sleep I wasn’t getting. The fact he didn’t understand just compounded matters and with that the resentment set in and I had no idea how to change things.  Resentment is a horrible energy, all woody and edgy so that it splits things apart, and certainly there were moments where it was doing that to us.

I now know that this is perfectly normal, in that many couples go through a significant period of adjustment during the first year of parenthood. The dynamics of the relationship change and the mother is often exhausted and trying hold it all together with the home, the baby and work, while the father’s life appears to continue as usual albeit he now has to adjust to someone else demanding his partner’s attention. It didn’t help that we came to parenthood late, when we were both so used to doing what we wanted, when we wanted.

The father doesn’t always appreciate the significant change that the mother’s body has had to go through, not least to accommodate the pregnancy but post natal too.  There’s often weight gain and you don’t feel so good about yourself and you might be breastfeeding and have full and leaky breasts.  Factor in sore bits from the birth and all the hormonal shifts happening and its hardly surprising women just want to be left alone at this time.

I found the changes to my body one of the most difficult aspects of the initial post natal period.  That and the sleep deprivation. Not only was I giving mentally and emotionally, but now I was giving physically as well and I certainly didn’t have any energy to give to E too. Because I was so sick this just compounded matters and occasionally I just wanted someone else to manage everything so I could have some time off from all the responsibility!

This was not how I expected motherhood to be. I’d desperately wanted to have a baby and now I was questioning whether I had been wrong to encourage E to have that baby with me. I’d had this terribly romantic idea of how things should be, breastfeeding and floating around with a baby attached to me, whereas the reality was completely different. I was super sensitive to everything and would cry easily. The tiredness was all consuming and I didn’t know how to change things.

Fortunately, I had befriended a lovely Mum with a little boy just a month older than Elijah, who helped to keen me sane.  She too was going through the same experience so we were able to moan and share together. We were also keen to find a solution that meant we got more sleep. We were both keen to gentle parent so the ‘crying it out’ approach was never an option for either of us.

The only time I read a baby-related book was in my quest for more sleep.  I tried the ‘No Cry Sleep Solution’, which was all very well and good, but to be honest I was just too tired to put any of it into practice! I just simply didn’t have the energy to make a change; breastfeeding when Elijah awoke seemed the quickest and easiest way for us to get back to sleep, even if everyone told us that this was creating the sleeping issue.

I tried all sorts of other things.  We went to baby yoga and while we both enjoyed the classes, they didn’t make him sleep any better that night.  I took him for cranial-osteopathy and to see a healer too and while both ladies told me he would sleep better after the sessions, he never did. I burned lavender oil in his room and wafted pine essential oil into his aura to ground him. I gave him Bach floral remedies and homeopathic remedies.

We bathed in dead sea salts to cleanse our auras and I put crystals under his pillow. We spent a lot of the day outside in nature, running around and getting lots of fresh air. I tried to do Reiki on him but while others are calmed and sleep amazingly well after receiving Reiki, typically it seemed to make no difference to him at all. I used the soothing sounds of Tranquil Turtle too, but this seemed to soothe me more than it did him.

Of course there was always hope that the sleep would improve, and it was this hope that my friend and I lived off.  It got to the point where we’d laugh because someone was always telling us that when we reached certain milestone things would change, for example when they started on solids, when they started crawling etc. But those milestones came and went and made no difference to our sons’ respective sleeping patterns, if anything they merely got worse.

E and I did what was encouraged and moved Elijah into a cot when he outgrew the Moses basket.  Intuitively I had intended to co-sleep but I was told that I would be making a rod for my own back and that he would smell my milk and want to feed even more than he did already. In hindsight, it was silly because now I just spent half my night traipsing backwards and forwards across the bedroom to feed him and try and settle him in the cot that he didn’t like to sleep in. 

Sometimes I was up and down every 45 minutes to an hour, which was incredibly tough. It was at times like this that I felt wholly resentful of E sleeping soundly beside me.  There was little he could do however as Elijah was very attached to me and would want the comfort of my cuddle and my breast, but nonetheless I was annoyed E didn’t appreciate the extent of my tiredness.

Mind you it’s difficult to truly explain how detrimental lack of sleep can be to one’s wellbeing, or indeed how you manage to keep on going.  But you do, because each night you hope it will be better.  I lived and breathed sleep deprivation and I made sure everyone knew about it. It became my thing. It was hard for it not to be though as it impacted so hugely on my quality of life and my health.

Essentially I needed help but I didn’t know how to ask for it and I couldn’t see how anyone could help because I wasn’t prepared to stop breastfeeding.  People told me I needed to move Elijah into his own room as he’d sleep better farther away from us.  We tried this and now I just spent half my night going backwards and forward across the landing.  So we moved him back into our room, where he stayed until he was big enough to go straight into his own bed.

We put him in a double bed initially and we were told that this was the reason he continued to keep waking. So we replaced it with a single bed but this made no difference. I was still spending half my night in his room and now it just meant there was less space for me in the bed beside him. So I’d end up just carrying him into the bed with us where he’d wrap his arms around my neck and hang on until the morning.

It felt like things would never change and by the time Elijah was about eighteen months I was just about keeping a grip on things.  I’d done an eight-week mindfulness course a few months earlier and that had made me very aware that my life was out of balance and I that I was stressed and unhappy. It wasn’t just the sleep deprivation that was challenging, my working life was far too busy, I was approaching my fortieth birthday and knew that we still had frozen embryos in Wessex.

Furthermore, I was under pressure from E and other family members to stop breastfeeding and I knew that if we went through another round of IVF that this was necessary. However, I was adamant that I wanted to breastfeed him until he was two years old so he could gain the immunity benefits. I also knew that I wasn’t mentally or physically in the ‘right’ place for IVF and was concerned I never would be.

I ended up seeing a counsellor because I just needed to talk to someone who didn’t know me and who wouldn’t judge me, so that I could try to make sense of how to make things better again. I’m not sure the counselling itself helped, but the fact I had acknowledged that I needed help set the wheels in motion and I slowly started to make the necessary changes to the way I was living to help me to heal.

I recognised that the more I went on about being tired, the more I was going to create “tired” in my life, it’s the law of attraction. I also realised that I needed to take my need for sleep more seriously.  I had to go to bed earlier and slow my life down to facilitate this.  I had to stop juggling so many balls and trying to be superwoman. I had to accept my imperfections and that it was ok to rest and let things be (like the floor).

I also finally learned to accept that Elijah just didn’t need much sleep.  I acknowledged that there was nothing wrong with him and stopped looking for the magic sleep solution because it didn’t exist.  One day I knew that we would have the opposite issue – we wouldn’t be able to get him out bed in the morning, so I resolved to accept what I couldn’t change and appreciate the blessing of my energetic little boy instead – it was me who needed to change, not him.

Part 19 - The Joy of Breastfeeding

During my pregnancy there was a local campaign to encourage more women to breastfeed. I didn’t need any encouragement as I was desperate to breastfeed.  But equally I didn’t want to be pressurized into a state of anxiety about whether I could actually breastfeed and E and I were very much of the opinion that we would wait and see what happened.

In my ideal world, as I have mentioned before, I would have birthed vaginally and peacefully at home and the baby would have immediately latched on to my breast and that would have been it, job done! Sadly, this was not the case, especially as I was not feeling very well immediately post-surgery and it wasn’t until I was back up on the ward that I was encouraged to try and get Elijah to latch on.

Easier said than done however and the first few attempts didn’t go well at all. The midwives took it in turns to try to help Elijah latch on and introduced me to a variety of feeding positions, including the rugby style one, which still flummoxes me today. I was aware that the pressure was rising but E and I had it in mind that when Elijah needed to feed he would feed.

Whether that was the reason he finally latched on I have no idea, but it coincided with my lovely male midwife helping me to establish breastfeeding. It was karma really, because there I’d been at the beginning of the day loathing the idea of a male midwife as I thought he would lack empathy and an awareness of how to help a pregnant and then post natal lady, but he was exactly the help I needed. I was breastfeeding!

It was amazing and yet equally strange that first time.  Here was my new-born son who was still so incredibly unfamiliar to me, and yet strangely familiar too, latching on to my left nipple, and suckling away. The sensation was much stronger than I had imagined and I had this sense of the enormity of the task at hand – I was my son’s sole source of nourishment, I had to make this work.

In the days that followed it was tough.  My nipples became really sore and it hurt when Elijah fed. I’d find myself wincing and thinking that surely this couldn’t be right, but apparently it was perfectly normal to feel like this. It was also very new to me and I was concerned about how I was holding him and whether he was feeding properly. 

When I returned home there was an enormous (external) pressure for him to put on weight. I’m not surprised so many women give up trying to breastfeed and go immediately to the bottle, because I was made to feel as if something was wrong with my milk, or that I wasn’t breastfeeding him properly. The visiting midwife told me that if he didn’t start putting on more weight he was either going to have to return to hospital or we would have to start supplementing with formula.

It was ridiculous.  There you are, a new mum trying to do your best, only to be told that your best isn’t good enough and perhaps you don’t have enough milk to feed your own baby.  Cue feeling disempowered all over again. So, then, in my infinite wisdom (not so wise as it happens) I tried to massage milk from my breast into my nipple, which resulted in me flooding Elijah and giving him excess wind.

It wasn’t until a lovely calming Irish midwife came around to the cottage and shared the magic words, ‘Nose to nipple, tum to mum’, that we truly ‘got’ the breastfeeding. Why had no one told me this earlier? Unbeknown to me at that time, I had been unintentionally squashing Elijah’s nose into my breast so that the poor thing couldn’t breathe, which didn’t make for a particularly restful feeding time!

Plus, I’d been switching breasts too quickly in a mission to make sure he got plenty of milk but had been giving him lots of hind milk. And of course with the breast massage and the squashed nose, it was hardly surprising he ended up with too much wind. I also hadn’t worked out at that stage that what I ate made a difference too, for example dairy made him very snuffly with mucus and soya made him particularly windy.

My Mum would talk about him being blue above his mouth and how this was an indication that he still had wind, but I just couldn’t see this.  My Auntie took this to another level because she could actually feel the wind while she was rubbing his back.  I can feel energy and auras and chakras, but I couldn’t feel the wind in Elijah’s body and felt that my Auntie must certainly have a gift.

Others had this gift too as they would visit and wind my baby for me in half the time it seemed to take me.   It was certainly not my skill and I was quite happy for anyone else to take control of this. This was the bit that I found most exhausting, simply because Elijah was so unsettled until he had been winded properly, and during the middle of the night this really challenged me.

Winding aside, this whole ‘babies not putting on weight’ thing is a common theme and I know that I am not alone with my experience. I’ve heard lots of stories of women being told in those first few days after birth that their milk is not good enough and that their babies are losing weight and may need to be topped with a bottle.   It’s crazy because babies lose weight after birth.  That’s a reality.

Given the time and encouragement, many women will go on to feed their babies perfectly adequately without the need for top ups. That’s not all women, I appreciate that some are simply not able to establish breastfeeding – to this day my Mum’s still sad that she was never able to breastfeed my brother and I beyond six weeks simply because no one told her she needed to drink lots of water (and not milk as she had been advised and which she can’t tolerate).

Others find that they don’t have enough milk to satisfy the needs of their babies, or that they lose too much weight trying to sustain their milk supply due to the demands of the baby.  Others simply don’t have the energy, and others just don’t like it. There are a myriad of reasons and while I’ve always been very pro-breastfeeding I do appreciate that it’s not for everyone, it’s a personal thing.

For me, once breastfeeding was established, that was it.  I was well away and absolutely loved every minute of it.  I loved the fact that I could nourish my son from my own body.  There is this notion that the breasts constitute a chakra (energy centre) all of their own and so when you’re breastfeeding, you’re not only physically and emotionally nourishing your baby (especially with you holding him/her by your heart space) but you’re spiritually nourishing them too.

I also loved the fact that breastfeeding comforted and soothed Elijah.  As mothers we become experts on learning how to comfort and soothe our children. It’s what we do best. You’ve only to see how a child calls out for his Mum when he falls and calms immediately when she picks him up and talks to him in soft tones. Or how a baby calms immediately when he is brought to the breast, or rocked or ‘shhh-ed’. Well Elijah was certainly calmed by my breast.

This certainly had its advantages, not least in helping him to settle to sleep, but also when we travelled. It was just so easy to whip out my boob on the aeroplane for example, and not only calm him, but help to clear his ears as we changed altitude. He’d often sleep the whole journey.  He was comforted by the boob on boats too, and made travel in that first year so easy. In fact, it made everything easy because we didn’t need to faff around with bottles, or warming milk, and there it was, his source of nourishment within me.

Of course this did present its challenges. Elijah cluster fed for the first 16 weeks of his life.  This meant that he was fussy each evening unless he was attached to my breast. No one really understands the reason that babies cluster feed as it certainly didn’t help Elijah to sleep through the night. But for whatever reason he needed a constant supply of my milk during the evening from approximately 6.30pm to 10.30pm, when he’d finally fall asleep.

It was exhausting.  In the earlier days I had a really hard time accepting the fact that each evening I basically had to sit down and feed him. Prior to the birth I was used to teaching yoga each evening and being out and about, and now here I was, having little choice but to sit down and join E watching TV.  I’m not a massive fan of TV so I tired of this novelty very quickly and became frustrated that I couldn’t be doing something active instead.

When I did return to teaching yoga after six weeks, I initially taught for two evenings a week. This meant that E had a very testing time because all Elijah wanted during those two hours was my breast. I had learned to express by then but the bottle didn’t cut it for Elijah and I’d return home to a traumatised E and an unsettled baby. I’d take Elijah immediately to my breast and he’d calm down instantly while E would pour himself an extra large glass of wine!

These evenings certainly didn’t help our relationship at the time and I soon cut back to just the one class a week.  This I absolutely relished as I love teaching yoga, and it was a welcome break from the usual evening routine. It probably helped to keep me sane during this time even if it was testing for E. Needless to say we were both delighted when the cluster feeding finally came to an end and we could have some time out together during the evening.

Then of course there was the challenge of the night time feeding and nothing can prepare you for this. When you’re in the final stages of pregnancy and finding it difficult to sleep with the discomfort of your bump and the constant need for peeing, it’s easy to conclude that it’s preparing you for the night-time feeds.  But in reality night time feeding takes it to an entirely different level.

Initially it was a novelty and I had heard other women say that they spent that time watching TV and eating biscuits.  So I tried this.  As soon as Elijah awoke for a feed I would take him downstairs and breastfeed while drinking tea, eating biscuits and watching TV.  I quickly realised this approach was not for me and made me feel particularly yucky!

Instead I stayed in bed and fed him there under the light of a lamp, while E continued to sleep beside me. I was ok with this initially, but after a few weeks of being woken every two to three hours the sleep deprivation had truly kicked in and I started getting resentful that E was able to sleep while I had to keep waking. It wasn’t just the feeding of course, but also the winding and the nappy changing that took the time.

I kept a little notebook by my bed and jotted down the time I was woken for feeding and the time I was able to go back to sleep again.  The intention was to note how long Elijah was going between feeds, but really all it did was make me completely obsessed by the number of hours of sleep I was getting each night, which wasn’t very many. Sleep deprivation continues to be a major theme in my life, but more on that later.

Returning to work at twelve weeks certainly challenged the feeding schedule as I had to ensure I had enough milk for my Mum to be able to feed Elijah for me. There was so much work to do in the office and while in the past I had been able to work longer hours than I was contracted to do, now I had to rush off at the contracted time to collect Elijah. I also had to make time to express milk and I was often so busy that I had to make a real effort to factor this in. 

Of course my breasts made it very clear to me that it was feeding time and I was certainly thrown into some degree of panic if I turned up at work having forgotten to put in my breast pads.  Yikes, leaky breasts! Initially expressing was challenging; I had invested in a double electric pump and I recall sitting at the kitchen table with one of my friends as I attempted to pump milk from my breasts. I felt like a milk cow and with my friend laughing at me it was perhaps hardly surprising that no milk came out!

My cousin suggested a hand held pump and that worked a treat.  It also made it easy for me to express at work as the only private space available to me was the toilets.  This wasn’t exactly ideal but there really was no other option, so I just accepted my reality and I quickly established a routine, making sure to store the milk in the fridge and take it home with me at the end of the day.

Expressing soon became second nature but it was another consideration in an already busy and exhausting day. I was increasingly frustrated at never really clearing my inbox and constantly chasing my tail. I was resentful of the fact I had to work and then rush straight to my parents to feed and collect Elijah. I then had to go home to the pile of washing and the cooking and all the other chores that come with running a household.

I lived off 70% dark chocolate those weeks. And tea.  And wine in the evening. I justified the chocolate on account of its iron content, and the fact I absolutely needed the caffeine and the sugar to get through the day.  The wine I justified because the sugar from it was the only thing to get me through the evening and take the edge off a little bit.  People say that you lose weight while you’re breastfeeding but with E that certainly wasn’t true, if anything I put on weight as I was constantly ravenous and still totally thrown by this new way of being.

Initially I had no qualms about breastfeeding in public but then we had an incident at six months that challenged this. E and I were in a neighbouring Island and out to dinner with my Reiki Master and her husband in their local Indian restaurant. Elijah still liked to feed most of the earlier evening and so I spent much of that meal feeding him.  I was wearing a floaty blouse, which made it easier – or so I thought – to breastfeed subtly in public.

Alas not.  There was a couple sitting at the table next to us, the wife and I sitting on the same bench that ran along the whole side of the restaurant. I was aware of their presence but I was so involved in our conversation that I didn’t pay them too much attention. As they stood up to leave, the woman came over to talk to us.  I was so used to people coming over and commenting on how beautiful Elijah was that I was confused by her words:

“It’s disgusting the way you’ve breastfed that baby”, she said
“Sorry?’ I asked with a confused look on my face, “sorry, what did you say?”
“I said it’s disgusting the way you’re breastfeeding that baby”, she repeated.
I was startled, “Sorry”, I heard myself saying because this certainly wasn’t what I was used to hearing and it took me a moment to clock that yes, she really did say those words, I hadn’t misheard her and I wasn’t imaging it. I never intended to upset someone else with my actions and so I was genuinely sorry, albeit totally confused.

By this point, E had stood up from his seat and was standing to the other side of the incensed, and drunken, lady.
“She’s just feeding the baby”, I heard E saying.
“I nursed all of my children, but I would never have been as indiscreet as you”, she said to me with disdain in her voice.

I was truly shocked. This had never happened previously, and while yes, Elijah had been fairly much on and off my breast the whole time we were in the restaurant, I had been doing my best to manage this.  Inevitably there’s always going to be a moment where you guide them on and off the nipple, and perhaps by six months I’d grown quite laid back about this, but heck, I was feeding my baby, it’s a nipple, what’s the big deal! Women sunbathe topless for heaven’s sake. It wasn’t like I was sitting there flaunting my breasts.

The lady was noticeably drunk and started challenging E, who was beginning to get a little wound up by this whole incident, which was something I’d never seen previously.  He was most certainly my knight in shining armour that evening. The lady’s husband had already left the restaurant and the restaurant staff quickly rushed over to see what was going on – I wasn’t used to all this drama! I told E to let it go, which he did, and the lady quickly left the restaurant.

It was one of those horrible incidents which happened very quickly but which has been ingrained on my memory ever since. I just couldn’t understand it and was mortified by it. The restaurant staff were incredibly friendly and apologetic, but of course it wasn’t their fault, and I was just confused by the whole experience.

I was shaken for the rest of the evening. Until that point I’d never questioned breastfeeding in public.  If Elijah needed feeding, I fed him, to me it felt like the most natural thing in the world.  But clearly others didn’t feel this way and it saddens me that this is the case. I was annoyed I never got to find out exactly what element of me feeding Elijah upset the lady the most, so that I’ve never been able to make sense of the episode.

Unfortunately, I became less comfortable feeding in public after this, especially as Elijah grew older.  If we were in a restaurant I would take him off to the toilets to feed him, which was silly really, because who wants to eat their dinner in the toilets, poor Elijah! Or I’d faff around with scarves and muslins to hide it.

Still, fairy undaunted, my love affair with breastfeeding continued and I was therefore incredibly distraught when at ten months Elijah went on a nursing strike. I was up in Edinburgh at the time visiting one of my best friends. It was bedtime and I was feeding Elijah when he bit down hard on my nipple, causing it to bleed, and I yelped! And that was that.

It was the strangest thing because that night he didn’t wake for a feed, which had never happened previously and I awoke in anticipation wondering if he was ok. The next morning, I considered that perhaps he’d finally learned to sleep through, but alas not, he refused to take my breast. I google searched and was introduced to the concept of a nursing strike.

Later that day flying back to Guernsey, he still refused to feed and screamed his way back on the plane instead. It was frustrating and incredibly upsetting because ordinarily he’d be comforted by breastfeeding. Back home he still refused the breast. By now my breasts were engorged and I was incredibly emotional and teary. I wasn’t ready to stop feeding. It just felt far too sudden.

That evening I approached the local Facebook breastfeeding group and was grateful for the advice. Someone suggested that Elijah may have an ear infection or some other condition that was putting him off feeding so I took him to the doctor the next morning.  The doctor thoroughly checked him over but couldn’t find anything wrong with him and concluded that he’d simply decided that he didn’t want to breastfeed anymore. There was a part of me that wasn’t prepared to accept this and I set out to do what I could to encourage him back to the breast again. 

By then I had researched ‘nursing strike’ at length and I decided to put into practice my findings and the advice of other mothers who had experienced a similar thing. Thus I did as much skin to skin as possible, laying naked with Elijah in the bath and in the bed.  I woke during the night and brought him in his sleepy state to my breast to try and trick him into feeding again, and I tried not to be discouraged when he turned his head away from my nipple. I drew him to my breast again in the morning, determined not to give up and later on and off throughout the day.  I kept expressing milk during this time to maintain my flow and ease the pressure in my breasts.

Finally, during the fifth night, after days of tears, skin to skin and expressing, he took to my breast again.  It was very early in the morning and I was so delighted and excited that I woke E to share my good news with him.  It was such a relief and I couldn’t have been happier; my son wanted to breastfeed again! I loved the intimacy of it, and the connection it created and it made me appreciate the beauty of breastfeeding in a way I had perhaps taken for granted previously.

E didn’t really understand and would have been happy if E had stopped feeding. He was desperately uncomfortable with the idea of me breastfeeding E until the two years I intended, and my Dad also had a similar opinion on the matter. But I was determined as I felt there were many benefits to be gained. Admittedly the accompanying sleep deprivation was challenging but I knew it was beneficial for strengthening his immune system and providing him with a natural immunity, plus of course the emotional, mental and spiritual benefits too.

I resisted the pressure I was experiencing from E and other people’s negativity because deep down I knew it was the right decision for Elijah and me.  It helped that my best Mummy friend was also breastfeeding her son and in fact continued to do so as she became pregnant with her second son. Both of us would talk at length about the need to wean at some stage, more so because we were both exhausted by the night time feeding, but the trouble was neither of us really knew how to do this.

As it happened her son weaned himself.  Apparently when you’re pregnant the taste of your milk can change and her son didn’t like it.  In so doing, she proved our theory that the breastfeeding was causing the excess night waking because her son started sleeping much better. Elijah on the other hand was still, eighteen months in, waking every two to three hours. It was getting super draining.

I was in some quandary.  I had a sense that I wanted to breastfeed for two years, but I was feeling the pressure from E and other family members, and I was aware that we had three frozen embryos in Southampton.  However, by then Elijah was talking and was calling breastfeeding “Nunnas” and he demanded it after any period of separation and I just loved the intimacy it created between us and I didn’t want to stop this. 

But I was tiring and fast approaching my 40th birthday. I had it in mind that after I’d celebrated my birthday, if we were going to try to have another baby, then we needed to get on with it.  Only that I still wasn’t quite sure how I was going to stop breastfeeding and wean Elijah, at least in a gentle way, as you are not meant to do IVF if you are breastfeeding. So I did the one thing I knew I could do – I handed it over to the angels and prayed for a solution.

Part 18 - Introduction to Motherhood

I was euphoric. I had a baby!  I wanted to shout it from the rooftops, tell the whole world, invite them all in to have a peak, “Look, I have a baby, a little boy, my dream came true”. I couldn’t have been happier; I was flying high, that little bundle of joy swaddled in his cot beside my bed was all mine. He’d arrived.

I was joyous too because I’d survived theatre and E had gotten to see his son being born. However, it was not how I had imagined birth.  And this was certainly not how I imagined my introduction to motherhood. There was no champagne or lazy hours spent in our bed at home admiring our new baby all on our own. There were no candles burning or soft music playing. There was none of the stuff I had hoped for when I had intended a home birth.

Instead here I was in hospital, wearing a blood spattered hospital gown with a catheter attached to my bladder and a drip attached to my arm. My body was full of drugs from the surgery including the obligatory antibiotics, which were killing all the good bacteria in my gut. And I was itchy, very itchy, as my body started to awaken from the anaesthetic. All I wanted to do was scratch.

I was also laying on what can only be described as a huge sanitary towel with a smaller sanitary towel soaking up the blood trickling from my vagina. No one had told me that I would be bleeding from my vagina following the birth. Just like no one had told me that I would need a catheter and a drip and be unable to move from my bed. I didn’t know any of this.

One thing I did know however was that there would be pressure to establish breastfeeding and as desperately as I wanted to breastfeed, I had resolved not to buy into the anxiety that accompanies this. I distinctly remember a variety of midwives trying to help Elijah latch on to me using all different sorts of techniques - I was completely thrown by the rugby style approach and am in awe of women who adopt this.

In the end it was my marvellous male midwife who helped Elijah latch on, which I found nothing short of incredible really.  My baby was feeding from me! It was a strange sensation initially though and it soon became clear to me the reason women suffer with sore nipples because my nipples weren’t used to it. Still at least I was able to relax a little and with that my breast feeding journey began in earnest (more on that soon).

That first night I couldn’t sleep because I was high on life and cups of tea, and because the hospital environment is not really conducive to resting with all the midwife checks and the babies crying. I was slightly on edge too because I wasn’t quite sure what I would do if Elijah cried because I was so ill prepared for the reality of life with a new born.

It’s ridiculous really, I had read a lot of books about pregnancy and about birth but not one single book about babies.  We had opted not to attend the NCT courses either so we were both clueless. All of a sudden, with this tiny person beside me my, “We’ll just wing the baby bit” attitude seemed ever so slightly naïve. What was I thinking?!

Breastfeeding wasn’t my only concern.  Nor was knowing what to do when Elijah cried.  It was more so the fact that I had such limited range of movement in my bed that I wasn’t going to be able to do very much regardless of the nature of his needs. And indeed I couldn’t do much, so that when he did cry because his nappy needed changing, the midwife had to tend to him, which I found desperately upsetting.  I couldn’t care for my own baby!

The next day the reality of recovery became glaringly obvious to me.  It hurt to move. No one tells you this do they.  Just like no one told me that I was going to bleed for six weeks.  Or that my breasts and indeed nipples would get really sore.  Or that I would have to wear those hideous compression stockings for a good ten days at home. Or that I would struggle to walk upstairs without feeling like I may collapse due to the blood loss I’d experienced during the birth and the lack of iron in my body.

I was keen to have the catheter removed first thing that next morning and, with the help of pain killers, I winced my way to the toilet as I was determined to get on with life as normal. Taking a shower later that morning felt amazing, albeit exhausting, and I remember staring aghast in the mirror at my post-pregnancy body, not recognising it.

Admittedly my bump was deflating quickly, but it was still very evident and felt strange knowing that the baby was no longer in there. I was very pale too and had a scabby nose from all the scratching post-theatre, and now I had this new scar below my bikini line, which was sore and soon bruised, and I felt all saggy. I stood under the water, holding onto the wall, head down and just let the water wash over me, cleansing me.

I had been told to invest in some high-waist leggings and big pants to wear post-surgery and I was grateful to my friend for the tip.  Both of these made a huge difference in ensuring minimal pressure on my wound. The leggings also helped to hide those horrible stockings, although I sneaked these off whenever I could as I was mobile and practicing yoga (of sorts) within a few days.

I also quickly realised that breastfeeding demanded a certain style of dressing, especially in winter time, a vest that could be pulled down from the top and a top that could be rolled up from below to reveal the nipple, or a button-down top. It’s knowing stuff like this that certainly makes a difference in navigating through this confusing time. It did mean a huge percentage of my wardrobe, including all my dresses, would remain unused for some time. 

I was constipated for three whole days following the birth, which just added to my general level of discomfort. I loathe being constipated and was frustrated that the balance of microbes in my gut had been adversely affected by the antibiotics and I usually resist them for this very reason. I took probiotics and ate yoghurt to increase the levels of good bacteria and consumed seeds, fruit and brown rice, as well as drinking a whole heap of water in a quest to empty my bowels.

However, there was a psychological aspect to this too; the scar was so painful that subconsciously I was very fearful of creating yet more pain through the pushing action to defecate. The mere hint of a sneeze had me panicking because sneezing hurt. A lot. As did coughing and any sudden movement. It sucked. I was given medication to soften the stools, but stopped these along with all medication as soon as I got home from the hospital as I just wanted to give my liver a break and heal my body holistically.

I took some milk thistle to support my liver, and also to increase my milk supply. I took arnica remedy to help with my internal healing and I used a combination of arnica cream, tea tree oil and lavender oil on my scar to heal this too. I found that rubbing arnica onto my skin where the bump had been helped with this contracting, and I channelled Reiki onto myself at any given opportunity.

It was a relief when my digestive system started working properly again. There’s such a connection between the gut and the mind that when you’ve a whole heap of toxins stuck inside you it starts to change the way you feel, and I didn’t need anything else throwing me off balance as I was having a hard enough time as it was.  I’d completely lost my grounding, like the rug had been pulled from under my feet.

Admittedly those first few days in the hospital and then back at home I was still euphoric.  My dream had come true and I was blown away with the love I felt for this little being who was a part of E and I. It was nothing short of a miracle and I was incredibly grateful. I was also inundated with deliveries of flowers, cards and presents, and received lots of emails and messages of congratulations.

It was mind blowing, like entering a whole new world – people seemed genuinely happy for us that we’d had a baby, and I found all the attention both uplifting and incredibly overwhelming. I’ll never forget the delivery of a huge cuddly teddy bear from my work.  It was so huge that it took up half of the dining room table and both Mum and I were in hysterics about it. I love that teddy as it represents all the love that was directed to us at the time and the craziness of it all.

It took five days before I crashed.  My Mum had expected it earlier and was concerned I was going a little too hyper. I’d been warned that the tears may arrive with the milk on day three and there was a part of me that naively thought maybe I’d gotten away with it. But alas not. I couldn’t stop crying and I felt incredibly sensitive, insecure and low. It threw me, what did I have to feel low about?  I had a baby, I should have been continuously happy for ever more.

However, it’s all part of the process as the hormones do their thing and the exhaustion begins to kick in. It did make me think though that we often believe certain events or changes to our life will bring us continuous happiness, but there’s often always a challenge. This challenge was hormonal and the fact my world was well and truly turned upside down and I didn’t have a clue how to find my grounding again.

It didn’t help that I’d lost so much blood during the birth that I was on the borderline for a blood transfusion, which I refused.  I just didn’t like the idea of taking on someone else’s blood and energy. I questioned my decision in the week’s that followed. I shall never forget leaving the hospital and walking to the carpark and being so out of breath and feeling so weak that I had to support myself on the car to steady myself. I shall also never forget arriving home and struggling up the stairs and having to sit down at the top to recover. 

Due to the fact I’d lost so much blood I wasn’t allowed to be left on my own in case I collapsed or fainted. This in itself was a challenge as I love being on my own, its what I do best, pottering until my heart’s content and enjoying solitude and silence. So it was tough always having to have someone in the house with me, and of course not being able to drive so that I felt my wings were truly clipped - I struggled with this as much as I struggled every other aspect of the post natal period.

I know I’m not alone.  A huge shift occurs when women become mothers for that first time, which can often lead to a period of shock. Not only do they tend to lose blood and with that iron and their magnetic and indeed energetic connection to the Earth itself, but their whole identity and sense of self changes.  Life is no longer all about them - as it tends to be during pregnancy, at least the first pregnancy - and now there’s this other little being demanding their attention, and their own needs become secondary to that.

There’s this fabulous quote from Uma Dinsmore-Tuli in her book, “Yoni Shakti” that sums it up perfectly, “For a postnatal woman, the experience of transformation is direct, bloody and embodied. Whatever kind of birth a woman experiences, the transition from being pregnant to being a mother is an immense and rapid transformation at every dimension of being from the visceral to the spiritual. At a physical level the body changes overnight from a living embodiment of ripe fullness into an empty and often damaged and exhausted shell.

Even after the most positive birth experience, the postnatal body can be left bleeding, leaking and broken. The shift in hormone levels is like falling off a cliff, or going cold turkey from class-A drugs. From the astonishing experience of peak levels of pregnancy and birth hormones (the feel-good progesterone, oestrogen and endorphins that facilitate the super-human endeavours of late pregnancy and labour, and the massive adrenalin kick that actually births the baby), a postnatal woman encounters a dramatic hormonal drop accompanied by a chaotic vortex of shifting patterns of endocrine activity”.

Fortunately, I was fully supported during this challenging time and my Mum virtually moved in to make sure I wasn’t on my own during the day. This meant that E could continue his life as usual, and while I was initially aggrieved that he didn’t take any time off when I initially came home from hospital, I came to realise that this was his way of coping with the significant shift in our lives. 

This did present issues for us later however as he lacked an understanding of what having a baby at home entailed. By the time he returned home from work all the chores were done, the washing was up to date and dinner was in the oven. This was all my Mum’s doing may I add, she did everything for me, well for us really those first few weeks, because I really didn’t have the energy.

I was so pleased to have the extra help. I sweated so badly at night those first few weeks that the sheets would get wet, which I believe was my body’s way of trying to release the after effects of the drugs from my system, that and the shock on my body of night time waking, so these needed to be washed daily. Plus, there was all the extra baby washing - I couldn’t believe that a baby could create so much washing.

I also hadn’t realised that breastfeeding was a full time occupation and while the opportunity to sit down was appreciated from an energetic perspective, I wasn’t used to it and I often felt that I should be doing something instead.  I watched a lot of television during this time, which was also strange to me and while it was a novelty initially, I soon tired of it. I also used the opportunity to respond to work emails because I couldn’t switch off from this and still felt the pressure to work.

I was desperate to get back on my yoga mat and while I certainly wasn’t able to do this in hospital (what was I thinking?!), I made sure to get on it as soon as I could once I was back at home. Initially I just lay on it and breathed, before incorporating some gentle movement in an effort to relieve the congestion in my digestive system and try and energise my system again.

It wasn’t long though before I was desperate to actively move my body and practice as I had done previously in a yang and active manner.  It didn’t matter to me that I’d just had major abdominal surgery or that I was exhausted from this and from the sleep deprivation, I just wanted some anchoring in my life again and this way of practicing came naturally to me. In my naivety I felt it would benefit me physically and mentally, bring me back to Earth a little.

In hindsight it was silly of me, yet it was also an essential part of my yoga journey and learnings. I eventually came to realise that if anything this approach to practice, especially in the post-natal period, was without doubt creating further energetic imbalance within me and stressing my body and mind, yet I couldn’t see it at the time.  I was desperately clinging on to anything which felt normal, even if it wasn’t actually enhancing my wellbeing.

It’s a lesson we learn. The one about letting go and surrendering.  But here I was with babe in arms and still I wasn’t dancing with the Goddess of the Moon and allowing her energy to flow through me.  I was still taking a masculine approach to yoga and to life, despite absolutely needing the softness and compassion of the feminine at that time and it would take me a few more years to realise this.   

I just found those early weeks so incredibly challenging. I was so ‘gung ho’ about the transition to motherhood and what this would entail. My life for 38 years had been about me, doing what I wanted when I wanted and now it felt like that freedom had been taken away. I loved Elijah of course but I remember at his six week check saying to the doctor that I wasn’t sure how anyone could want more than one, as one was such hard work.

I was very well aware that we still had one blastocyst and three frozen embryos stored at Wessex and I felt this urgency to do something with them. The doctor told me to let that go and just concentrate on Elijah, and she was right. The last few years the focus had primarily been about having a baby and now I had the baby I felt a little directionless and a little thrown off balance because the reality of having a baby was very different to what I had imagined.

So, a little like with my yoga practice, I compounded my exhaustion by doing the things I used to do previously to maintain some sanity when it felt like everything else around me was totally out of control. This meant that five weeks post Caesarean Section I went running. I felt like I needed to get out the house, get into nature, clear my head and feel alive again. On some level I was also trying to run my life forwards.

It was insane now I think back, there I was with milk filled breasts and a tugging scar, running through the lanes, simply because I needed some fresh air, freedom and space to process all that had happened. I would never encourage any other new mother to do this. During the immediate post-natal period, let alone post-surgery, the body needs rest, not to be pushed like this, and a gentle walk would have been more appropriate.

Still, I was listening to my body in other ways. I had been trying to increase my iron levels through my vegetarian diet by eating vast quantities of dried apricots, spinach and dark chocolate, but I didn’t feel like they were having any significant impact. If anything, all the sugar was simply encouraging the growth of candida and creating a greater imbalance in my gut flora, which was already struggling due to the antibiotics and my lowered immune function.

So I finally relented and to my family’s relief I agreed to eat red meat. My Mum made me a Shepherd’s pie as she felt that this would make it easier to eat.  Well I certainly didn’t have any problem eating it.  It was an animalistic experience as I was salivating at the sight and smell of it and I simply couldn’t get enough of it and ate it with such vigour that E was astounded as he’d never seen me eat meat previously.

It was an empowering experience because for once I was truly listening to and honouring the needs of my body in a way that I hadn’t done previously.  It wasn’t easy though and I had to dig deep to make peace with this on a soul level – I feel strongly about animal welfare and killing animals for our pleasure, so it helped to see it as a short-term medicine. It worked and I’m very grateful to the animals who helped me to heal.   It took a few months but my iron levels increased and I reached a point where I no longer needed to eat meat and I returned to my vegetarian diet.

Six week’s post-surgery, I had a check-up with the specialist and by then my scar had healed. I could still feel it when running, but I wasn’t aware of it other than that. The vaginal bleeding had also stopped and I was finally able to drive again. I was also well enough now to be left on my own again and I relished this. I was still extremely exhausted though, the sleep deprivation was beginning to take its toll and little did I realise at that time that this would go on for many years!

I was still feeling pretty overwhelmed however and there were lots of tears and moments of frustration. It just took so long to do anything, to get Elijah changed and ready to leave the house, and then inevitably we’d need to have another nappy change and that would add on another ten minutes, so we were always running late. I was beginning to anger quickly too, a combination of the sleep deprivation and the tiredness and I blamed the Caesarean section for all of this – this wasn’t how it was meant to be!

And I think that’s the trouble. One of the five Reiki principles reads, “Just for now, do not anger”, because anger is often a waste of energy and can create disharmony if expressed inappropriately. It often arises because our expectations are not met, so the principle asks us, just for today to let go of expectation. But here I was full of expectation – expectation of birth, of motherhood, of having a baby, of what E should or shouldn’t do to help, and my expectations were not being met. It was a rocky road over those next few months.

It actually took me a few years to heal from this birth experience and the shock of the transition to motherhood. I couldn’t understand the reason any woman would elect to have a Caesarean section or have another baby, and I had increased compassion and respect for all mothers. My healing and spiritual journey would help me to finally come to terms with this experience, for what I would later discover is that what you resist persists…and the Goddess of the Moon was still waiting for me to dance with her.

Part 17 - The Caesarean Birth

There’s no denying the fact that I was nothing short of terrified as we arrived at the hospital that gloomy November morning for the birth of our baby.

I’d barely slept the night before and while I’d managed my much needed early morning yoga practice, no amount of conscious breathing was really going to ease the edginess I was feeling.

I’d read extensively about ‘birthing without fear’, yet here I was, feeling exactly the opposite, so that I was most definitely going to be birthing with fear.  Not that I felt that I was really going to be doing much birthing; I just had to show up and the birthing bit was going to be done for me.

There was a certain finality to leaving the cottage that morning, as I knew that life would never be the same again. I was excited of course, but also extremely nervous about the unknown and consumed by the anxiety of whether we’d have the chance to witness our baby being born.

We tried to stay jolly during the short drive to the hospital and onwards on the walk up to Loveridge Ward, the maternity unit at the Princess Elizabeth hospital here in Guernsey,  where I’d been born too. As requested we arrived at the ward at 8am, which still seemed ridiculously early, especially as we then spent the next few hours sitting around waiting for something to happen.

I was allocated a bed close to the central nurse’s station, although the curtains were drawn around it so we had some privacy. There was nothing much we could do aside from sit around and wait, me on the bed responding to work emails on my blackberry and E attempting to read a magazine as he sat on a chair beside me drinking tea. I was nil by mouth from midnight and envious because I was desperate for a cup of tea!

It felt that there was an assumption we knew the routine of being here on the ward, but it was all new to us.  We weren’t familiar with the ward, nor the manner in which it was run. And while an initial midwife was allocated to us, she was quickly whisked away to an emergency and replaced with another one instead.

This second midwife had recently moved to Guernsey so we chatted about life on the Island as I was keen to establish a relationship with someone who might be with us during such a life changing event. She ran through the preliminaries for the Caesarean section and handed me a gown which I would need to wear to go down to theatre.

My friend had already warned me about the need to shave the upper part of my pubic hair so I’d done this earlier that morning, saving the midwife a job. However, I hadn’t been warned that painted toenails are not allowed in theatre, so the midwife removed the nail polish for me. I felt a bit awkward her doing it for me, but my bump was so huge it would’ve been tricky trying to do it myself.

We had been allocated a theatre time and were preparing for this, but then there were a couple of emergencies which understandably took precedence over us. It was therefore just a waiting game and yet more sitting around becoming increasingly anxious, and of course hungry.  It also meant yet another change in midwife as the second one was also called away to one of the emergencies.

I was then reminded that what we resist persists, because for weeks I’d been going on and on about the fact that I absolutely didn’t want the one and only male midwife on the ward assigned to me.  In my small minded way of understanding how things were at the time, I had concluded that a male midwife would have zero empathy or indeed awareness of my needs as a woman.

It was inevitable therefore that I was allocated the male midwife, only to discover how very wrong I was! And needless to say I quickly learned that despite my initial resistance, he was everything I needed that morning, a true gift from the angels. He cared, he listened and he laughed helping to keep the energy light. The funny thing was the fact he wasn’t meant to be working that morning and had been called in at the last minute to help out.

The Goddess of the Moon was dancing and for the first time during that pregnancy, I smiled at the manner in which events were unfolding.  I’m pleased the Universe gave me the opportunity to recognise this, and to realise how judgmental I was being despite considering myself an open minded and non-judgemental individual!

It wasn’t long after he was assigned to me that, all of a sudden, they were ready for me in theatre. I had changed into a gown by then and removed my jewellery. I rushed off for yet another pee with my kidneys now definitely in fight or flight mode, before settling myself on the bed again. A porter arrived to wheel me down to theatre, which seemed a bit ridiculous as I could have quite easily walked.

I was upset to leave E and I recall looking back at him as I was wheeled out of the ward and silently praying that he would join me soon. I didn’t like the fact that we were separated at this scary time and I felt sorry for him left on the ward on his own. I was grateful for my male midwife who did his best to keep me humoured during the short journey.

Arriving into the waiting area was terrifying.  While I’ve had surgery previously, I don’t recall being in the theatre environment, so it was all new to me and it felt like entering another world that I knew nothing about. I didn’t recognise anyone, which is unusual here in Guernsey and it felt really busy with the the theatre staff rushing around doing their thing.

A theatre nurse was assigned to me and she checked my name tag and asked me to confirm my name. I was trying to keep it all together, trying to smile and trying to take it all in my stride but it was challenging, my mind was in overdrive concerned about the uncertainty of what lay ahead. My male midwife kept checking I was okay and the theatre nurse asked me questions about yoga to try and keep me calm.

I found it difficult to concentrate though as I had this myriad of ridiculous concerns going around in my head.  Should I still be wearing my pants? No, and the kind nurse helped me to subtly remove these. Would my midwife definitely retrieve my placenta for me? Yes, he was primed with a plastic tub, I didn’t need to worry. Would E be joining me soon? Yes, as soon we were settled in theatre.

I was handed a plastic hat to wear and we joked about this because we were all wearing them and it’s not the most attractive look.  To reduce stomach acids, I was given an antacid to take orally. I wasn’t happy about having to take anything which would impact on the balanced state of my gut, but I was aware that stomach acids can, in very rare cases, leak into a woman’s lungs during a Caesarean section, and the treatment is necessary.

Soon it was time to go into the theatre. It certainly wasn’t the environment I would have chosen for the arrival of my baby into this world.  It was bright, clinical and noisy with the sound of equipment buzzing and the theatre staff busily preparing for the procedure. I was shifted from the ward bed on to the theatre bed, which made me feel awkward as I didn’t like to think that I wasn’t capable of moving myself.  I’ve never been so nervous and fearful.

My memory is a little hazy of the exact course of events but I believe an intravenous line (IV) was placed into a vein on my right hand.  This was used to deliver medications and fluids etc. during the surgery.  It was also there if needed for a blood transfusion and I was reminded that blood was available for me in the theatre if necessary.

An oxygen monitoring device was placed on my finger and a blood pressure cuff was placed on my upper arm to monitor my blood pressure. I can’t recall now whether wires connected to heart-monitoring equipment were attached to my chest, I just remember there being an awful lot of wires and equipment generally.

As soon as I was settled, I was then helped onto my left side so that the anaesthetist could apply the spinal anaesthesia. I was wearing a gown that opened at the back so I felt exposed and vulnerable in front of a whole room of strangers. It was now that I became absolutely consumed by fear, especially that the anaesthetist might not be able to administer the epidural and me then requiring a general anaesthetic.

I was aware I needed to stay still to assist the anaesthetist but I was shaking uncontrollably. It was horrible because I just couldn’t seem to make it stop. A kind nurse held my hand and talked me through some deep breathing to calm me down. I thought it was ironic that I had to be reminded of this, especially being a yoga teacher but regardless, I was grateful for the support.

The focus on the breath made all the difference and I dropped my awareness deep into it, using Ujjayi breath as this calms me down almost instantly. It was a very present moment experience that I can still recall to this day, simply because of the manner in which I was desperate to stop the shaking, and was doing all I could with the breath to stop this.

I don’t remember feeling any pain as the anaesthetist injected into and around the nerves of my spinal column, near the middle to lower back, I was just focused on being as still as possible.  I was aware that once administered the anaesthesia would give a rapid and complete numbing sensation, relaxing all the muscles of the legs and abdomen and preparing me for surgery.

It was the strangest feeling, especially when I had to touch various parts of my body at the anaesthetist’s request to check whether the spinal had worked. My friend had already warned me about this because she said that while she was touching her own body, it felt like she was touching chicken breasts.

She was right, it felt very odd.  It also felt very odd that I couldn’t move my legs and I wasn’t entirely comfortable about this, as it made me feel a little claustrophobic. Still, this meant that the spinal had worked and with that I felt an incredible sense of relief. My greatest fear had not yet been realised, and hopefully E would soon be able to join me.

I was aware of activity around me. The specialist in his surgeon capacity was busying himself to the lower right of me and the anaesthetist was positioned to my right chest, monitoring the screens.  Soon a screen was placed over my chest so that I couldn’t see what was happening in front of me. My focus however was back towards the door behind me, and I kept crooking my neck around to look out for E who was supposed to be joining me.

A nurse mentioned that they needed to move my legs to enable them to insert a flexible tube, a Foley catheter, into my bladder to drain urine and keep my bladder as empty as possible during the surgery. This was also a strange feeling as I knew my legs were being moved but I couldn’t actually feel them.  Fortunately, I was too distracted by the door behind me to realise that this meant that my vagina was once again on display.

Finally, the door opened and there was E, dressed in his blue theatre attire with the regulation plastic hat on his head.  I could have wept with joy; it was an incredible relief that he was now able to join me. He was a little bit emotional himself at seeing me lying on the bed attached to all the wires and machines and the theatre staff primed for the birth, and quickly held my hand to comfort us both.

My relief was short lived however as I started to feel really sick. It probably didn’t last long as the anaesthetist reacted quickly, but it was long enough to send me into a minor panic. I felt helpless as I was lying on my back, unable to move, and concerned that I was going to vomit. I quickly figured that I could turn my head to the side if necessary so I wouldn’t choke, but nonetheless it was a very scary feeling.

The anaesthetist explained that my blood pressure had dropped and she did what she could to balance the level again and with that the sickness eased. I wasn’t very aware of what else was going on at that stage and I was trying to focus on my breath to steady myself, while gripping E’s hand.

E was standing to my left side and watching the procedure over the screen in front of me.  He later told me that it was incredibly graphic, but fascinating too as he saw the different layers of muscle and fat as the surgeon operated. It wasn’t long before I was told to expect some sensation of tugging and I could certainly feel this but it wasn’t painful.

Shortly after the tugging I heard mention of the need for forceps and went into another minor panic because it hadn’t crossed my mind that forceps would be needed during a Caesarean birth. I expressed my concern to E but he assured me that they were needed and were being used in a gentle manner. I shall never know if this was the case and fortunately I didn’t have a lot of time to reflect on the use of them because moments later the baby was born.

We didn’t know the sex ahead of the birth and we’d asked the specialist that E be the one to determine this. I remember E peering further forward over the screen as the baby was lifted out of me. I was impatient to know the sex and was asking him “is it a boy?” as this is what I had suspected throughout the pregnancy, and him nodding, before verbally confirming, with tears in his eyes, that our baby was a boy.

The name had chosen itself months beforehand. It had jumped out at me in the Baby Naming Book, E had agreed that he liked the name and it just stuck.  It wasn’t a name I would ever have imagined myself choosing, but it fitted very well. Here he was at 11.34am on Tuesday 12 November 2013 thrust up in front of us above the screen for a very quick peak, our new born son, Elijah Iain McInnes.

One of the meanings of the name ‘Elijah’ is ‘miracle’, which seemed appropriate to us as he was certainly our miracle, beating the odds by being conceived on our first attempt at IVF and staying safely in utero to 38.5 weeks despite the placenta previa. The other meaning is strength and power and that seemed appropriate too, he certainly felt strong and powerful, not least to beat the odds but also with all the kicking he’d done in the womb.

We gave him his middle name ‘Iain’ after E’s Dad who had passed away a few years before E and I met. We wanted to include him in Elijah’s life in some way and hoped that by giving him his name, it would connect him somehow.

I have to be honest I can’t remember which came first, my first glimpse of my son lifted up above the screen or hearing his cry. I was told that babies don’t need to cry upon birth, that actually if their birth is peaceful, they need make no noise at all. However, I had also read that a good cry lets a baby test out his/her lungs for the first time.

Before a baby is born, it takes in oxygen through the placenta via the umbilical cord, but the moment the baby leaves the womb, it’s on its own, so to speak. Natural instinct then kicks in and the baby does the only thing it can; it gives a good scream, the lungs fill up with air and for the very first time expand to their full capacity.

Furthermore, the baby’s first cry helps them to get rid of any amniotic residue in the lungs, mouth and nasal passages. This can also be suctioned out by the nursing team if required and everyone depends on that first cry to indicate that the baby is breathing well on its own. Our little boy certainly seemed to have healthy lungs and I welcomed that first cry.

I’m not sure of the exact sequence of events with the cord cutting either. Prior to the birth I had read extensively about the benefit of delayed cord cutting, which include a normal, healthy blood volume for the transition to life outside the womb; and a full count of red blood cells, stem cells and immune cells. For the mother, delayed clamping is said to keep the mother-baby unit intact and can prevent complications with delivering the placenta.

However, as I had placenta previa I had been told that there was no time for delayed cord clamping and with that the loss of all the researched benefits.  I knew this before going into surgery so I had already had time to process this, but it still seemed desperately unfair that my little boy wasn’t going to gain these additional benefits having been plucked from my womb before he was ready.

Still at least E was able to cut the cord. He had been resistant to this initially but now the opportunity presented itself he was more than happy to get involved. It’s often seen as a rite of fatherhood or the first stage of forming a relationship between father and baby and a Portuguese study found that the process aids emotional bonding between father and baby too. Whether it helped or not I’ll never know but I was pleased E was involved in the process.

After the cord was cut and Elijah had had his initial checks, our little miracle was soon brought to me as I lay on the bed while the specialist removed my placenta and stitched me up again. Fortunately, my placenta was retained by my midwife as the wild yogini within me wanted to plant it in the garden to nourish a tree for Elijah – and so the cycle would continue with the tree providing oxygen and nourishing us all that way too.

I’ll never forget seeing Elijah properly as he was placed skin to skin on my left side under my gown. He was wearing a pink and blue knitted hat, and looking so unfamiliar to me. I remember thinking, “This is my son, but I don’t recognise him, I don’t know him and yet he’s come from me”.

I lost all sense of time after this. My blood pressure dropped again and I have no recollection of being moved from the theatre to the post-operative recovery area. E tells me that we were there for a good hour or so as I was stabilised, but to me it felt like minutes.

All I remember is staring at Elijah and having the itchiest nose I had ever experienced. I just couldn’t stop scratching it because the itch just wouldn’t go away. The nurse administered an anti-histamine, which finally relieved it, but by then the damage had been done; I’d scratched my nose red raw and it was scabby for days after.

Once I was stabilised and back in the land of the living, I was wheeled up to the ward, Elijah swaddled and asleep beside me, and E beside us.  We had left the ward separately E and I and here we were returning as a family of three.  It was surreal but extremely exciting, I was now a mother with a healthy baby boy, it was a dream come true!

Part 16 - Preparing for the Birth

We now had a date for the baby’s planned birth, that is, of course, if s/he didn’t arrive earlier, although I was adamant that this wouldn’t happen. I was having a hard enough time accepting that the baby would be born at 38.5 weeks’ gestation, a whole week and a half earlier than the ‘due’ date. I concluded that this ‘early’ delivery would result in the baby having fragile lungs and a dodgy digestive system and with that a week immune system and years of allergies ahead. 

The specialist had tried to allay my fears. He explained that at 37 week’s gestation a pregnancy is considered full-term as the baby’s lungs are understood to be fully developed and the baby’s gut contains meconium – the sticky green substance that forms the baby’s first poo after birth. Furthermore, while the immune system is still developing, the baby is considered to be able to survive perfectly well outside the womb without any need for special care.

That said, he was keen to allow the pregnancy to progress beyond 37 weeks but was trying to balance that up with the risk of me going into early labour and suffering blood loss as a result of the placenta previa. Thus 38.5 weeks seemed a happy medium. Not that I was particularly happy about any of it.

I certainly wasn’t pleased to discover that with my condition there is an increased risk of blood loss during the Caesarean section and with that a potential blood transfusion. It certainly wasn’t ideal and I was upset about the prospect of this. I was keen to provide my own blood in advance in case it was required, but sadly this wasn’t allowed. This frustrated me and I was adamant that I didn’t want to have to take on someone else’s blood and energy and prayed with renewed vigour for a safe delivery.

However, this was compounded a week later when I went to see the anaesthetist. She explained that the Caesarean section would be carried out with spinal anaesthesia, which involves a one-off injection in the lower spine that works quickly and gives sufficient anaesthesia for the whole operation. This would enable me to be conscious during the whole birth and for E to join me in theatre.

However, she did stress that there’s always a risk that the spinal doesn’t take properly and a general anaesthetic would then be required.  If this happened E wouldn’t be allowed into theatre so neither of us would witness the birth. The whole concept of missing the birth filled me with huge fear. I’d known this happen to friends of mine and it had taken them a long time to come to terms with this.

I knew the anaesthetist was under an obligation to inform me of the worst case scenario, but I wish I hadn’t known. It was totally irrational on my part but I couldn’t let this idea of missing the birth go. Not one single thing about the conception or the pregnancy had gone the way I intended and now I just had this horrible feeling that I wouldn’t even get to see the baby arrive Earth side.

And while I knew fear is simply false evidence appearing real, and that I should be transmuting this feeling into love instead, I was well and truly caught up in the negativity of it.  My solar plexus, my navel centre then, was certainly not happy and I could feel it gurgling as the anxiety crept in and the big black hole of despair begin to open up again. My heart didn’t stand a chance in keeping the love alive…the fear had set in.

So I kept busy. Being busy is what I do best, it comes naturally to me. And now I had a good reason to keep busy, as it would distract me from the fear I was feeling. It was good timing really that I got involved in an additional project at work that ensured I was very busy, right up until the end of the pregnancy.

Despite the need to be busy, at 36 weeks I realised that it was time to ease up on teaching yoga and channelling Reiki. I was carrying all out front and and my bump was beginning to get in the way – it was becoming increasingly challenging to demonstrate during yoga classes and the students were concerned of an early delivery in the yoga space! This gave me additional time to focus on the office work instead.

I had decided that I would work right up until the day before the planned birth. My best friend who had birthed four children by then was keen to stress the need for me to take some time out to calm and relax myself ahead of the birth but I was having none of it. I was only able to take 12 weeks’ maternity leave as it was, and I felt that I wanted to save all of that time to spend with the baby, plus I was just far too busy at work to leave any earlier than this.

As it was I didn’t know quite how I was going to get everything finished in time and as only part of my role was being covered in my absence, I was well aware I would need to keep abreast of things during my maternity leave. Knowing when I was likely to have the baby did then have its positives, in so much enabling me to plan and manage my workload.

Looking back, I realise how desperately unprepared I was for the arrival of the baby and how much I was in denial of how my life was about to change. I’d become so wrapped up in the pregnancy and the birth that I hadn’t really thought beyond this. I had overlooked the fact that the pregnancy and indeed the birth were all leading me to the ultimate dream, which had always been to have a baby.    

That’s not to belittle the experience of being pregnant, I loved it! It was insightful and beautiful and I had grown rather attached to my bump. And while the birth was still an unknown quantity to me, I was aware that it can be a hugely empowering and beautiful experience; not only does it mark the transition from maidenhood to motherhood, but it also brings new life into the world. It’s certainly a big deal.

But it had become nothing short of a huge drama in my life, and I was so caught up in it that I couldn’t see the bigger picture. It was the baby that I had spent most of my life dreaming about having. Not the birth. Not the pregnancy. And yet all I’d done for the past eight months was read books on pregnancy and birth and not one single book on babies and how to care for them. We hadn’t even joined the NCT classes.

I was also in complete denial about the manner in which having a baby may possibly change my working life. I just assumed that this would continue as usual.  My parents had already kindly agreed to look after the baby while I was in the office and E would be able to look after him/her while I was teaching yoga and practising Reiki. I just felt that my life would fairly much continue as usual, just with a little bit more organisation!

D-day – or C-day really - loomed ahead of me as I tried to get on top of my workload and do what I could mentally to prepare myself for the birth.  I didn’t feel there was anything to do physically, because it didn’t feel like I was going to be doing much birthing – the baby was going to be birthed for me. That was a strange feeling but by then I’d stopped giving it too much thought. It’s not that I’d accepted my fate, far from it, more so that I tried not to think about it too much.

My home yoga practice was essential at this time, and I made sure to get on my mat every day, as well as attending the weekly pregnancy yoga classes with Anita.  The slow pace of these classes made much more sense to me now.  My energy levels were not what they had been earlier on in the pregnancy and the bump was decidedly large and my back often ached. 

Not only that but I couldn’t get a good night’s sleep on account of all the trips to the toilet and the effort it took to find a comfortable sleeping position propped as I was with a number of pillows. Everyone kept telling me to rest and get as much sleep as I could, which began to annoy me after a while as I found it impossible to do either in this later stage of pregnancy. Still I made the most of the opportunity to soak in a warm lavender infused bath and I tried to get to bed early, even if it was just to read my book.

As C-day quickly approached the frequency of the midwife appointments increased. These were used to check my blood pressure, check for protein in my urine, listen to the baby’s heartbeat, measure the size of my bump (to check baby growing) and check the positioning of the baby – still breech!

Fortunately, I didn’t bleed, which was a relief. That’s not to say I didn’t spend much of the latter part of the pregnancy constantly concerned about bleeding.  Any slight change in sensation of discharge found me dashing to the nearest toilet or to the nearest place I could discretely check whether the discharge was blood.  After the earlier miscarriage scare I was paranoid about blood and the placenta previa merely compounded this.

A few weeks before the planned birth, I was told that I needed to be on the ward by 7am on the morning of the surgery with the surgery itself scheduled for later that morning. It sounds silly but this incensed me.  I didn’t want to be in the hospital any longer than I needed to be and I certainly didn’t want to be getting up for 7am to spend a few hours sitting around in the hospital, getting tired and increasing anxious about the procedure.

I wanted to stay at home until the last moment and have time to practice yoga in an effort to centre and ground myself ahead of this most life changing event. I spoke with my midwife to see if the time could be changed but she was powerless to do anything about it. Before too long the whole ‘time to go to the hospital’ became something of a drama, because it made absolutely no sense to me and it was one thing I felt that I should be able to control, because let’s face it, I couldn’t control anything else about the birth.

I believe it was this that was getting to me. I had lost all control.  The Goddess of the Moon was dancing and I still didn’t know how to dance with her.  I didn’t know how to let go.  I didn’t know how to go with the flow. Because none of this flow was flowing the way I wanted it to.

Fortunately, my lovely doula, Anita, whose services were somewhat limited now by the medicalised nature of the birth, spoke to the Head of Midwifery and negotiated a later arrival time for me. It’s sounds silly, but this made a huge difference to my mental state and while I was still petrified about all the things that could go wrong about the birth itself, at least I had longer that morning at home.

The weekend prior to the birth I tried to prepare myself as best I could, not least in terms of getting in the sea to try and ground myself but also in preparing the cottage for the arrival of the baby and preparing my hospital bag.  A friend who had previously had a number of Caesarean sections helpfully suggested what I may need to help with this post-op in terms of clothing.  I also made sure to stock up on pro-biotics and Arnica.

I was still in some denial about what lay ahead. I had read nothing about Caesarean birth and the implications of this post-partum as I didn’t want to experience any additional fear. And while on the one hand I joked about taking my yoga mat with me into the hospital, I did exactly that because I figured I would be able to practice post op in the time that the baby was sleeping – how I laugh about this now!

I worked in the office until 5.30pm the night before the birth and continued working on my blackberry later into the evening. It felt very surreal, knowing that I wouldn’t be back in the office, well not properly, for 12 weeks and yet mentally still very much in the ‘work’ zone despite knowing I was going to meet my baby the next day. This certainly wasn’t how I imagined birth to be!

Sleep certainly didn’t come easily that evening. I was excited about finally meeting our little bean Earth side, but anxious too about the Caesarean section, and whether I’d be able to breastfeed and the fact our life would never again be the same. Of course I wanted this change, I wouldn’t have chosen to get pregnant otherwise but the enormity of it was desperately challenging and I know E felt it too.

We’d been such free spirits for so much of our lives, more or less able to do what we wanted when we wanted, that we were both concerned in our own ways about how this would be affected with a baby in our lives too. Only time would tell, and for now I was just grateful that I could begin the next day with a short practice on my mat and a moment in the garden in the cool and damp air desperately trying to ground myself.