Do you remember the first time you…..

OK I admit it, the title was a cheap shot aimed at hooking you in, but hey I’m new to this blog thingy – so surely I’m allowed a bit of leeway.  The reason for the title will become apparent though, I promise.

Making coffee in the kitchen at work this morning a few of us who have kids were asked by a colleague who is pregnant for a recommendation of a good pregnancy reference book to buy.  Now, as my son is 16 I’m afraid I bailed out on this bit of the conversation but one of the younger mums had some suggestions.  This of course led to a conversation about how helpful these books really are and how of course we really coped.

I can’t recall the books I read, but I do remember flicking through the pages into the delights of what to expect in the trimesters to come, frightening myself silly and worrying about what the hell was going to be happening to my body.  In the end I had a fairly straight forward pregnancy and birth, with only a few minor hiccups along the way – like fainting in the knicker department in Frasers and being helped by two elderly ladies who, interestingly enough, were buying pants that were almost as big as the ones I was now wearing.

What I do remember feeling after Spencer was born was surprise that the hospital staff were actually going to allow me to take this child out of the hospital – it seemed that the charade of a confident, coping mum I projected whenever a nurse appeared was working.  Result!  First hurdle over, or so I thought.

The day to go home duly arrived and as we were actually moving house this day (I know – don’t go there – however do remember in my previous post I talked about divorce – go figure!).  A friend very kindly offered to come and pick Spencer and I up from the hospital and take us home (or rather to a house littered with the contents of a removal van).  I should point out at this stage that my friend had never had kids and of course I was working furiously to pretend that I could do this mum stuff no bother.  When we got to the car we looked at each other realising of course that we had no idea what you were supposed to do to secure a child’s car seat safely in the car.

I know of course this all sounds very ridiculous.  I had just assumed that seatbelts were involved and it couldn’t be that difficult – it was a car seat for goodness sake.  To say that it took us a while was an understatement and worried that the maternity ward staff were perhaps anxiously watching from the hospital window I made my first big decision as a mother – I tied the two seatbelts in the back seat together to secure my son and we drove off.   As the journey went on I had this awful feeling of failure that my son had a mum who couldn’t even work out the car seat stuff – however was he going to survive?

I had many ‘firsts’ like this one as the days and weeks went on, but gradually I figured my way through it.  Maybe I should have paid more attention to the books (or the car seat instructions) but despite the panic, worry and anxiety that went with all these ‘first times’ I experienced in those early days I wouldn’t change it for the world.  Why, because they are now stories that my son laughs at.   “Tell me about the olden days mum” – he used to say when he was little.  These stories are about remembering the first time he smiled, slept through the night, cut a tooth, took his first steps, started school the list is endless.  They are also about all the ‘first times’ I had to cope with being in charge of this wee person.

What I can also remember is the first time I realised I was actually doing this stuff, I was coping and could feel my inner confidence that I was the person this little person needed to be his mum.  I tried so hard from the first moment not to let him down and as he is now 16 I still feel like that.  OK we may still have the equivalent of the ‘tying in the car seat’ moments even now – and I’m sure there will be solutions that I come up with that I will reflect on initially with horror and eventually with laughter.  These will be our stories in the future.

So there are still a few ‘first times’ to come for me as a Mum and I know deep down that there is no book on earth that can help me with that – I guess I’ll just have to rely on experience that my track record has got me this far.