Holy cow, kids, Alice turned one year old on Sunday. I’ve had a few days to get used to the idea but it still makes me shake my head in disbelief.
The Friday before is when the reminiscing started – A whole year ago that day was when I went for a long, lovely swim in the thermo-pool with my mum, lifeguards looking anxious as I floated on my back with my enormous, three-day-overdue belly sticking out of the water like an island. It’s actually a wonder I didn’t sink.
I missed my belly on Friday, I have done for a year. And then Alice sings along with a tune on the radio or gives her wooden spoon a nuggle and I get over it.
Saturday was an emotional day of remembering my incredible labour – when I was giggling with contractions in the early hours of the morning and thinking how hilarious it was trying to shave my legs so my midwife wouldn’t have to deal with prickles later (because, of course, my hairy legs would be her biggest concern).
At two in the afternoon I fought back tears at a friend’s house when I realised a year ago at that moment, my midwife told me she could feel the skin on Alice’s head and she was convinced she had hair. I was talking to a friend about Alice’s birthday prep and choked up – she must have thought I was an emotional nut case.
I remembered my exhausted tears at four pm, after 16 hours of labour, made worse by the guilt I felt when I saw how dog-tired Paul was, too.
I remembered, at eight-thirty pm, that it was a year since I rang mum (wringing her hands at home all day, poor thing) to say that we were getting ready to leave for hospital, but we’d still be another half hour so don’t rush. She bet us there by fifteen minutes.
And Sunday, well. We had an amazing day with forty five people filling our living room to help Alice, Paul and I celebrate. The cake was awful. The table wasn’t big enough for the food I had made, let alone what everyone else brought. I forgot to give Alice her afternoon bottle. But we were surrounded by family and friends and there were kids everywhere and it was wonderful. Alice was a social butterfly for the first time in her life and she got spoiled rotten. And when I climbed in to bed that night tired and teary, I was able to remember that year ago that day, Alice took her first breath and took mine away.
The 365 days that have just passed has been the making and breaking of me.
For the first time ever there has been strain on the relationship I have with Alice’s dad, and yet I can say without hesitation I have never loved him more.
I used to happily define myself as a teacher, letting the title speak for itself as a description for what I do as well as who I am. This doesn’t work any more – not because I don’t teach any more, but because my identity has been stripped to its bare bones to become something entirely new. In fact, it’s still in the process of ‘becoming’. But ‘teacher’ is not a big enough title to describe who I am, to sum up my hopes and dreams and motivations and fears and personality and quirks and faults in one, succinct term. ‘Mother’ almost does it, though.
And Alice, oh my god. I don’t even know how to say how incredible it’s been, having a whole year of achievements and cuddles and pure, unadulterated joy provided by just one sweet little person.
With the outside world, I celebrated Alice’s first birthday on Sunday. But just her and me with her dad, too, we’ve celebrated a year long love affair that we all fall deeper in to every day.
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