When Instinct Kicks In

Standing, looking through the glass window watching my day-old baby being placed on the xray table, the assistant pulling her legs down to straighten them, her screaming and my partner being tasked with holding them straight was the moment I knew I was really a mother. All I wanted to do was run in there and push them out of the way, scoop up my baby and hold her in my arms. Soothe her. Protect her. Stop her cries.

Never had I felt so helpless and out of control. I wasn't allowed in the xray room, because I’d just had an emergency c-section. It was one of the most horrific experiences of my life. It was like living through a bad dream that I couldn't stop.

Soon enough the experience was over and I got my precious little bundle back. I could hold her tight and comfort her. We were sent back to the maternity ward to await the results of the xrays. And wait we did. At 9.30pm that night, I had just drifted off to sleep and a young doctor came in to tell me that the xray showed nothing about her left knee. He then proceeded to wake her up and check her out. He mumbled something about her hip not being right and left the room swiftly, with nothing else to offer.

Two days later a burly midwife came in and abruptly told me that I was to be down in xray in 10 minutes for baby to have her hip xrayed, otherwise I was spending the weekend in hospital. I was already climbing the walls and wanted out. However we couldn’t leave because the doctors couldn’t figure out what the issue was with baby’s leg.

Somehow I managed to get up and out of bed and shuffle myself along, ignoring the pain to push the crib to the lift, tears streaming down my face. I was on my own as my partner had left to get something to eat. On our way down we ran into my partner and he came with us to repeat experience at all over again. Talk about repetitive nightmares!!!

We were then sent for an ultrasound of her hip which revealed it was dislocated. At last we knew what was going on. What a relief! But it was temporary. The hospital we were in didn’t treat children this small. We were sent back up to the ward and told to put double nappies on her and wait for our next move.

Even though we had an answer, my partner and I were distraught. Would our child ever walk? Would she ever run? How did this happen? Whose fault is it? Why didn’t the young doctor send us for an ultrasound? And so began a vicious cycle of doubt and blame. It didn’t do us an ounce of good. We had to trust that the doctors knew what they were doing and would do their best to remedy the situation.

But the waiting game is the hardest of all games to play. You don’t know what comes next.  You don’t know how long you will be waiting for the answers to appear or if they even will. At some point, there’s a choice to be made about trust. Trust that everything will be okay and things will work out in the end, the way they are meant to.

Quite often when you’re in the heat of the moment, under stress with your adrenal glands in full flight, it can be difficult to focus on anything other than that moment. You get so caught up in all the emotion, you lose sight of the bigger picture. Our baby was healthy. We are not the first parents that this had happened to.

While we were waiting for our answers, we were blessed with the arrival of our midwife from antenatal classes. An angel sent from heaven. She talked to us. She listened to us. She cried with us. She got frustrated with us and went searching for answers. Finally, we had someone on our side, willing to bat for us.

And answers she got. After making several calls we were put on standby for an Angel Care flight to the Royal Children’s Hospital in Brisbane. Somehow we managed to get suitcases packed for us and brought to the hospital ready to go. We waited and waited and waited. It was getting later and later and didn’t look like we were going anywhere that day. Our beautiful midwife came in and told me she was going to discharge me, as nothing would happen over the weekend. We were to come back Monday and she would sort everything out for us.

Leaving the hospital with our bundle of joy was such an elating moment. What an ordeal it had been. Life had been turned upside down over the past few days. We were blessed with our beautiful girl, we just needed to get some answers and they would come in time. At least we could go home to our own home and get settled in, get used to being a family of 3.It was time to take some deep breaths, relax and savour those first precious moments together. We had an obstacle in our way, but it wasn’t stopping us from having our precious girl with us. We learned to be grateful for what we had.

Thinking about this experience now, reminds me of the saying …. “It’s not the hand you are dealt, it’s how you play the cards”. Little did I realise how big an impact this would have over the next few months. 

Journey of a Lifetime

Have you ever planned a holiday to some exotic location? Your tickets are booked. You’re busily reading everything you can get your hands on about your dream destination. You daydream. You fantasize. You imagine what it will be like to be somewhere you’ve never been before – to hear a different language, make an attempt to speak the language, to try different food and to experience a different culture. You’ve talked to your friends who been there before you and gotten their advice about the hot spots, the do’s, the dont’s. You’re pumped. Suitcase is packed. You’ve got your passport, your ticket and your hopes and dreams are pinned on this adventure of a lifetime. You are filled with anticipation, hope, excitement and curiosity.

There are some things in life you just can’t prepare for. It doesn't matter how much you research or how many books you read or how many other people you talk to who have been through the same experience, you just can’t prepare for becoming a mother. You also can’t walk down the street pregnant without a stranger offering some random advice and throwing in their two cents about what’s right and what’s wrong when it comes to motherhood and childbirth.

No two birthing experiences are ever the same. We are all unique as individuals, our bodies built perfectly for us. The birthing manuals can’t possibly cover it all. Well if they did, it would probably be a 24-volume encyclopedia version, and what mum-to-be has time to read that while she’s busy preparing for the arrival of her precious bundle. That same precious bundle that’s destined to turn her life and her world upside down and inside out, and not just during the birthing process, but potentially for the next 18 years or so as the bundle goes through the various stages of development and growth.

No book or conversation I had with anyone around pregnancy, motherhood or giving birth could have possibly prepared me for the experience I encountered when my beautiful girl came into this world 4 years ago. I was ready for her. I had wanted children for a very long time. I had natural maternal instincts. I believed that motherhood was my destiny and my future would see me as a stay-at-home mum raising a brood. My pregnancy was like a dream. No morning sickness for me. Everything was like clockwork, all according to the books and magazines ( the couple that I read) !

I remember at my 37-week check up with my GP, she told me that baby’s head was engaged and we were ready to go. I also remember at my 38-week check up with the new, young obstetrician at the hospital that he had some doubt as to whether or not the head was in fact engaged. At the time I laughed at him, mainly because :

a)      He was young and male

b)      I trusted my female GP implicitly

For whatever reason, he eventually concluded that things were as they should be and sent me home to wait out our impending, and much-anticipated arrival.

So I did. Everything was washed. Everything was set up. Everything was ready to go. All we needed was our baby. At ten past midnight on my due date, my waters broke. Off to the hospital we went. I had no labour pains at this stage and when the nurse checked me out at hospital she was going to send me down to the ward to see if anything was going to happen, except there weren’t any spare beds.  There was however a vacant birthing suite, so off we went to “see what happened”.

At 5.30am, I turned to my partner and told him I was ready to push and to find a midwife, they’d been few and far between. He looked at me like I was some crazy woman, but off he went nonetheless. When he returned with the midwife, she gave me the same crazy look, said she’d check things out to see what was going on.  She confirmed that I was indeed ready to push.

Nothing I had read, heard or talked about prepared me for what was to come. After some pushing it was confirmed that my baby was in the breech position. I was offered a c-section or to keep pushing to have a natural birth. My partner chose the second option, as I’d expressed my beliefs around c-sections. It was only to happen if it became a life or death situation.  
Pushing again and passing the time limit, without a baby, I was told that I hadn’t gotten very far, despite the midwives having convinced me I was about to give birth any minute.

I was whisked down to theatre for an emergency c-section, one leg hanging in the air as I was wheeled through the corridors and into the lift. In theatre, I was awake and conscious of what was going on. I don’t remember much of the actual process. I recall some tugging at my stomach and the doctor pulling our baby out and taking her to the observation table.  A reassuring cry came from our baby. The doctor came over, without telling us if we’d had a boy or girl (we were leaving it as a surprise), to inform us that there was something wrong with the baby’s leg and they’d need to investigate.

In that moment, I told myself that I was a failure. I wasn’t even good enough to get making a child right. I carried that with me for a very long time! It was all my fault. I was a failure. I wasn’t good enough. I was so disappointed in myself and felt like I’d let my partner down. I took that one moment and made it mean the end of the world in my mind. I could have chosen to be grateful for the fact that my child was otherwise healthy and well. After all, all of her limbs were intact and she was perfect in every way.

As humans, we tend to focus on the tiny negative aspect, rather than the more abundant positives that surround us. Focussing on the negative is to our detriment. I didn’t know any better at the time! I do now and so make conscious choices on a daily basis to be grateful, to focus on the positives, to live in the moment and to appreciate the little things. There is no guidebook for life. There is no rule book set in stone. Life is for living. Life is for making mistakes. Life is for breaking and bending the rules. Life is for figuring it out. Life is for making it happen. Lighten up. Live in the moment. Love your life for who you are and the experiences that have shaped the wonderful person you are today.

Reminiscing, Not Returning

I'm sure you've seen or heard this somewhere in the past,  You can't drive to the future using rear view mirror". I agree with it to some degree. From where I stand, it's okay to look back at the past and what happened, it's okay to reflect upon the lessons you learned then, it's okay to pat yourself on the back and say "Hey, look how far I've come. Man I've kicked some great goals and I am glad that I went through XYZ to get to where I am today". That kind of revisiting of the past is healthy, helpful and reassuring.

What's not healthy is when we revisit the past and hang out there. When we take on the emotions, the character we were and the beliefs we had at that time. To give you an insight of what I am talking about, I was recently set a challenge by a mentor to revisit a time in the past that was very defining for me, to write about my experiences and learnings that have helped me to get to the place I am in today. At the time of the experience, I felt helpless, hopeless, lost, dark, heavy, fearful, afraid, like I couldn't do the right thing and had no clue what I was doing. My self esteem was sub zero to say the least.

I will admit, I've been procrastinating ... a LOT. Consciously I know that the past is the past and its over and done. I've had endless flashbacks and memories of what happened during that time. The defining moments have been popping into my head daily and yet I've been struggling to get the thoughts out of my head and down onto paper. I have also been waging a full-scale internal military battle about the fact that I've been set this challenge, have been procrastinating and now two weeks since our meeting, I've not yet gotten anything concrete done. Fear has arrived and unpacked its suitcase, yet again. This time it's different though. This is more a fear around rejection, however that's a story for another time.

On the weekend I had decided that I was going to sit down and make a start on my challenge. I knew what I wanted to write and thought I knew how the words would pan out on the page. I sat in front of my computer and began to call upon the memories and pictures that had formed that particular experience. But then something else happened, I also took on the emotion of the feelings of the time just like putting on an old comfortable jacket. It probably would have been okay if I'd used these emotions to actually write with, but I chose the more commonly-trodden path of throwing myself a pity party!! 

Suddenly, I was right back there and I was that character. My partner called me to ask me to do something for him and he got the girl that was haunted our lives 4 years ago, not the woman I've become today. Then that caused a whole lot of tension between us. It was as if someone had hit the rewind button on our lives. It was scary. I had succumbed to the powerlessness I used to experience.

To be honest it lasted longer than it should have. However, I did pour a glass of ice water on my face to wake up to reality. To reflect that I am no longer that person. I am growing. I am changing. I am evolving. I am learning from the past and the lessons it presented. I am now even more passionate about my challenge, so much so that I am taking the time today to sit and write about my experiences.  

Today, I will choose to take the observation deck to the past. The emotion is still there, the memories will always be there, but I know now that I am merely an observer. The past has no power over me. And if I can help just one other person by sharing my story and my experiences, then I will be a happy woman. If I can help someone else to feel empowered, to see the light when all they can see is dark and to hear that life has a beautiful melody that you control the volume, the tempo and the bass of, I can go to bed at night knowing that I have fulfilled my passion for life. I believe that inside all of us is a story filled with lessons, waiting to be told.

Is Your Language Lighting Up Your World?

We've all got a list of things a mile long of all the shoulds, musts, have-to's, got to's in life. How do you feel when you tell yourself you should exercise, you have to take better care of yourself, you've got to clean the house today? These words lack in energy, passion, enthusiasm. You say them and it creates a resistance to the task at hand. They are otherwise known as  "Modal Operators of Necessity". As a result, you then tend to shy away from the things you know that will benefit you if you did in fact do them.

These words are heavy.Filled with rules. Full of implications and necessity. There are consequences ..... big ones, if you don't do what it is you say you are going to do do! These words are draining. You dread the action that needs to be taken, mainly because of the word/s that have preceded the doing word! The words we choose have more power than we realise!

The words we use are what helps us to create our reality, how we express our selves, how we communicate with ourselves and the outer world. What would happen if you were to get rid of the "shoulds",  "musts",  "have to's"in your life? What are some new words you could begin using instead? As speakers of the English language, there are thousands upon thousands of words at our fingertips, and yet we only use a small percentage. Tony Robbins talks about this his book "Awaken the Giant Within".

There are words we tend to favour and others we don't use at all. We get comfortable with our words. And after awhile, comfortable can get boring! I will always remember my grade 3 teacher telling me the only time he wanted to see the word "nice" was on a biscuit. I still cringe when I hear the word. After all, what is "nice"any way? It lacks depth, description and power. There are plenty of wonderful, descriptive and powerful adjectives out there, look them up in the thesaurus! Challenge yourself to bring a new descriptive word a day into your language. Expansion is growth! Let it be fun.

To bring this together for you, here is a list of words you can replace your "shoulds", "have to's",  "musts", "need to's" and  "got to's":

• I choose to ........
• I want to ......
• I'd like to ......
• I desire .......
• I might ......
• I may ......
• If I wanted to I could ........

Take the earlier phrase of "I have to take better care of myself"and insert one of the suggested replacements, "I'd like to take better care of myself". Doesn't that feel a whole lot better and sound a lot less harsher? You now have options. Maybe you will do it and maybe you won't. Either way, the world will keep turning and life will go on. Tomorrow morning you will wake up again and you get another chance. Take the pressure off yourself, there's so much on you already! Give yourself a break! Be kind to you. The relationship you have with yourself is the benchmark the rest of the world has to know how to treat you. And we all want to be treated with love and respect right?