Intensive care

I've just put my son to bed. 

He said "Mummy, you're the most beautiful girl in the universe." Then continued to tell me that he likes daddy the best. I taste wonder and concern all in a breath.

This is how it has been for me, motherhood. A strange mixture of delight and anguish muddied by an exaggerated oxytocin-style attachment to my first born.

Ours was a tricky beginning. He was 19 days past his estimated due date. I was huge, excited and under pressure, in the end, to give birth. I was induced at home and had a wonderful labour. Seamus got stuck after 24hrs of riding the waves of pain gracefully. My womb was cut and he escaped from my body on the 15th of October 2005 at 10.13hrs. The event proved a little too much for him and he spent the first week of his life in intensive care.

I spent the first week of his life in despair. Separation, pain, war, loss, expressing, support, love and bleak despair were how we spent our first few family days. This set a tone for life to come. 

Seamus never cried as baby. Much because he was with me (after his time away on NICU) for every moment of his life until I went back to work when he was 10 months old 2 days a week. For the first few weeks of his life I carried him around on a pillow, like a Prince. From then on I carried him in a sling. He never left my side. I fed him on demand and gave all of myself to him. Breast feeding healed all our wounds we'd received from the initial separation. Our hearts entwined and we grew in love for each other.  

Seamus' daddy left us last year in October 2008. We were thrown together, Seamus and I back into separation, pain, war, loss, expressing, support and bleak despair. It's not always there on the surface. But it's moments like this when I can see my boy struggles with it all. So I am left with the guilt that I know all mothers feel and that taste in my mouth of wonder and concern. All I have for my son is my love for him - deep, calm, yet intense.

So I stroke his head and say "you know Seamus Daddy and I love you the best and always will, you're a brilliant boy.  

Then I bend forward, kiss his soft cheek and whisper, "I love you Seamus" as slumber engulfs him. Sleep well.

I go to my bed and cry into the pillow. Separation, pain, loss, expressing, support, love, intensive care.