He didn’t look back. Didn’t turn to look at my face when I spoke to him. He released himself from my arms and charged in. Through the gate, across the playground and into the arms of others, becoming part of a world that is now apart from me. His head bobbed up and down, then disappeared through the door. The moment I had never thought would happen for us came and went, just like that (hopefully with greater success than Sarah Jessica Parker & co’s farewell season).
Our son has started full time preschool and I have been emotional beyond even my wildest emotional belief. For over three years I have been submerged in 24/7 on duty, unexpectedly stay at home motherhood. Satiated, sublimely saturated, sleep deprived, at times simply sinking. From the moment we left University Hospital Lewisham there was no going back: not to my body, my friendships, my relationships, my job, or, as it turns out, even myself.
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that few of us after babyloss, trauma and infertility dare to acknowledge, that a geriatric mum finally in possession of motherhood must be in want of something more. Herself.
I watch David Attenborough’s Parenthood in silent tears and lip curling gratitude I am not an arachnid in Namibia whose spiderlings are devouring her – literally – after her reproductive and maternal service is done. The realities of parenting, spoiler alert, are no different regardless of how a child has been conceived. Ours may have the added layer of (open and honest) donor conception but when you put together rabid sleep deprivation, not knowing what you’re doing, geographical, perhaps emotional distance from grandparents, the motherhood penalty and don’t forget to construct your own village, why are we even surprised at the rates of postnatal depression? Because feeling like you’ve been removed from your body, mind and life by the best person to ever happen to you is basically built in as some grim rite of maternal mental health passage. Because both of you feeling like ships passing in the night, when you’re up every night, several times a night, is about as conducive as a working relationship you’ll get in these parts. Because reassembling yourself personally and professionally after the most sublime bomb has exploded and the backdraft dissipated, in a world where countries and political leaders do not protect children, is the work you are still beyond grateful, indeed privileged, to do.
And as I receive yet another rejection, another ghosting of my book proposal, and ask myself is donor conception too niche? Not commercial enough? Already spoken about and so deemed done by the publishing zeitgeist? Could be written better by someone else with a bigger profile? I also know, thanks to my son going to preschool, the actual truth: a pure, potent feeling of irrefutable knowledge I wish I could impart to all parents-to-be thinking of, possibly agonising over using a donor. As his eyes search out mine at pick up, his head goes up meerkat style and I know in that moment it does not matter one iota whether we share genetics or not. I bend down just as he bolts out of the nursery gate like a dog at the races, champing at the bit to get to me. Our embrace almost takes me off my feet. The emotion is one so exquisite, so unique to us it could never quite be matched by the heights of professional success or the dizzying, intoxicating touch of a lover. It is love of the purest kind.
How could anyone doubt the strength of this bond? How could I ever have felt less than as a mother? How are some in society still judging those who want a family that isn’t delivered by heterosexual sex?
There are so many people here at the school gates. Some are invisible, shimmering, watching from the air. Pumbaa, his half brother. My grandparents. My husband’s grandparents. My best friend. So many invested in the dream and actualisation of this child. I can see in my husband’s face that despite – in spite – of minimal sleep, rapid ageing and a complete withdrawal of time to read, think, and simply be, he would do this all again in a wank bank and intra-muscular shot (or dozens of them). We are collecting once in a lifetime moments with this boy that are coming and going at the rate of knots. I am painfully cognisant of the cyclical nature of time. How our parents must have felt seeing us in this, their September issue. How he may feel in thirty or so years’ time, if this is what he wants and we are fortunate enough to be here to see it.
Autumn has always felt such a deeply sad, hopes hanging milestone in the infertility and baby loss community; the front door pictorial stab in the heart before the intensity of October’s baby loss awareness week and emptiness of November. So used to carrying the chronic emotional, almost metaphysical grief of a decade trying to have a live child I realise, just like that, this chapter of my life is now closed. The page has turned. He is at a pre school with children conceived through many different routes to parenthood. He will grow up knowing other donor-conceived children. It will be part of him, always known. No big deal. In many respects, I now need to stop fighting, striving, campaigning. I can just be and enjoy the beautiful, run of the mill, day to day mundane. It is a strange, almost wild thought to have such luxury. I have relationships to rebuild, a new job to find, a literary agent to strive for, a new person – me – to discover. Again.
Despite being my son’s primary carer day in, night out, doing the housework, laundry, life admin, renovation project management, pick ups, drop offs, and octogenarian cat care, despite saying to others that they are the lynchpin of their families in doing any and all of the above, I am ashamed to feel that in leaving work unexpectedly and becoming a stay at home parent I have not practised what I preached. I have not valued my own, sometimes isolating, hugely privileged labour in the home. I feel less than not earning my own money, not contributing financially, not having a place in the workplace. This says so much about growing up in the nineties and noughties bullshit media frenzy of women having it all, the relentless economically emosh juggle of bringing up children, what society still thinks about the value of motherhood, care, and carers, and quite honestly? It says a lot about the cult of productivity, the pressure to produce, the desire to hustle, even on maternity leave. The creativity that can spark when you’re keeping another little human alive. It says a lot about, perhaps, women like me.
Nothing else matters when that little hand is in mine.
We walk back through the pre school gate, then the main school gate. Our fingers lock tightly, anchoring one another. My steps may be on the pavement, but my mind is walking elsewhere. Through those double locked doors in neo-natal intensive care, stopping each time to shakily wash my hands. The entrance to Lewisham maternity ward as his proud daddy carried him out in his car seat. The door of his old nursery, where the staff were my saviours and the building my emotional support sanctuary. We pick up speed, together, towards the train station. One day there will be a door he will walk through on his own and won’t come back.
“Seriously,” says another mum, after I share the headlines of how we’ve got to these school gates. “I think after all this shit you need at least five years off.”
I haven’t got five years I laugh, thinking. I’m on the rise to perimenopause. Our cat’s retirement years to momage. I’ve got dreams to dream, eye cream to buy, and our boy to raise.
Maybehood x
maybehood.com 