Guest Post: The waiting game

Today I am very pleased to welcome the lovely Corinne to my little space on the blogosphere. She normally blogs over at Motherhood Journeys but she is having a battle with technical gremlins at the moment, which means her blog is out of action for now and she needs a space to let off some steam... so I was more than happy to provide a platform for her to do so. 

Corinne was a great support to me earlier this year when we had to make the difficult decision to terminate a pregnancy at 15 weeks, you can read about that here. She helped me through a difficult time and reading her blog and her story gave me strength to make the decisions that were right for us regardless of what others might think. I have been both moved and inspired by her emotional strength during her current pregnancy as that too has not been easy. She is an awesome woman so without further ado over to Corinne:

My blog is playing up and I can't access it, strangely some people can access it and others can't. It's driving me nuts and all the things I'd usually blog about are backing up in my brain and I'm a bit worried about it starting to leak out of my ears... A guest post seemed to be the safest way forward, so thank you Mrs B for letting me post this on your blog.

Of course, now it comes to actually writing my mind has gone a bit blank and I wonder how much whinging I can get away with on someone else's blog? (Answer - as much as you like, Mrs B). If you don't know me or my blog, my name is Corinne (@MotherScuffer on Twitter) and I blog about my life as a Mum to 3 boys. I am currently pregnant with boy number 4 and this is my biggest whinge source at the moment, I usually love being pregnant but I'm struggling this time and would quite like to stop being pregnant soon.

So, here I am at 34 weeks and 5 days pregnant. A combination of pregnancy exhaustion, insomnia and a heart murmur means that I'm pretty much stuck at home bored out of my mind trying to entertain 2 small children who are equally fed up of being stuck indoors with a really dull mummy. I want him out. But I know he's not at term so obviously I don't want him out, but I'd like to fast forward 2 weeks and 2 days and for him to pop out. If I knew he was going to arrive at 37 weeks I'd probably be coping a little bit better, but as all of my boys have arrived 10 days past their due date I know that this little one is more likely to arrive in October instead. October feels a long way off. Oh, I know in the big scheme of things it's not that far off, but like I said, I'm whinging.

Then there's the other side of me that remembers that I'm actually going to go through labour and have a baby. This little one has a brain condition called Agenesis of the Corpus Collosum, which basically means the 2 sides of his brain aren't connected and he's likely to have developmental issues. There's also an increased risk of him not being able to breathe after birth so I'm a bit worried about that.

An amazing MRI image of Scuffer Boy Number 4 at 29 weeks

We'll need to stay in hospital for a few days after he's born so he can have checks done, I've never had to stay in before and that feels a bit strange. Gareth (my husband) is due to start a new job in a couple of weeks and we're not sure if he'll get time off when the baby arrives. I don't think he's even told them I'm expecting a baby yet! I'm trying not to think too much about childcare issues and just think we'll sort something out when it comes to it.

Then I remember that I'm going to be bringing an actual newborn baby home. I'm so excited about being able to sleep and walk and breathe that I sort of forget that I'm going to have a baby to look after. I wonder how I'll manage a 4 year old, 2 year old and a baby. Again, I know I will but if I think about it too much I get a bit overwhelemed and have to stick my fingers in my ear and sing "lalalalala" very loudly.

I think what this basically boils down to is that I have too much time on my hands while I am a bit housebound so I am over-thinking everything. This has been a stressful pregnancy with all the extra tests and things, so the main thing for me is wanting to hold my baby boy in my arms and to know that he's OK and he's safe. I'm sure I will look back on this time and forget how hard it was, forget how the time dragged as I waited for him to arrive and then I will turn to my husband and ask "shall we try for another?"

Story of Mum: Making an Exhibition of Yourself

By now you have all realised that I am a completely useless blogger. If you can call someone who blogs once every two months (if that even) a blogger! Well things are going to change from now on because the lovely Pippa at Story of Mum has invited me to be part of Story of Mum: Making an Exhibition of Yourself so I see this as a kick up the bum to get this blog into gear and start getting the ideas and thoughts contained within my trusty notebook and unleashing them into the blogosphere.

As part of this exhibition I have to choose an exhibit by another blogger to share with you all and then add my own piece to this inspiring celebration of motherhood.

Now it's fair to say that I got completely lost in all the great posts on the Story of Mum site. I spent several hours reading, listening, watching and crying at the stories, images and love that I found there. There are some incredibly moving videos and funny accounts of motherhood that had me in stitches but in the end there were two pieces I kept coming back to.

My first pick is from Sorayah July (great name for a start) at Totally Teen Mum. Sorayah's positive and determined words and defiant yet happy expression in her 'I'm a Mum and...' photo really caught my attention. I can't imagine how my life would have been had I become a mother as a teenager but I would like to think that if I had I would have had Sorayah's strength and emotional maturity to hold my head up high and be proud.

Here's a paragraph from her post:

"...I was proud. I am proud; I just wish that I had enjoyed motherhood properly from the start.

This is why I was so saddened by @CandiesOrg’s #NoTeenPreg campaign. They are using tactics that will make other young mothers feel ashamed of what should be the most joyful experience possible. Why should a mother not enjoy parenthood just because of her age? Young women and teenagers have been having children since man begun, why has it been made so taboo today?"

And here is her contribution to the Story of Mum exhibition

My second pick is from Ben at Mutterings of a Fool. Yes I know he isn't a mum but he is a parent and a husband. I follow Ben on Twitter and have had many conversations with him over the last few months. I am a regular reader of his blog which I thoroughly enjoy. I picked his poem because without my husband Ingo and his love and support I wouldn't be the mother I am to our daughter. Through the dark nights and crazy fog of early parenthood we held each other up, we shared the fear, the joy, the journey into the unknown. All to often the affect parenthood has on dads is underestimated  as all the focus is on the baby and then the mother... Ben's words are a beautiful tribute not just to his wife but to him as a father as well.

Mum.  Mother. Mummy.

Many names but the same meaning, a loss of identify, of personality.

But deep down it’s still there, a glimmer every so often of a life that seems so long ago.

The tidal wave of parenthood takes over, washes you out, strips you down.

But you don’t panic, you stay calm, fight the urge to scream. Mostly.

One day you decide enough, you take control, you restore the balance.

The same person, but different, that smile returns. A glint in your eye.

A reminder of where it began. This adventure we embarked on together.

My best friend, cake baker extraordinaire, owner of the best smile in the west, red wine lover, Peanut M&M addict.

Oh and greatest mum in the world. 

So now for my turn. And I am stuck, totally stuck, Despite all the inspiration on the site I am stumped. How can I put into words or images how I feel about being a mother? I want my contribution to be good, to be worthy of how much I love being a mother, worthy of the love I feel for my beautiful daughter and all she has taught me. So I have to think about it some more, because that's me nowadays, there's no point stressing out that I haven't created something just yet as it will come to me I know it will. I want to make a little video, I want to create a Muma Mash-up, yes and I want to do the others too. I am starting simple and then perhaps I will get round to doing the other things as well, from small seeds and all that.

So to end this post and begin my own Story of Mum journey I am going to share with you my contribution to the Join Our Mums' Poem because it is simple and small yet together with the contribution from other mothers it is strong and powerful. It's this feeling of shared motherhood and experience that I felt during the birth of my daughter. I imagined millennia of women around me, supporting me as I brought my daughter into the world. It was an incredibly powerful feeling and one that I carry with me everyday.

I was the kind of child that always coloured in really neatly, never going over the edges, a perfectionist. Perfectionism followed me into adulthood, sometimes to the point that it was crippling and I wouldn't start something for fear of failure. Then I became a mother and I started to accept that it is okay not to be perfect all the time, because what does perfect really mean? So here are my words and a little image by me and Leelah for the Join Our Mums' Poem...

Perfectly imperfect

I don't know how long it is going to take me to get my other exhibits up on the Story of Mum site but I will. It just might be a while. I am not perfect... but that's okay.