The One Year Mark

Approaching your baby's first birthday is always going to be a big deal. Whether it's your first or fourth child, it's a year ago since your world changed. Another year with that little person to love, and to consume your every thought. So much changes in that first year, it feels quite momentous when you get to the end of it.

But what is it like when that first birthday celebration is also the anniversary of a traumatic experience?

Later this week, Baby T is one year old. Last week marks the anniversary of my waters breaking. I was just (by minutes) 32 weeks pregnant and we were on holiday in Norfolk celebrating my husband's 40th birthday. I'd gone to bed, but couldn't sleep. I felt restless, uncomfortable but put it down to the heat. Then it happened. A pop and a sudden gush. There was no doubt what had happened and I won't lie - I panicked! A complete, wasn't-expecting-this, totally unprepared, what-on-earth are we going to do kind of panic. I don't usually panic, but when I do I tend to do it in style! Aside from the fact it was 8 weeks earlier than we'd anticipated, we were 6 hours away from home, had our other 3 kids with us, as well as the dog - and we needed to be out of the holiday home the next day.

Anyway, to cut a long story short (I'll share the detail of my birth story another time) my labour stalled, and I managed to be transferred back home to Yorkshire where I gave birth a week later, followed by a month long NICU stay. Needless to say I found the whole ordeal hugely traumatic.

So when we reached the beginning of August this year, I knew the one year mark was going to feel a little emotional. I'll be honest, I'm a cry-at-anything person since having kids. First birthdays always get me. I'm not sure what it is. The celebration of a whole year of the most intense love, sweat and tears. The end(-ish) of those sweet baby days. The start of a new phase, of life with a toddler. Whatever it is, I always shed a tear or two. It's also a time of reflection; what were we doing this time last year, has the year been what we expected it to be?

But I wasn't expecting the all-consuming, overwhelming wave of emotion that hit me last week, on the anniversary of my PPROM. It seemed to hit me from nowhere. I felt a mix of emotions that I can't even begin to dissect yet. I cried. But not just a few emotional tears. I'm talking about uncontrollable, what-on-earth-is happening-to-me tears that I don't think I've cried since my NICU days. I went to bed early, woke up crying, slept fitfully all night. When I woke up my eyes were puffy and I felt exhausted.

I expected that looking through photos of Baby T's birth would be triggering, but actually I found comfort in revisiting them. Seeing how far we'd come. Looking at his sweet face amongst the wires. On one hand the enormity of what we'd been through hit me all over again, but on the other hand I was able to recognise, for the first time, just how resilient I had been.

But what I hadn't expected was the tears that would fall when I went into the garden and saw that my pregnant neighbour had decided to wash and hang out all her newborn clothes, ready for her baby's arrival. It hit me right in the stomach. I had wanted to do that for Baby T, but I didn't get chance. There were triggers everywhere. I found the heat of last week overbearing - the feel and the smell of it took me right back to those summer days just before my waters broke. Photos I saw of people on their UK holidays at the seaside took me right back to those sunny days on the beach in Norfolk, the holiday that was cut short. The holiday that I spent much of it alone in the labour suite in Kings Lynn hospital.

Throw in Covid and lockdown restrictions and many of my feelings this summer mirror those of last summer. It has felt weirdly similar and horribly triggering.

But I also recognise that part of the overwhelm is a feeling of gratitude. A feeling that I am incredibly lucky to be where I am now. Baby T was long-awaited and I now have all I everything I wanted. It might not have been the journey I wanted, or expected, but we're here, happy and healthy. Covid and lockdown may have added to the challenges of the past 12 months but actually they've also allowed us to spend so much more time together as a family. My eldest three have spent so much more quality time with their baby brother than they ever would have done otherwise. It has been such a blessing to watch.

The initial overwhelm has passed. I followed the advice of one of the NICU nurses and let myself feel whatever it was I was feeling. It felt overwhelming, but then the intensity faded. Who knows what I'll feel later this week on Baby T's birthday. Perhaps there'll be another wave as I recall the trauma of his birth and those first few days in NICU. Perhaps there won't be. Hopefully I'll be able to focus on the celebration rather than the trauma.

But I am now acutely aware that navigating trauma and celebration isn't easy. And I suspect that being aware it may be difficult and going easy on yourself are probably two of the key things to help you get through it. That and a lot of birthday cake!