Lyra - from the Lost Blog

I’m writing this during the last hour of 2018. We’re celebrating New Year in our tradition (est. 2017) of watching cheesy 90’s films, eating tasty trash food and hanging out on some of Cornwall’s finest coastline. If I get this written up in time, we’ll run upstairs and watch the fireworks go off at midnight from our skylight hatch. I don’t mean to brag but the window is my favourite thing about our home – we can see the entire of the bay, Cudden Point and the Lizard Peninsula jutting out. We can see the twinkling lights of Newlyn, boats resting in the bay, the lighthouses at both Penzance quay and Lizard Point as they wink in the night, warning boats of the rocks nearby. Ok, perhaps I’m bragging a little but it’s magnificent and I love looking at the stars and storms from our little hatch and feeling the sea air on my face even when I’m safe and cosy in our bedroom.

I was going to write a birth story post, and then I was going to write a post about the turbulent first few weeks of motherhood and then I was going to write a summary of my year but now I feel that the best thing to do is just condense these things into chapters of one post as we bid goodbye to the passing year.

So here we are, 8 weeks with this wonderful, squishy, honky, snuggly little human in our lives and hearts and to use a cliche, it’s been the longest 8 weeks of my life. It’s most probably hormones that are responsible but I can’t imagine our lives without her now and despite the first two weeks, I spent weeping and mourning my old life, I now can’t even see the point of life without her – it all seemed like things must have been terribly boring and unfulfilling back then even though I was having the time of my life.

These intimate ‘skin to skin’ photographs were taken by Jon when Lyra was just a couple of days old. We brought her home from the hospital after a dramatic and long birth and then after just two days at home we had to go back for nearly a week so she could be treated for jaundice.

Lyra’s Birth

Lyra was due on the 20th of November but after a truly lovely evening spent at Port Elliot estate watching the November 5th Bonfire fireworks, I woke up in the early hours of Tuesday morning with what I was almost certain were contractions. I just ‘didn’t feel right’ – my instincts knew things were happening and at 4 am I was up and feeling very restless. I knew they weren’t frequent enough to worry and it was far too early to call my midwife so I dozed in bed and waited for things to progress. Waiting was the theme of Lyra’s birth…

At 9am I phoned the midwife, she said to time the contractions (which were about 1 every 8 minutes) and said that once they were 3 every 9 minutes I should call again to be examined at our local West Cornwall hospital. The entire day went by with us timing contractions – we managed to watch Lord of the Rings, The Prince of Egypt, have lunch and even danced around the bedroom together doing some ‘interpretive Kate Bush inspired’ dancing in our efforts to get things moving along and pass the time. The dancing part was actually really fun despite having to pause through contractions.

By 5pm, contractions were finally 3 every 9 minutes so I phoned the midwife again and she said the local hospital was off duty now and I should phone Treliske where I would be giving birth. Throughout the pregnancy, I had been super relaxed about childbirth… My mum had birthed me in under 2 hours and my half sister in under an hour so I was feeling pretty relaxed and confident that I was going to have a chilled out, super zen water birth experience with my favourite playlist on in the background, zero drugs and delayed cord clamping followed by a serene skin to skin session. It was a nice idea. Too bad that’s not how it went down.

2 weeks old

At 5pm, the midwife changeover was happening so when I called them up, they said to come on over to the main hospital rather than getting checked out in Penzance – the contractions were getting pretty powerful now and I have strong and fond memories of us bombing up the A30 with Muse’s ‘Black holes and revelations’ playing in the car and wincing through the pain. I fell apart when Starlight came on because that’s our song for Lyra and I remember weeping to myself thinking that in the next few hours I could be holding my little babe in my arms.

We arrived at the hospital and after being examined, it turned out I was only around 3cm dilated despite the frequent contractions and because Penzance is so far from the county hospital, the Midwife didn’t have the heart to send us home again. She got a water birth room ready for us and let us get comfy. We checked in at around 6pm… 13 hours later at 7am in the morning I was still having the contractions and stuck at about 6cm dilated. I hadn’t slept that night and had been in and out of the birth pool constantly. It was the perfect temperature and sooooo cosy and me being in my element had been so relaxed that it almost stopped the contractions altogether so the midwife had to usher me back out to get them going again. This game went on for about 8 hours… and by 7am I was exhausted and starting to fade. I couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep and the midwives were starting to get concerned.

By midday, I was still stuck at 6cm so they decided that I needed to be moved from the cosy and super fancy midwife led birthing centre to the labour ward for more tricky births where drugs may need to be administered. They put me on a hormone drip to induce the contractions and because of my exhaustion, I was given an epidural (something I was adamant I’d never do in a million years) so that I could sleep and sleep I did. It was magnificent. I spent another 9 hours snoozing and hanging out in the bed, chatting to everyone and my friend Holly’s mum (who is the midwife in charge at Treliske) and having a fine old time. Things were pretty nice. By 9.30ish, my midwife Sam said I could start pushing – I couldn’t feel much because the epidural just made everything numb and I couldn’t feel contractions at all. But after some pushing that was going well, little babe was starting to peep out but then changed her mind at the last moment and wiggled back down getting her head caught at an odd angle. We had opted for ECG monitoring incase anything went wrong (this meant a small clip was placed on her head to get an accurate reading of her heart rate) and it was a good thing we did – they detected that her heart rate was rising and she was in distress so in a matter of seconds, a surgeon arrived with an assistant and paediatrician and I was gently informed that they needed to get baby out as soon as possible with assisted delivery. I was pretty zoned out at this point and had little awareness of what was going on, but in the amazing NHS staff did their best work and little Lyra was pulled unwillingly from her cosy little home via forceps. It was quite frightening because when she came out, she wasn’t breathing. She was an awful purple colour and looked like something dead that had been fished out of a lake. She was placed on my chest for only a fraction of a second and whipped away to be resuscitated. It was hard to process what was going on but Jon looked terrified next to me even though he was doing his best to act like everything was fine. After two puffs of the oxygen, Lyra wailed and everything was fine and good in the world. She arrived on the 7th November at 10.01pm after 42 hours of labour.

I didn’t get the ‘beautiful’ and ’empowering’ experience of childbirth that I had envisioned. No amount of being relaxed and reading ‘the positive birth book’ was able to control the experience I had but I don’t feel sorry for myself or ‘cheated’ of a dream labour. Lyra is here, and I felt so well cared for by the midwifery team at Truro and also my sweet husband, Jon. I feel so fortunate to have had access to the NHS and I know that things could have gone so differently had we lived in another country or another time.

Just like the birth, no amount of reading or carefree attitude towards the grievances of sleep deprivation could prepare me for the first few weeks of new motherhood. I’ll be completely honest, I struggled. After we got back from our second stint in the hospital and got back home to our house and our life, it was a huge shock to the system. At the end of the first week, the baby blues hit me hard and I spent about two – three days sobbing and mourning my old life. I mourned the intimate side of my relationship with Jon, I mourned my independence and the freedom to jump in a car and do whatever I wanted when I wanted. I struggled with the sleep deprivation and the heartbreak of her tears, I struggled with the monotonous routine of living between the bed and the sofa and the impact of when Jon’s paternity leave finished and he had to go back to work. It was really really hard. At one point I even questioned whether I was even fit for the parenting role – everyone on instagram seemed to be LOVING life being a mother, they had bonded with their baby instantly and had seemingly been made for this life.

Now of course I loved my baby. I loved her from the beginning but there was no instant feeling of ‘Oh my goodness, here is the meaning of my life – this magical coup de foudre that I would cherish dear in my memory forever. No, the love, the sort of love that meant I would throw myself willingly in front of a car for my child, the sort of love that consumed every part of me and filled me with a high better than any drug came after a few weeks. It came with time, getting to know her, endless cuddles, feeds, stroking her little cotton noggin in reassurance and watching her eyes grow brighter, her body grow stronger and her personality blossom. We’re 8 weeks in now and I adore this life. I can no longer imagine life before Lyra. It seems sepia, odd – empty.

4 weeks old

I love how curious and furiously determined she is. She is incredibly nosy and loves to look around and examine everything in her surroundings. She has strong, bright, curious eyes and has developed some adorable squawks and yells. She smiles at us in the morning when she wakes up to see us there, she’s even let out a few little giggles which I’m pretty sure she’s not meant to do for a while yet and is always trying to lift up her head and body as if to do a push up… far overreaching her newborn status. She’s cuddly and sweet, very calm and relaxed and loves to have her own space sometimes. We are extremely needy parents and want to endlessly cuddle her and sometimes she squawks to be put down which always leaves me feeling slightly offended. We have cycled through several nicknames for her from ‘Tum Goblin’ to ‘Trumpet’ and the current favourite is ‘Hungry Horace’ although we call her Horace so much she’s in danger of actually growing up to think that it’s her name.

The Last Day of 2018

After 27 years of being very underwhelmed and disinterested in babies I am officially now a convert. I love my life with both her and Jon. I’m so excited to witness and experience her as she grows and surprises us, I’m excited for her first dip in the ocean, to take her to the lido in the summertime, to read her bedtime stories and collect acorns in the woods. To take her out for teddybear picnics and watch her become herself and learn who she is. I hope she grows to be kind, above anything else. Kind and happy. Jon is already proving to be an incredible father to her – he’s gentle, sweet, patient and loving. She’s so lucky to have him and I am so proud of who he is and the role model that he is going to be for our little girl. Hufflepuffs make the best dads.

This year has gone simultaneously incredibly quickly and slowly; we have done so much and experienced so much in such a small space of time. Everything we can possibly think of about our lives has changed. This time last year we were celebrating NYE eating Chinese takeaway and watching Jurassic Park in the tiny room we were renting in a cottage in Redruth. We probably chatted about what may happen this year, what our hopes and expectations were and I can’t really remember what those might have been but I remember thinking how 2016 had been a most marvellous year and I wondered aloud how it was going to be a struggle to ‘top that one’. Well… top it we did. 2019 the bar is now real high.

We spent our final day of 2018 reclaiming a little back from our former lives but this time with Lyra’s company. We visited Holywell bay – one of my childhood haunts and an excellent beach for its incredible dunes and iconic rocky islands. We collected shells (this beach has some really magnificent ones!) and watched the detectorists roaming. We then went to Truro for cherry sodas and burgers at Hubbox. We normally visit the St.Ives one and rarely visit the ‘city’ as it’s so far from us but we snagged a table next to the flickering, warm log burner and chatted and ‘hung out’ with Lyra sitting in our laps for ages before heading home via a quick trip to Newlyn to see the twinkly festive lights. We spent the evening watching Indianna Jones and yes, the hour has passed and the view of all the various fireworks displays happening from our little lookout truly was a spectacular and special moment. We could hear the new year cries go up in the town and share in everyones joy and yet our moment was private, cosy and gentle.

I often feel like New Years eve sets the mood for the year to follow. Last year, we began the year with a bracing, moody coastal walk followed by scrumptious food and we ended it that way too. That puts a lot of pressure on tomorrow… especially since it’s now 1 in the morning and at this point I’m wasting valuable sleeping time because I know Lyra will be up in two hours wanting feeding and I’ll feel like trash.

Well 2018, you were swell – we got legally married, the UK became a snowy wonderland for a spell, we found out we were having a baby, travelled to the Isle of Wight and all over the UK for wedding adventures, we went to the Isles of Scilly for my birthday and moved into a beautiful flat together in a quirky town by the sea. We had endless coast walks, coffees in cosy cafes and quality time with friends. We grew as people and bid farewell to our old lives as just two and greeted life as a family of three. It was a really gentle and fulfilling year. I’m curious as to how 2019 is going to top the last… but with Jon and Lyra by my side, I know things are going to be amazing. Those two are my world and I’ve never loved two things more and couldn’t possibly if I tried. They are my best friends, my constant companions. They are my universe.