I Was Jealous

I must have seen about a hundred blog posts, articles and images about Kate and her newborn baby glow. I didn’t expect to be one of the ones writing about it because I’ll be honest I’m not really bothered about the royals. I’m not against them I’m just not interested.

Yet on Saturday when I called over to my parents house around 6pm and saw they had the TV left on a channel which was live streaming from outside of the hospital and I got a little sucked in ..to the drama of it all..the excitement of a new baby ..princess or not.

When they walked out of the door beaming and happy I felt a tear well up in the corner of my eye. I saw a healthy, beautiful little girl and a beaming….glowing mum.

I don’t care what or who she wore, how much make up she had on or how long it took to get those silken tresses just so. I saw the light in her eyes, the special warmth in her smile.

I felt jealous.

Not because I want another baby. No. If I’m honest with you as much as I love a newborn baby squeeze I really do not want another child nor do I think I could cope with another pregnancy.

I was jealous because I knew no matter how much make up I had on or if I had all the money in the world to buy a flattering dress that I still wouldn’t have had that glow in my eyes or that smile of pure happiness.

I was happy, I was thrilled that my baby had been born safely. That she was ok. That we had somehow made it to the end of a pregnancy fraught with worry and the threat of something going wrong. Not just the end but two weeks overdue!

My eyes were swollen and bloodshot from 3 days of crying before I gave birth, my smile contained love but it contained sadness too. Sad because hours before during labour I was convinced something would be wrong with my baby, they contained fear because I was sure that I was going to die.

Immediately after giving birth, things weren’t so bad, I was in love with our baby and overjoyed ( even if you can’t see it ) that she was here and healthy.

It was later that it got worse.

I was lonely because 4 hours after our baby arrived I was left alone, on an empty and dark ward. My partner wasn’t allowed to stay and nobody joined my ward until the following morning. I had a severe tear and pain which made it difficult to move and tend to my child. So I sat up and held her quietly in my arms and I cried.

At 4am that morning I wrote in the notes on my phone that it had been the most traumatic day of my life. I still thought it was normal to feel like this. I had just given birth after all. I had had a difficult pregnancy.

It wasn’t normal and what I was experiencing was a result of birth trauma.

One of those things you don’t really know much about until you experience it.

You can read more about birth trauma here and here.

18 months on.. I’m still dealing with it. It’s hard and even when I think I’m getting over it I have days like Saturday where I watch another person with a baby and there tucked away in my happiness for them I see a sliver of jealousy that they had their happy day and I didn’t.

I’m thrilled that the Princess is here and that from all we know the Duchess had a normal delivery. I wouldn’t wish birth trauma on anyone.

Forget what she wore or how she managed to stand in her heels. Let’s celebrate that she did what she did. That the princess is healthy and that from what we can see they are all happy. It’s more important that anything else that happened on that day.