You will always be my babies….

Admit it? I can’t be the only one. I’ve selfishly babied my youngest daughter.

She’s the youngest of four, and I don’t love her any more than I love my other children, but I’m selfishly clinging on to her infantile ways and babyish demands for my own selfish needs and my maternal desires to needed, to nurture, to love, hold and cherish this beautiful little human that I grew and gave life to before she doesn’t need or want me anymore.

What’s ever more significant is that she’s my last child, I don’t intend to churn out another addition to the Harris army any time soon, in fact EVER. I’m done.

With my eldest daughter I wished her milestones away because I was overwhelmed and excited by becoming a new parent in a naive, first time mum kind of way, I couldn’t wait for her to start teething, crawling, talking, walking, start preschool, then school, dance at a ballet, and after the loss of Louis and Corey, her premature brothers before her. I was really just excited, pleased and utterly relieved that she had safely arrived and was here! I was elated she was healthy and alive and I was subconsciously and unhealthily stifling all of my grief by busying myself making plans for her and her future!

My son came along 18 months later and it was a similar affair, but for very different reasons, he was difficult, poorly, needy and relentlessly grumpy, cried continually, and it wasn’t easy being a mum to newborn and a toddler, it wasn’t easy being an exhausted mum, with tits that had been tortured within an inch of their ‘breast-life’, nipples resembling a chewed up and regurgitated ‘sugarpuff’ but on a much larger scale. I was exhausted and I wished the months away for my own sanity, I wished the months past so I could sleep and regain clarity and most importantly allow my tits time to heal and my fanny to forget the brutal and rather barbaric battle it had and lost with a pair of gigantic forceps, the type I had only ever seen being used by a James Herriot on cattle!

I wished for the serenity that you see in all the ‘mum and baby magazines’, a new mum, looking calm and naturally glowing, holding and feeding her porcelain skinned, perfect baby that is equally as calm and feeding contently from her pert, full breasts! I sensibly and quickly realised that; that, was a load of amazing photography coupled with careful editing and some money hungry magazines deluded perception of what they think, WE want to SEE – basically in laments terms a load of F**KING PHOTOSHOPPED BOLLOCKS AND LIES, and went back to wishing the days past as quickly as possible.

I couldn’t ever imagine doing this parenting thing again, but then the unthinkable happened, my son, became fun, funny, charismatic, gorgeous and he actually liked sleeping, he was everything I imagined him to be, after almost 10 months of hell – I was finally enjoying every second, my eldest daughter was thriving. I was f**king nailing this motherhood shit!!!

Along came Isla; and raising Isla, my second daughter and third live child, one day I should write a book called….’Raising Isla’, because from the moment she was born she was ridiculously advanced, headstrong, and exhumed confidence; even as a newborn, I mean don’t ask me to describe how a new born baby can be confident, but she really was, from how she found her routine, how she breast fed from the second she was born like she just knew what to do from the off, I’m also pretty sure she purposely catapulted herself out of my womb and down my skin chimney faster than the speed of light, not looking back for nanosecond to see the destruction she left behind, she’s much the same as a thriving 8 year old! She knew she was cooked enough and she was coming, move out the way I’m coming through, her motto and mantra to this day and she has smiled, stropped and giggled her way from newborn, to toddler, to school girl, and she’s been an independent and feisty little girl ever since the day she was born.

This was unbeknown, both a blessing and a gift given the unknown path ahead, she didn’t need me wishing her milestones away when she was smashing through them all by herself. She was a confident, funny and smart little 18 month old ‘Smiley Isley’

Then Elliot died.

I

Stopped

Parenting.

I

Momentarily

Stopped

Living.

I

Just

Stopped.

Isla was 18 months old, my children’s independence was blessing while I slowly detached myself from life and them! I had stopped wishing for anything other than to go back in time. All this time I’d excitedly wished away and now all I wanted was to go back in time.

The impact Elliot’s death had on me, I’ll never have the right words to relay or describe it well enough for others to understand and I can’t believe I even decided to have another go on the ‘Harris disco stick’ to have another baby after loosing Elliot, however despite the fear, I did, and she is the youngest little girl in our family. She is a prime example of how desire overcomes fear. My desire to have another child versus my fear never to have another or to loose another.

I stopped wishing milestones away, I cherished every memory, I basked in every moment, I held on to the hugs and cuddles just a second longer than I should. I SLOWED DOWN. I appreciated, loved and experienced properly for the first time what being present in the moment really meant, how important and perfect it is, no matter how unimportant and imperfect it actually feels when your in the parental blurs of exhaustion with a sore fanny and swollen ‘sugar-puff tits’!

Circumstance changed me as a person.

Circumstance effected how I parented.

Circumstance then made me appreciate what I have as-well as a what I had lost.

And the reality is that no matter how old they become, they will always be my babies, and I won’t ever stop trying to keep them present in ‘their’ moment of adolescence, innocence and infantility because let’s face it … your a long time a grown up!

So cuddle your babies a little longer tonight and take a moment to reflect on how fucking amazing this circle of life is, and how lucky we are to have and hold our children when so many don’t even get the opportunity.

To my babies,

You ALL, will always be my babies.

The end!