smell | Yummy Mummy's Blog

In my heart I’ve been a mum since August 2012 but in reality I’ve been a mum since November 2013.

If you’ve read my previous blog posts you will have seen that I first became pregnant in August 2012 but suffered a Molar Pregnancy and then fell pregnant again in January 2013 but suffered a Miscarriage. I then became pregnant in May 2013 before giving birth to my first son Jack in November 2013, 10 weeks and 2 days early, quickly followed by Mikey who was born 5 weeks early in October 2014.

Since becoming a mother, one thing that occurred to me pretty quickly was that you can’t plan, I mean you can but don’t expect things to go the way you had thought. I wanted that beautiful One Born Every Minute moment where I delivered my son with no pain relief and had him on my chest immediately after birth, he’d automatically breast feed, then we’d go home the next day with no glitches. Well with my first he was whisked off to NICU without a glimpse of his face, he never latched because of his prematurity and we spent six weeks ‘rooming in’ on NICU, my second was Breach so I needed a C-section, it took him 14 weeks to Exclusively Breast Feed and we went home after 2 days. I wouldn’t change my experiences for the world, they are the reason I love my children as much as I do, but they are worlds apart from what I had planned.

The next realisation was that the people that rubbed my bump, waited patiently for a kick and promised me babysitting, gifts and help for when the baby was born were nowhere to be seen. It’s not their fault, people just have a habit of disappearing once your baby is born, you see for those who don’t have children they still have the luxury of sleeping in, doing their make up, toileting alone and eating their food warm. They soon realise after your baby is born that they aren’t mother Theresa and this isn’t their baby, so they don’t have to feel responsible and trust me…they don’t!

My house my beautiful house, I pictured a light filled nursery, a special corner in the kitchen for baby food and bottles, carefully stacked toys in the corner of the living room and the sweet smell of a newborn’s head upon entry, but do you know what I got? The ‘nursery’ is our dumping ground for anything that gets in the way, the baby sleeps in our room always has, the ‘nursery’…it stopped being a ‘nursery’ the day our baby came home, baby food and bottle are scattered around the kitchen, the baby bag, the bedroom and most probably the car. The carefully stacked toys (that aren’t half as exciting as mummy’s slipper) are scattered around the house, you are lucky if you can see the colour of my carpet, and that sweet smell…if you want the aroma of new baby, you’d need to bath my baby, put lotion on and sniff before he poops in his fresh nappy, my house smells like baby sick, baby poop and sour milk, sorry…it’s not what I planned (but you remember what I said about plans, right?).

The love, it’s not movie love, it isn’t song love, it’s not how you expect it….people will explain it to you, scientists will try to come up with some formula and doctor’s may even try to diagnose it, but you can’t! That love, the love for your child, the love for the person you made, carried and brought into the world, it’s indescribable! The mess, the smell, the heartbreak, the tiredness and the stress, none of it matters, because you love your baby unconditionally, I can’t tell you why but you just do.