Raising Wildings

Disclaimer: this is the short version, even though it isn't that short. I could write a book or two on the subject — feeding, weaning, carrying, birth, pregnancy, parenting techniques, emerging personalities, neurodivergences, my mental health and my own self-discovery. This only touches the path I have walked.

I always knew I would be a mother. That was a strange thing, given that I have never really identified as a “girl”. I have struggled with gender identity, fairly quietly, for as long as I can remember, and the words woman, girl, wife, girlfriend, Miss and Mrs still make me cringe. They do not represent me. But mum is somehow different. I use the word parent a lot, and I have no problem at all with being a mama. It is the one place where I can accept my femininity — maybe because it is the one place where I see how much power there is in it.

I always felt at ease around children, and the smaller the better, because there is a serious lack of bullshit there. I understood children, and I never treated them as less than, so I did well with them. I also grew up young and fast, which is why I was still young when I wanted a baby. It felt inevitable. And if it was going to happen, why wait?

In the beginning

I was so excited to get pregnant. We conceived within two weeks, which I had not expected. Before I could even take a test, I was sick. Oh, so sick. I remember the excitement and the sickness with a clarity that makes it feel like yesterday.

The pregnancy was complicated and worrying from the first day and it never improved. It ended with a complicated, fairly traumatic induction a month before my due date, to save my daughter's life. She arrived healthy, luckily, if somewhat tiny and bird-like.

Bean

Breastfeeding was extremely hard at first, but I was determined — bloody-minded, really. I did everything I could and it worked in those early days, against the odds. We doted on our tiny baby. Sleep was impossible and we coped. She, our little human Bean, was everything and more. We listened to the experts and followed the advice so that we could be the best parents possible. We had our own style, but we did it by the book. I had trained in childcare, we had looked after younger siblings and nieces, and we thought we had it sorted.

She went into her own room at six months. We weaned onto a spoon and purée at sixteen weeks, switching to formula at the same time. We used a Baby Bjorn from early on, facing forwards, until we moved to a backpack carrier. We decided smacking was not for us and went for a heavy praise-based approach, with the naughty step as our defensive technique. We were strict, to make sure we got a respectful child, and we were loving. We struggled with our tempers, and with getting our child to be organised and tidy. In time, the naughty step gave way to reward charts, for a more positive approach.

One thing we always knew was that our Bean was an oddball. She was, and is, a seriously and beautifully unique little thing. Extra sensitive, sometimes not quite on the same planet as everybody else, and she struggled with some basic things. So we loved her harder and stronger and hoped she would learn to love herself. She is getting there.

The surprise chapter

We knew we wanted more. There was no question about it. The only complication was that I was working, through some difficulty, towards my degree for our future, so the timing when pregnancy came was not perfect. Bizzy was determined from the start to exist on her own terms. That has continued.

Halfway through, when I had finished my final exams, I panicked completely at the realisation that I would have to give birth again. I wanted to run, and even I knew that would not help. So I did the only other thing available. I researched.

In 2006 there was no Facebook, only random parenting forums. That is where I came across hypnosis for birth. I was deeply sceptical, and desperate. I bought some CDs with a booklet and thought, what the hell. It led to a birth I could manage, and one where I mostly felt in control. I had to stand up for myself and fight the system to get what I wanted, and it felt good. That experience taught me something I have relied on since: only I know what is best for my family, and the experts do not always have the best answer for me.

Bizzle

My Biz got the worst deal at the start. Our finances meant I had to work from the time she was eight weeks old. We made sure she had good childcare, and I pumped through every break, managing to feed her breastmilk exclusively for twelve months. Honestly, I more or less had to. Bizzle knows exactly what she wants and she gets it. She refused formula every time it was offered to top up my milk, and she screamed blue murder at any child carer she disliked. She has always known her own mind.

We rushed through her early life, with little choice. When she was three, and I was pregnant for the third time, she developed an infection from severe eczema complications and ended up in hospital. Obi and I spent three days there with her, and I realised I was missing too much. I changed as a mother right there, in that hospital.

Planned, calm and free

Our third pregnancy was properly planned, and we even had to wait a few months for it. I am not a patient person. We were both working in the NHS, I got twelve months of maternity leave, and we knew exactly what we were doing. For the first time I felt mature enough to do this “right”.

Having had a better birth with Biz, and having done it my way, I wanted to know more. I read a stack of birth books, had a hypnobirthing practitioner run a private course with us, and ended up on forums where people were talking not only about birth but about making different parenting choices, using slings I had never heard of rather than the Mothercare ones, and about feeding full term.

I wrote the birth plan of my dreams, fought tooth and nail against health professionals rolling their eyes, and got myself as calm as I have ever been. My Bear's birth was beautiful. It was powerful and calm, and it made me feel free.

Bear

I birthed him into my own hands and kept him against me for as long as I could. He was born calm and stayed a calm baby. I fed him until he weaned himself, slept beside him, and carried him.

I also cut my corporate work down to part time and started learning about supporting other women through birth, with their babies, and then with parenting more broadly. The idea of ToddlerCalm blew my mind, and our approach to raising children was transformed. Gentle parenting techniques were easier to put in place with him, because we were starting fresh. It took much longer to work out how to do it with children we had begun with quite differently.

As it happens, the universe hands you the skills you need at the moment you need them. Our Bear can only be parented this way. As he grew and things got harder for him, our style kept slipping back into the well-worn path of reward, bribe and threaten. That caused an apocalypse. We felt broken. What he actually needed was a more extreme version of what I now call calmer relationships. He needs to be treated as a completely free human being, not as an owned child.

Lost and broken

From the beginning we had said we would have four. It was always said, never planned. I never thought my Bear would be my last baby, so when the time came that we had previously agreed to try again, I felt lost, because my mental health, always an issue, had become a major issue. I wanted to be ready for a fourth baby and I was not. Obi knew it and so did I, though accepting it was hard. We kept saying not now, and I struggled on. In 2013 I had a fairly serious breakdown, which thankfully led to enormous changes in my life, and I got better. Much better.

Everyone told me not to have another. They said I was fragile, and that I might break. But I knew the way I would definitely break was by not completing our family. I knew it would be hard. I did not realise how hard.

We started trying, and after what felt like a very long time — probably six months — I was pregnant. I found out a few days after agreeing to take over an organisation, a project that was going to be bloody hard work. Six weeks later I miscarried. I felt lost and broken all over again. It felt as though my fourth baby was gone, forfeited for my other dreams. So we dropped the idea entirely, and I worked and worked to save a company that could change the world for my other three.

Utter madness

The universe laughs at people's plans when it has ideas of its own. I took over the business at the end of March and found out I was pregnant again in the middle of May. It seemed like utter madness, but I could no more let go of the new project than of having another baby. Neither was an option. So we chose madness.

As I say, the universe laughs if you think you know what is coming. I was a bit smug. My mental health was sorted, my parenting was sorted, and I knew how to birth perfectly. Yeah, right.

Batty cake

I had the perfect home birth planned, and on paper it looks as though I got it. It was not the calm, positive experience of my previous two. The pregnancy had been beyond hard, and I went into birth, and into life with my little Bat, in an anxious state. Luckily I had the tools and the support. Running a business with a baby while trying to parent the way I do is not easy. I would not recommend it. I would recommend believing you can do anything if you really bloody want to, especially if you have the utterly bloody-minded temperament for it.

I think she knew that to compete with the life we had built, she would have to be a force of nature. She came out angry and ready for a fight, and she is the most determined, demanding and fiercely loving spirit I have ever known. She does not simply hold her own. She leads us all.

Meeting her needs and building my relationship with her has been, and still is, the biggest challenge and the most rewarding experience of my life. She teaches me how to be a better parent every single day.

Raising Wildings?

We are absolutely done having babies. I love them so much it makes my heart burst, and sometimes I want to run away and never come back. It is crushingly hard work.

But I understand, sixteen years into this parenting business, that our children are here to show us the parts of ourselves we need to work out in order to be at peace and live our lives. Most people seem to struggle through blindly. My eyes are finally wide open. In the last eighteen months alone my children have led me to rediscover educational freedom and opened up the whole world of neurodiversity. Without them I would not know who I am now, or what I am capable of. So I take their lessons, expand my knowledge and understanding, and reflect, and raise myself to a higher level. For them, I keep stepping forward, pretending to raise them while really I am raising me, hoping my example shows them what it means to be human. What it means to raise yourself.