Everything has changed. Again.

On a Thursday afternoon in October Georgia Daisy announced herself to the world by flying through her dad’s hands “like a bar of soap” and landing on our bathroom floor. Milk monster, snuggle bunny and a massive set of lungs, she’s been bringing newborn joy and chaos ever since. But I’m in too deep to blog that. 

Instead, I thought I’d share what I felt in the final days of being pregnant with her. You see, I was certain this kid would come a couple of weeks early (that famous mother’s instinct, you know?), so by the time she was a week overdue I’d gone past impatience, through insanity and was emerging somewhere almost spiritual.  

My desperation had multiplied each day I was in sole care of Ruby, who was oblivious to my full term struggle (“Catch me mammy!” “Carry me mammy!” Good God girl, look at me…) By 4pm, feeling guilty for allowing too much telly, I’d fall asleep mid-sentence during stories. Rubes – ever the caring character – would give me a teddy, cover me in a blanket and ‘put me to bed’ on the floor, only to announce “WAKING TIME!” five seconds later. It still gives me the chills.   

The more I wanted this baby out, the more giving birth seemed to elude me. Finally, after trying all the tricks in the book of labour inducing bullshit, I reluctantly concluded that I was not in control. Mother Nature, it seemed, was steering this pregnancy ship and she gave zero shits about sailing past our due date. 

Miraculously, once I resigned myself to the fact that our baby would arrive at the ‘opportune moment’ (as my brother had assured me she would) and not when I wanted her to, I remembered the beauty of this life generation lark. How being on the precipice of doing the biggest thing I’ve ever had to do (again) had a freezing effect on time. Every moment could be The Moment. I was literally pregnant with possibility and I understood – in a way that I hadn’t until then – that everything really was about to change.  

I acknowledged the ridiculousness of my condition while it lasted – the two of us sharing the one body. While I’d been eating, sleeping, working, watching Netflix, raising one kid and complaining about the symptoms of growing another, something altogether more powerful had been equipping our baby with the mechanics to exist in this world. I had the acute sense that Georgia was being propelled into being by the sheer force of life itself and that I was simply a conduit for the process. 

For fear of forgetting it in the years ahead, I made notes about waiting to undergo the momentous and all-encompassing task of delivering a person to the planet. It occurred to me that the enormous sense of anticipation I felt was an amplified example of how we spend much of the rest of our lives: as an existence hinging on the existence of others.  

So that was where my head was at, as new life prepared to manifest itself. And maybe it’s a coincidence that with this newfound calm came – at last! – labour. Or maybe mother nature sensed that now I was really ready for everything to change. Again.  

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Georgia Daisy Hart White – 20 October 2022.