I remember walking down the long corridor of our home, as a child, to collect the post from the little wooden letter box stuck to the front door. We lived with my grandparents and so quite often the envelopes would bear their names - my Grandpa’s mostly. The routine in the house was relatively predictable at this time of the morning: Grandma would be sitting up in bed, having some breakfast that had been prepared for her by Grandpa, and he himself would be enjoying cornflakes followed by marmalade on toast - the very same choice faithfully made every day for many decades - at the dining room table. He wore his distinguished pyjamas, dressing gown and slippers; she sat in a handmade floral nighty with a shawl around her shoulders. The image is printed indelibly on my memory, not because it was remarkable but because it was every day.
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When I imagined contributing my own little piece to the ever-popular discourse on births - and I wasn’t sure I would - I didn’t think I would need courage. It’s all too easy for women whose births didn’t quite go ‘to plan’, or who in fact endured something quite traumatic, to feel disempowered to speak about it. Writing a birth story almost seems like an anticlimax, or at best a cathartic exercise that won’t actually inspire anyone else! And so I decided to write up my humble experience for a number of reasons - to describe with words of truth and love a birth that is far from perfect; to encourage all those women who have felt disappointed or upset by their births to still feel capable; and to not - on principle - remain silent because the story isn’t conventionally worthy of admiration.
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