The Story Behind Mothertelling

I sat with my daughter in the dark Neonatal Intensive Care Unit trying to figure out how I got here.

Motherhood surprised me. At 35 weeks pregnant I sat on my couch at 2am, eating toast, watching Anne on Netflix trying to decide if I should call my midwife or not.

An hour earlier I got up from bed wondering if my water had broken or I had peed myself.

I sat for over an hour waiting for a “sign”. Wondering if I was just making things up.

I called. She asked me to meet her at the hospital. And as we walked in at 4:51am I felt my first cramp.

After being triaged, checked and poked a bunch of times I was told my baby was coming, I was already 6 centimetres dilated.

My first daughter arrived shortly after that exactly a month before her due date. She was big for being a premie and mostly healthy but needing some oxygen. I barely saw her before she was whisked off to the NICU. Me, I was left wondering what just happened and what I was suppose to do next.

I don’t know how much time passed before I asked if I could go and see her. I lifted the receiver off the wall and nearly choked on the word “daughter”, saying it for the first time, asking to come in the locked doors she was behind.

Then when I got to her she was covered in tubes and cables.

“Can I pick her up?” I asked my husband tentatively.

We looked around for a nurse.

“Excuse me” my husband said to the first one that walked by, “she would like to hold her baby”.

“Oh! Of course”, the nurse said.

As she separated my daughter from the machines the computer started beeping.

It was startling and frightening. Sounds and routines we would come to get use to.

I picked her up awkwardly. She was so little. So sweet. From me, of me, my whole heart outside of my body. But for 2 weeks (a short stay, compared to others) I felt judged. I felt not quite good enough. I felt scared. Until one day when I was sitting in the dark plastic like recliner chair with my swollen feet elevated and I checked my phone. I had posted about her birth and my inbox was flooded with messages from mamas.

I found myself reading the messages from the other NICU mamas first. And with each one I felt more seen, heard and understood. They got me. They got what I was going through. They understood that this was not how I thought motherhood would start. That although grateful for the NICU it was not where I wanted to be.

That’s when Mothertelling came to me.

I saw it so clearly. Moms need other moms to share with. We need each other to share our stories so we feel less alone. So, we feel seen, heard and validated in our hardest and most challenging moments.

To see my first Mothertelling story performed on stage, as I launched my vision and business click the video below.