My last planned c-section happened on a Monday, which meant my husband and I had one final weekend together before meeting our daughter. We filled it with ‘grown up’ activities that we suspected would be difficult with a baby – a bougie brunch in Peckham, poking through a bookshop in Brixton, going to the cinema to see a very slow-moving, relationship-based film (it was called Ordinary Love and I adored it, while my husband thought it was Liam Neeson’s dullest work).
That Sunday night, we shared a massive, slightly burnt oven pizza – the last thing I’d be able to eat pre-surgery – which I still have a photo of on my phone because it felt like such a momentous occasion. I mean…
In many ways, the weekend was very low key – exactly like many of the weekends we’d had before. But those couple of days stick firmly in my mind, because we knew we were on the brink of life’s pieces getting shaken round and tipped out like Duplo. Unlike most people who go into spontaneous labour, the planned caesarean aspect meant we were very aware that it was our final weekend as a two.
Fast-forward nearly four years, and I have my second c-section booked in – again on a Monday. Life has been so busy lately that I hadn’t thought too much about this, until I was looking at my diary and it suddenly dawned on me that there would be such a thing as ‘our last weekend as a three’.
Even typing that makes me tear up a bit. It might sound silly (and hormones are definitely at play), but an emotional torrent threatens whenever I consider how our family shape is about to be reformed - no longer a triangle where all the love and attention is poured into one child. It’s not so much guilt, because I hope that ultimately it will be beneficial for my little girl to have a sibling. Perhaps it’s more the sense of time passing that makes my throat tighten. It’s a reminder that my first baby is certainly no longer a baby, and an acknowledgement that a particularly special chapter of my life – the one where we were a trio – is about to close.
The fact that the last four years haven’t exactly been straightforward makes this all feel more poignant. There’s been colic, covid, my personal postnatal crash, job changes for both my husband and I, and many, many tantrums (not just confined to my daughter). But we’ve survived them as a little unit, and I can say hand on heart that I never feel luckier than when my husband and I walk along holding hands with our daughter, swinging her in the middle while she jabbers about conkers and unicorns.
Every instalment of life comes to close at some point. I remember the tearful signing of the shirts at the end of school; lazing on my college lawn with a fearful excitement about university summer tipping into ‘real life’; even feeling sentimental about moving out of the Clapham flat I shared with two of my best girlfriends for four years (despite the fact it had mice, a never-ending fire alarm beep and sofas that were no bigger than 3 foot by 2 foot). Often I find the anticipation of the end is more heart-wrenching than the reality – when it comes to it you’re normally so busy heaving boxes down the stairs or repacking your hospital bag that you fail to have the full-on emotional breakdown you’re expecting.
As for planning the final weekend before our next big life stage, I imagine we’ll keep it fairly low key. A walk, lunch out, a film on the sofa – in fact, activities that are not a million miles from the stuff we thought we’d ‘never be able to do again’ during that final weekend as a two.
Perhaps there’s a lesson there…
❤️❤️