My son on his 5th birthday

BabyMaybe checking in to say happy 5th birthday to my fantastic son.
 
I don’t forget what it took to get here.
 
When they talk about recovering from pregnancy they say “nine months in and nine months out” and I do think it is right that in my case it has been “five years in, five years out”.  We’ve now had him longer than we were waiting for him and it is only around now that the journey is fading and real life has taken over.
 
That said we have been so so lucky and we feel so so lucky.  Our son has been fine and his early years have been thankfully ordinary. 
 
We’re quite happy together as a three.  When we were young and naïve we thought we might have two children and I would have been willing to do IVF again (we do have four frosties in the freezer still) but in my heart I knew from being about 7 weeks pregnant that I could never willingly put myself through that again.  And it only got worse… from sickness to seizures and six weeks in hospital.  Pregnancy took me apart and put me back together in a different order.  It was truly awful.  So one and I’m done.
 
I found it hard to gel with other new parents.  The people I met through NCT and baby groups just didn’t ‘get’ what we’d been through and we didn’t have a lot in common at a time when shared experience is what bonds you.  But the people we met in NICU had a far far worse time than us so we didn’t really fit in with them either as we sailed through our uneventful few weeks there.  I also hated meeting up with new people and their babies, and noticing that everyone was talking but nobody was listening.  Eventually I stopped bothering going and was much happier – I felt less isolated on my own than I did in those groups.  But as he and his peers get older and need less constant supervision it has become easier to chat properly with the grownups and I’m making a few parent friends now. Some of our existing friends have kids and it is interesting to see how we approach parenting differently (mainly) or sometimes the same.  In some cases being parents together has rekindled old friendships.  My friends who don’t have kids have largely been difficult to fit into our new lifestyle although to be fair they have waited for me and welcomed me back when I’ve been ready to fit back in with them.  But two of my friends have really stepped up and I love them for that.  R has made a huge effort to get to know my son and include him in things, and A has been a solid support and a judgement free ear, both going out of their way to work around our changing circumstances and being really considerate about what we might need at any given time.  I’m so grateful to those two.
 
I’m still self employed and have been working part time around childcare.  I took ten months off then we’ve had a very flexible childminder and then pre-school nursery.  I’ve been able to keep his hours quite short whilst maintaining my business.  That has worked out brilliantly, actually my business has gone from strength to strength.  Honestly, I’d have preferred to work a bit more and I’ve been pretty grumpy about ‘the patriarchy’ and ‘the system’ ‘forcing’ me into the woman’s role at times but this arrangement has made sense and I do know I have it A LOT better than most.
 
It turns out I’ve had a real vision for how I wanted to parent and I’m pleased with how we’ve seen it through.  I suppose we had a long time to think about how we would be / wouldn’t be and what a responsibility parenthood is, and I know that we genuinely appreciate having the opportunity to do this.
 
We’re doing our best to parent the child we’ve got.  To give him our time and our respect and encouraging him to be himself.  It is so fascinating to see how he is the same as us and also how he is different to us.  He is mainly different to us!
 
He’s a character!  He’s chatty and funny and wants to be part of everything.  He loves super heroes and ninjas and Lego and animals and nature and dinosaurs and vehicles and books.  He’s been ridiculously active and a bit of a problem-solver from early on.  He would climb on everything.  He learnt to open his bedroom windows and get past the child safety locks on cupboards and unlock the front door when he was really small so we’ve always had to helicopter parent him a bit. He’s boisterous and exhausting and didn’t sleep through the night until he was three!
 
He’s so sporty (where did that come from?) and could ride a bike with no stabilizers aged 3 and a half.  While his peers are getting their first bikes, at age 4 he’s already moved up to his next one with 20 inch wheels and gears.  He’s done RugbyTots since he was 2, and is a real water baby that loves swimming and water slides.
 
He’s also super confident and a natural extravert.  He’ll chat with anyone and everyone and will routinely introduce himself, and me, to strangers at the park or on the bus.  He makes friends wherever he goes.  In a group of kids the leader always knows his name.
 
Both of us parents were academically able but we didn’t want to impose this on him or expect anything of him, particularly given he was a preemie that had developed during the stress of a bereavement, hyperemesis, high blood pressure, and a seizure and then had minimal early opportunities for cuddling / bonding in the NICU and only the very few mils of breastmilk I was able to squeeze out.  But it turns out he’s clever, he had an entrance assessment for P1 and got full marks on everything except handwriting.  He got full marks in one area that the teacher said she would only expect a handful of kids to get right, and full marks in another area that the teacher said she only sees a kid get right every few years, and he took an unusually sophisticated approach to solving something else.  At this point we’re mainly relieved that his early experiences have not held him back.
 
He will start school in August at the same place he has been attending pre-school nursery and he’s very excited about that.
 
I’ll probably cry on his first day of school.  That first day of school photo standing at the door with his silly big blazer and enormous school bag is something we never thought we could have.  I can’t wait!
 
My fantastic son is five today and it feels like a milestone, and a time to reflect.