Five years of Him, Five years of Me.

We’ve been celebrating something exciting recently - well, I say exciting, but it’s something that I always find difficult every year when it comes round.

It’s my son’s birthday.

My first son. It’s recently been his fifth birthday, and I don’t know if I’m alone in this, but five feels like a huge milestone. Maybe it’s because it’s halfway to a decade, maybe it’s because he’s of school age now. He’s not a preschooler anymore. He’s officially out of what I see as the baby era and the young child era. I feel like we’ve stepped into a new phase of childhood with him. He’s getting his own life. His own friends that he wants to spend time with.

And it just… it feels different.

Another huge milestone for us is that he had his last breastfeed on his fifth birthday. That’s something we’ve been working up to. We’d been talking about it for months, weeks before, and on the day he enjoyed his last breastfeed. He had as much as he wanted, and then we had a big cuddle and said bye-bye to the milkies. But you know what? He still woke up the next day and asked for it, and I chose to stick firm and say no.

Five years is a long time to breastfeed the same child, and don’t get me wrong, I know that lots and lots of women breastfeed their children for much longer. But for me, five years feels like a nice end, and I’m immensely proud of getting to that milestone. Reaching his fifth birthday feels very special.

What also feels special - but also challenging - is the fact that it’s been five years since his birth.

Five years since I was broken apart and left in the most vulnerable state, and then left with no help to piece myself back together. Just left with a brand-new baby, 23 years old, having had a horrendous birth and being cut open and my baby dragged out of me.

This is not what I had been dreaming about. Nothing in my birth story for my first baby was what I was wishing and hoping and aiming and planning for. And that was always completely disregarded with: “Oh well, at least he’s healthy, he’s here, he’s safe, you’re safe.” And yes, of course all of those things are true, but what about me? You know, what was missing from every conversation was: How do you feel about your birth? How has it left you feeling? And my answer would’ve been: broken. Physically and emotionally. I was physically broken and I was heartbroken.

And even now, five years later, it haunts me. And you know when it’s the hardest? That run-up to the day. The few days before, when I was induced. When even in that moment my gut was telling me, “You don’t want to do this. You don’t need to do this. There is another way.” But I didn’t have the belief to go with it because I trusted all the professionals around me.

Every year, those 3–4 days before his birthday, I relive those days in hospital. Thinking about how disappointed I felt. How this was how my pregnancy was going to end. A glorious, dreamy pregnancy where I’d never felt so much gratitude for my body and so much pleasure in growing life. Because I’m going to be honest - he was unexpected. He was a surprise baby, and when I first fell pregnant I was extremely shocked and angry with myself. But I quickly came to be so grateful for my fertility, for my body. I really enjoyed the pleasure of growing a human being. It was honestly just magical. So for it to end the way it did just felt so unfair, so unjust. And that is something that haunts me, and I think it always will. I don’t think his birthday will ever go by where I don’t feel this way, where I don’t feel that twinge of disappointment and guilt instead of pure excitement, because of the memories it drags up.

I love watching him grow. I love seeing the boy he’s turning out to be. I’m so proud to watch him become independent, have his friends, make friends wherever we go. He’s so kind to his baby brother. He loves deeply - everyone and everything. And I hate that I cannot think about his birthday without the twinges of guilt for feeling like his birth was less than. Guilt around how we spent our first few weeks - me crying, heartbroken, wishing it could’ve been different, not embracing and enjoying my tiny baby. Shame for my body not doing what I’d been told it would do and what I believed it could do. Failure for the same reasons.

My body had failed me - that’s what I truly believed.

But now I’ve had my second baby, and this is the first birthday where I’ve acknowledged this and now I know truly that my body didn’t let me down. I didn’t let myself down. I didn’t fail my baby.

I was failed by the system.

I was swept up in the medicalisation and the iatrogenic harm. I was just one of the traumatic births that happened that day - because let’s be real, it’s one in three, and that number is far too high.

It’s only since having my second that I’ve really dug deep and thought about what went wrong, how it could’ve been different. And believe me, the guilt that came through when I was doing that work - knowing that I could’ve done something different, I could’ve changed it. I could have changed that birth story. And ultimately that is a fact, because I could have simply said no to the induction. It really is that simple. But because I didn’t have the backing of a strong birth team that I trusted, and I hadn’t done the deep work around understanding how birth works, understanding what my options were, questioning everything… I was swept away.

And I trusted the consultant who told me I had two options: be induced at 38 weeks or book a C-section at 39 weeks, simply because my baby was showing on growth scans that he was growing “exponentially.” Now, that is a whole other topic, but I will just quickly say: what a load of rubbish. And how unfair that my baby was taken from my body potentially four weeks earlier than he needed to be, all because an ultrasound image decided he was too big.

Now, I have been a mum for five years. I can’t quite believe it. I can’t quite believe we are five years into this wild ride that is motherhood. And let me tell you - five is so much harder than a newborn. I don’t think I would’ve believed you if you’d told me that five years ago. But especially since having a newborn again - they are so much easier.

I always find birthdays a good time for reflection. Every year I think about these things, and this is really my honest truth. My honest feelings about birth and my birth story - my first birth story. And all of this is to say that his birth… his birth is the fire behind New Beginnings.

His birth is everything that I am fighting for, everything that I believe in. It all comes down to my first birth experience, because no woman should feel how I felt after I had my first baby.

And every woman should feel how I felt after I had my second baby.

Birth can be what you dream of. Birth is yours. You are the expert in your pregnancy and your baby.

So honestly - invest. If you are pregnant right now, it is really all you can do. Invest in being the expert. Ask the questions. Don’t take one simple answer as the gospel truth. Because it sometimes feels like we are fighting to step up against the system that so often knocks us down, makes us feel less than, makes us feel as women that we don’t know what we’re doing or talking about when it comes to our own bodies. Women’s health is seriously undervalued, underfunded, under-researched. So really, it’s up to you. It’s up to you to be the expert. You need to take that power into your own hands and hold it with a strength you’ve never felt before.

And it’s hard to do that on your own. It’s really hard to do that on your own when your hormones are fighting against you, because your hormones don’t do what you expect when you’re pregnant - they’re not doing what you’re used to pre-pregnancy. So choosing the right doula for you can be birth-changing. And even if things don’t go how you’d planned or dreamed, you’ll know that you’ve made the decisions that feel right for you because you’ll have that knowledge and that confidence to ask the questions. And having a doula will offer you the space - a safe space - for you to feel and reflect however you want or need.

So if you’re reading this while pregnant, feeling that familiar knot of fear in your stomach about giving birth, I just want to say this: you are not broken for feeling scared. You are not weak for questioning everything. Birth is big. It’s transformative. It asks a lot of us. But you are allowed to take up space in that process. You are allowed to ask questions, to slow things down, to say no, to say yes, to choose differently, to choose boldly.

Your birth doesn’t have to look like mine for you to learn from my story. Let it remind you that your voice matters. Your instincts matter. Your body is not the enemy - it is powerful, wise, and deserving of respect.

I’m wishing you a birth that leaves you feeling held, heard, and whole. A birth where you walk away thinking, I did that. I really did that. And if fear is sitting beside you right now, I hope courage sits on the other side and reminds you that you are capable of more than you know.

Happy baby growing,

Lucy xxx