For the rest of the world tomorrow is New Year’s Eve; the end of one year and a time to celebrate the new. For us of course it’s the same, but it’s also our big girl’s birthday. And tomorrow she turns 7. I know everyone always says it but seriously, where does the time go?
I think back to New Year’s Eve 2009 when I’d been days in labour contracting my way around East London, in and out of shops in the grips of labour as I made the people working on the tills terribly nervous. My Midwife kept telling me to go out and keep moving to try, try, try and get my home birth…
Alas I didn’t get to stay at home but by the time my perfect girl made her appearance, at twenty to midnight with the fireworks just starting to pop and snow falling outside the window, I could have been anywhere in the world and I’d have been happy for she was here.
It was the perfect way to end one year and the most beautiful way to start a new. New Year’s Eve is forever changed, forever more important and forever the perfect date because it’s Florence’s. And tomorrow that baby of mine, the one I willed to be bigger for such a long time so that I’d feel safer knowing she was stronger, more robust… Well, she’s definitely bigger and 7. Wow! A whole SEVEN she will be!
I don’t will her to be bigger these days, I love her growing up and adore that today she wrote, with joined up writing no less, a brilliant story, but… I’m quite happy that she’s still a little girl. And I realise now that it doesn’t matter how big she gets, I will always worry. As a baby I worried when she didn’t sleep and worried more when she did. I would go into her and gently rub her lips until she moved her little rose bud mouth a twitch so that I could see she was fine. I was exhausted with the worrying and thought when she was bigger I’d be less so panicked, far happier to just let the poor thing sleep and not wish to wake her just to satisfy my own neurotic needs…
But…Being a Mummy doesn’t mean you get to stop worrying and nor would I want to. I still touch those little rose bud lips before I go to bed. I still have to see her move a little and feel her brush me away as she turns over, I assume wishing her mother wasn’t quite such a nut! And frankly, even at seven year’s old (which is really quite little and also really quite big) I don’t see that changing…
So… Big day for our family tomorrow because Florence turns seven and as with every other year on her birthday I shall be taking my picture with her at the exact minute she was born. I won’t even have to wake her up to do it… We are going to friends for a New Year’s party and it’s the first time we’ve celebrated since she was born, She’s going to love it being able to stay up until midnight with her friends and hey, she may moan when I stop everything for that all important picture but at least it’s better than being poked in the mouth until you move…
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