‘He has the cord around his neck. If you don’t get him out with this one, we’ll have to cut him out. This baby is in distress’. The doctor instructs to push.

It’s 9am on Monday, December 15, 2003. And it’s hot as the flippin’ hades in here. Here being National Greenlane Women’s Hospital that is now no longer. I have a doctor to my right with my heel firmly implanted into his hip and one of my very dear childhood friends – a then-almost-graduated-med-student – with my left heel indented into her hip. My husband’s trying his best to keep me calm. It’s not working. I swear often. He is so excited he’s barely audible.

The doctor is concerned and even though I’ve only been in hospital three hours, and actual proper labour for five, things are beginning to get hairy. No way are they coming near me with that fucking scalpel. Like fuck they’ll cut him out. I’ll tear in half before that happens. They clearly do not know who they’re dealing with here. And so I push. I push like I’ve never pushed before.

Within what seems like hours but actually is probably only 10 or 15 minutes…he makes his entrance. First that head and then the rest of him slips out like a little eel. Eight pound three ounces. Fifty-two centimetres. Tiny lashes the colour of golden sand and a shock of silky blonde hair not even Marilyn could compete with. Holy snapping duckshit. I have for reals given birth. They lift him away and check his airways, make sure everything’s working properly – there are indeed 10 teeny lil’ sausage toes and 10 eency little splayed fingers searching for the womb he could just before touch. And then this tiny little being, a mini human who is all mine – a part of me and him – is placed upon my chest. There are no words for this moment. His daddy and I are in complete and utter awe at what we’ve just created.

This isn’t another birth story. This is a life story.

For that teeny little human who in a flash of an eye blink, changed our lives completely…you came into this world in a belting hurry, exactly as you have lived ever since. You had shit to do, people to see. None of this hanging around waiting for life to come to you, since that day you’ve had all of us in your world captivated in our hearts.

That’s when it started and from every moment since, I’ve worried, loved and nurtured you. I’ve watched you grow and quietly learned what I can from you. To love and forgive, to fill my heart with empathy and compassion, humour and wit. I’ve watched you turn from a tiny little boy into this young man if it wasn’t for having given birth to you, almost overnight, I now barely recognise. Gone is the sweet rounded baby face of childhood, the innocence of a world yet undiscovered. In its place now sits this strapping young lad with handsome chiselled features – some your dad’s and some your grandad’s. This person with eyes that show the endless depth of his soul, an ability to love and share and laugh and give. Of an ability to love and remember and honour every day, the person who helped create you but yet to equally love and adore and admire the one who also raised you.

Kiddo, I can’t tell you how dang proud I am of you. We both are of you. Of what you’ve achieved so far, of how you’ve buried your emotional scars just low enough beneath the surface to acknowledge them yet deep enough to not let them slow you down. How you bounce back bigger and brighter with each knock that forces your fall with just the right amount of resilience and nonchalance and most importantly, forgiveness. How you have hopes and dreams as big as the ocean but a whipsmart determination to reach them too. How you can’t wait for the moment to meet your baby sister and share your big, huge, brilliant heart with her. How it fills my heart with pride every single time someone tells me what a great kid you are, how kind and thoughtful and respectful you are with others. How much my heart swells to know I must be doing something right.

Four-whole-teen. Goddamnit I wish I could slow it down. Wind it back. Go right back to the start and get to do it all over again. But I gotta say too, I sure can’t wait to see you become this adult you’re sitting just upon the precipice of. To see you achieve all the greatness I know is set before you. So, happiest of day’s of birth to my most beautiful, handsome, loving, caring, bright and clever lad…you will forever and always be my sunshine…Lov’n’hugs, Lady Mama G, The Vet, The Supermutt and Jellybean xoxo