The road to becoming a mum

I got pregnant with my first child in the final few months of my training to become a Play Therapist. The last two years had been spent intensely learning about child development, attachment, and therapy, whilst simultaneously working as a Counsellor for primary aged children in schools. It was such an intense period of time for me and by the end I was ready to become a mum and focus on building a strong bond with my child and watching her develop.When I was pregnant, my best friend and I (Caz - pictured below) talked frequently about pregnancy and birth. She had a baby a year and a half before Ava was born so she had gone through pregnancy, birth & motherhood before me. One thing we both agreed on when we discussed the up coming arrival of my baby was that I needed to think

past the birth and begin to read practical things about becoming a parent and caring for a small baby. I remember her saying to me that you could only read so much about pregnancy and birth and then you would be prepared for whatever would happen. She felt the most important thing was to think about when we would have a baby at home to care for, when it was just us and we had to care for her ... she was right. I began to think past the birth and John and I began to talk about becoming parents.

Although I had studied psychology, therapy and child development for many years prior to becoming pregnant and knew the principles behind attachment and had in my job helped children to feel safe and secure again in relationships as well as assisting their parents/carers to re-form an attachment bond with their child I had never been apart of an attachment relationship with a child of my own...

My husband and I (John) began to talk about what kind of parents we wanted to be and tried to make decisions about how we would work together as parents when the baby arrived. We wanted to be consistent in our parenting from the beginning and so spent much time during the pregnancy talking about all the things we would have to make decisions about; like where the baby would sleep and how we might form routines. We had been lucky enough to see a few other friends go through becoming parents before us and so had different ideas to discuss and we tried to make a plan about what we would try to do and what we would try to avoid. A valuable tool in helping us discuss both the birth and parenting decisions was the National Childbirth Trust (NCT) classes we attended. The NCT classes prompted John and I to discuss many things as a couple before Ava's arrival. These classes also gave us a chance to discuss

decisions we would have to make about the birth and our parenting with a group of other mums and dads to be. All the babies from this group were born in January and John, Ava and I continue to enjoy meeting up with the other mums, dads and babies! John and I walked away

from the NCT classes with three different birth

plans: a) labour & natural birth, b) inducement & c) cesarean ... which was lucky really as we needed all three in the end!