I think it’s fair to say that no one ever anticipates that their child’s birthday will be one of the hardest days of the year to face, but off the back of round 3 this year I feel there has been a definite shift and the dust is starting to settle. I vividly remember my first therapy session where I was asked what I wanted to get out of my sessions, and my honest answer was that I wanted my beautiful little girl to be able to have a ‘normal’ birthday that wasn’t drenched in awful memories. Sitting here today, and after a lot of hard work, I think I can safely say I am well on the way to achieving this.

I wanted to write something about this though, because I feel anyone who has been through any major birth-related trauma is in this same very unique situation. Unless there is a very weird coincidence, with most other serious trauma, there is no demand on you to recognise ‘the day’ every year and certainly not the want to celebrate it and throw a party! But we are in this position that forever more the worst day of your life, and undoubtedly that of your immediate family, is intrinsically woven in to the day that gave you the best gift of your life. I can wholly understand how people just can not face this, and to be honest if that’s where you’re at – that’s fine, because its massive! As I said before, I have done a lot of very effective therapy, which I will go into more in a different post, so don’t expect this to just happen but there is no rule book or guidance written for these situations so here is an honest account of what I have learned.

One discussion I had with my therapist was around why my perception is that this is a sad day? Yes, these horrendous things happened, and yes it was terrifying for all involved and generally hideous – but ultimately we survived, and shouldn’t that be something to celebrate, rather than desperately run away from? The first time this came up, I thought she was mad – the rational part of me could see where she was coming from, but there was absolutely no way my brain was going to process that and just miraculously let all the pieces just slot in and be like ‘Hey, yes – I’m fine now!’. But it sowed a seed, and the more we worked through things, the more this narrative started to take over. Going through all of this, and being in one piece living a perfectly ‘normal’ life is honestly the greatest achievement of my life – so why shouldn’t we celebrate it? Even now, the traumatic narrative always tries to take hold, but I have embedded the rational thinking around it so providing I have the capacity to do it, I can let this rational response take hold. Like I say though, it is not easy so be kind and patient with yourselves on this one.

One of my biggest issue has however always been accepting the missing days when I was unconscious and everyone else knew my beautiful girl and I didn’t. So how do you celebrate the birthday of a little girl who was born on one day, but where you family wasn’t whole until a completely different date? It made me incredibly anxious and unsettled and was something I worked really hard on – the solution, create something out of both days.

The first year, as that week approached I just didn’t know what to expect, and that in itself sent my head all over the place. But we tried to work out what would help keep us calm, and hopefully throw in a little bit of a celebration to recognise the amazing little human we had created and how far we had come as a family. We kept it really really small – we climbed a family favourite hill and had lunch and birthday cupcakes on the top and did presents on her actual birthday and then had proper birthday lunch and round two of cake on the day we became a family. If ever there was a time to be a little bit selfish and make sure whatever is going on works for you – this is it! As selfish as it sounds, she was one and had no idea the day was any different to any other, so don’t let yourself get dragged along with what others are doing if it doesn’t feel right to you. And it seemed to work – although the run up was pretty gritty, the days themselves were just full of love for this amazing little human who seems to have the capacity to just make us all feel a little bit better about the world.

The next two years we have followed a similar kind of structure – one day of birthday celebrations, one day of family celebrations. We dipped our toes into the world of birthday parties for her second birthday, but just with family which was lovely, but a lot and was definitely more for our families than it was for us. So for round 3 we paired it back again – immediate family, chilled in the sunshine, play with all her presents and then possibly the most gorgeous sunny trip away to celebrate the amazing little family we have grown in to. I have to be honest that the run up to her birthday has been equally anxiety inducing each year, and maybe this is just the way those days are always going to be? It is almost like my body remembers something is coming that my head just can’t quite get into line. But then the days themselves appear and I am just full of absolute adoration of what I have around me. I have however learned that this is the time when my bucket has seriously reduced capacity and so I have to take things steady and make sure I have plenty of space to recognise what is going on. I have learned that rushing through these periods of time definitely makes things worse.

I can’t tell you how proud I am to have gotten to a point to genuinely be able to have a really lovely time around her birthday, it makes all the hard work and tears it has taken to get here completely worth it! So that’s where we’ve got to so far – it has taught me that there are some things you can’t rush and you just have to let time do it’s thing.