My name is Catherine and this is my story as a new mother. Firstly, my family and I can’t forget to praise God that our first attempt at getting pregnant was a successful one.
For one month, my fiancé and I had been planning to have our first child. Three months later, I had a craving for sausages from Capital Shoppers Ntinda. This was quite unusual since it had never happened to me before. We then made the decision to check for pregnancy, and guess what? It was positive.
The moment I saw those two pink lines of the Human Chorionic Gonadotropin (HCG) strip, my motherhood journey started.
I fell in love with the fetus the moment I discovered that there is a life inside me. I started having all kinds of dreams for the baby, and pondering the kind of mother I would be.
I started recording everything in the journal, right from hearing that precious heartbeat to feeling the movements. I can’t explain how I enjoyed my pregnancy to the fullest, that I even had a tour in the jungle at 8 months.
On the day I finally held my baby boy in my arms, I felt like I was no longer so attached or much in love with anyone else.
It was quite overwhelming to even think that am now a parent for the first time. I experienced mixed feelings of happiness, anxiety, nervousness, thrill, and fatigue.
What was quite challenging was, I didn’t know how to hold him while breastfeeding. Talking about bathing him, it took me two months and a half to learn.
My heart was melting with much joy that I would wake up in the middle of the night just to stare at my baby.
Much as I was in a bed of roses, I had bad experiences too. One of them is the day my baby got circumcised, I couldn’t sleep the entire night as I held his legs because I didn’t want him to get hurt.
As a young mother, my tiny and delicate baby was a gift of life, and this made me believe in the miracles that happen in this world.
Life was never the same as my whole life revolved around my baby that nothing else mattered. Even the little smiles of my child had the power to banish all the sorrows I had faced in this world, and I felt that it was the best feeling and decision I made.
Motherhood means family, happiness, love and contentment. It brings out the best and the worst in you. Some days are hard while others are cool, but ultimately, the joy of raising a small human is so powerful.
