Where did it all begin?
Despite my 34 years of life, when I think of those words I don’t think of my childhood. I think of my kid’s childhood.
So, where did it all begin?
My life began the moment I had my daughter. Not when I was pregnant. The person I was during pregnancy had no idea what was coming.
But the moment it all began is still clear in my mind.
18 years old and camping, a week before my due date.
That night I’m so uncomfortable. I go to the toilet, mainly as an excuse to leave the tent, and see a mucus-like pink glob that made my insides fill with uncertainty.
You know the feeling.
Where a part of you thinks it knows and the other part says nah, it can’t be..
I try to sleep but by the time the birds start chirping I haven’t slept at all.
I’m sitting in my car calling my Mum, asking her questions. Trying to understand what’s happening.
It feels like period pain that comes and goes.
That’s when she tells me that it sounded like contractions.
I’m hours away from home, it’s barely morning and all I want is to be back home.
Once I get back, I call my midwife who did her check in over the phone.
I hadn’t had the dramatic water splash TV had convinced me would happen, so I assumed my waters hadn’t broken.
I would later find out they actually had. Just a slow leak Id mistaken for pressure on my bladder before we left for camping.
My contractions were still a good 10-15 minutes apart.
The midwife tells me to come in when it becomes too much.
Ambiguous, right?
Looking back, telling that version of me to come in “when it becomes too much” was basically a challenge.
What if I went too early?
What if I wasted their time?
So I waited it out.
24 hours
48 hours
By the third night, closing in on 70 hours, my contractions were about 3 minutes apart.
I’m standing in the kitchen and suddenly realise:
Oh shit, this is it. We need to go NOW.
I think I’ve hit the “too much” stage.
The trip to the hospital is a blur.
I feel as if I’m half in and half out of my body. I could feel the pain but my mind was dragging along somewhere behind the car.
Every bump in the road feels like a spike through my soul.
When we arrive, walking inside feels like a fresh form of torture. My family asks for a wheelchair.
I can see the look on the nurses faces – that indulgent new mum look that many women recognise instantly.
The one that silently says, buckle up there’s more to come.
But when they check my dilation,
I’m already 8cm.
The midwife asks in surprise “why didn’t you come in earlier?”
Those words threw me.
I genuinely didn’t know when I was meant to.
The benchmark was too vague.
What’s too much?
When does it become too much?
It’s not long before I ask to scrap my birth plan.
I had planned to go without pain relief.
Yeah.. I was already kicking myself for pre-labour Gem’s decisions.
It was too late for an epidural, but I get the gas and absolutely guzzle it.
The rattle of the gas being drawn into my lungs kept me going, I feel sick from drawing it in too much, too fast.
Even when it stops helping, I breathe through it like I can will it to work.
I learned later that they actually turned it off.
12:26am welcomed sweet relief that comes after the peak of pain.
My daughter is born.
Days of contractions, hours of doubt and exhaustion.
Suddenly, seconds after feeling like my body was tearing itself apart, everything becomes quiet.
Like a veil drops over the chaos.
They hold up my baby.
This long, wrinkly little thing that’s somehow perfect.
Weren’t babies meant to be born a little ugly?
Not mine.
I have never been more terrified.
Just like that, everything changed.
Not in the way people talk about, not some magical rush of certainty or wisdom.
Just a tiny human placed in my arms and the overwhelming realisation that someone now needed me to figure it out.
Looking back now, that was the moment my life began.
And I had no idea what I was doing.
Threads of Gem 
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