2024: 365 Days Of Making A Family!

Since I lived in California at the age of 16, I had been back there for visits numerous times. One time, I rented a car and drove up to the Central Valley, where I had lived, arriving in that small town as a “grown up” for the first time. Shortly after I found out this year that I was pregnant, YouTube asked again if I could travel to LA. Usually, I am not so keen on long-distance trips, especially if it is always to the same place. But having the baby in my belly, I jumped on the chance. As spring was arriving on the shores of California, my foetus and I cruised along the 101 in another rental car, fully aware that everything was going to change. 

            Hanging in Laguna Beach!         

Change - no better word for 2024 than that! While I reflect on all the other years I’ve been through, usually very proud of my personal development and how I tried to pursue change, this year it just found me. When my fiance and I tried to kiss in the streets of Egypt with everyone watching this frivolous act of public affection at midnight January 1, 2024, we knew the year ahead would be no joke: We were going to try to marry so we could spend permanent time together. We had also planned to have babies some time in the next few years. My contraception was expiring and we thought it never works right away especially with my age being in the range medicals call “dangerous”. By the end of that month, I was already pregnant… 

Crazy to think that those first weeks I was scared about things I have now forgotten already, although it was only a few months ago. I was working out on the patio at our Airbnb in Newlands, Cape Town carefully to not hurt the baby, we saw a doctor that attempted to extort me (and of course failed!) and we sat at wine farms without drinking wine. It was quite genuinely a different life. The days in the sun passed by slowly, knowing that those days would come to a permanent end for both of us soon. No more Thursday afternoons at Cape Point Vineyards watching the sunset on a blanket with a beer. For me, these days had always just been a glance, but for Francois, they were reality for most of his life. When I peed on the stick on Valentine’s Day, the realization that he was giving this up for us had only just started to hit him. 

You might think having a baby is that change I am talking about, and yet it feels to me that something so animalistic, inexplicably intrinsic doesn’t initiate a kind of change you feel unprepared for. It was definitely super hard (I don’t need to tell anyone how bad sleep deprivation hits you after a traumatic birthing experience), but then the baby… is just there. You know what you have to do. Kind of. Everything you don’t know, you are aware of needing to know. With all the other changes that found us this year, that was not the case. What do you do to get an appointment at the immigration office? How do you start a business? And how does the government issue a document you need insurance for when insurance does not take you on as a member if you don’t have exactly that document? Immigrating to Germany, even for me as the initiator, not the affected, was the worst experience of my entire life (other than living in Egypt). 

And then, October 16, as Francois was at the doctor to get yet another document he needed for his business permit, I started having slight cramps. While I was ready to meet my daughter, the business wasn’t set up, we didn’t have insurance and there was a plethora of paperwork I still had to do (and still have to do today). I was hoping for as much time as possible without the baby - but my cramps were not cramps. 24h later, after an absolutely stunning ordeal, I gave the final push to eject baby Alma from my womb, then staring at her in disbelief: was I a mother now? Nothing felt different. I made another human that looked nothing like me, did they already make a mistake? Why wasn’t she crying? And why was everything I did before suddenly completely unimportant? 

The first week, I couldn't believe how easy it was. The hormones took care of me, and while I was tired, I quickly realized I had one of those babies people called “easy”: no crying, regular feeding and pooping, gaining weight faster than Jared Leto for a movie role. And then the day came, where I realized my “old life”, despite me being ready for that before I ever had sex with Alma’s dad, was over for good. I hadn’t ridden on the back of a convertible in several years, but yet suddenly all I could think about how I would never be 21 again riding on the back of a convertible in Eastern Europe ever again. I saw myself partying in Ibiza, hiking up Corcovado mountain and going wine tasting with Patricia (who was also pregnant before I even finished my first trimester), having me mourn my past life despite it finishing even without me being pregnant (with all of my friends moving away or starting their own families). I truly felt that the first trimester of my life had come to a close, and I was now entering the second. 

I have accepted that I live a different life now. I am ok with the fact that the “old one” is over and will not be coming back. What was hard about it was that it happened from one day to the next, and even if you prepare, nothing can prepare you for loss of this kind. You need to mourn. But then in this case… “here is your baby”. Take care of that now, not yourself. Or your partner. Or anything, really, because the old rules no longer apply. Your body and mind has a new job now and that is sustaining survival for the human you voluntarily created. You didn’t have to do that and yet Alma only exists because you wanted her to. We owe her our presence in this second trimester of life, not a nostalgic look back or too much worry about what this trimester will look like. 

For the first time ever, I am scared. I know how to make myself happy, but how do I do the same for her and her dad? The things that made me happy in the past fail to do so now. I hate Berlin now, this unsustainable illusion that just reminds you of how close Russia is and that will exploit the money you saved so vigorously in order to afford a child. The flat I so carefully curated to fit me does not fit a family - and that is me now: a mom. Moving in Berlin is... so far from "possible that the word "impossible" doesn't cut it. The only thing that still makes me happy the same way is a good bottle of wine, only that the whole year I have had only 5 glasses of it. The things I strive for now are time in nature and a fireplace. And right now, well, we have neither. 

If you had told me what I would be challenged with at 35 years old, I never thought it would have been this. The thought of raising a human seemed daunting enough, but I never expected something so hard coming so naturally. The true challenge is letting go: of your old life, of what you thought you needed, of trying to progress a career, a relationship, the goal of having a house or anything materialistic. As soon as I met Alma, that's all there was. Not because I wanted it this way, but because it's necessary. I just thought I would hate that more. I find myself being most scared of not being able to stay emotionally connected to myself, not ruining her. 2025 does not sound like a year I can even pursue the change I always sought, the self-development I usually craved. I won't matter. And since this is so new for me, starting the new year from a hospital bed with a feverish Alma felt like an accurate welcome: I'll be where she is, I'll do what she does... and comfort, fun or lightness are no longer part of my deal - at least for now. 

Countdown To Baby: Falling In Love Made Me Do It!

It’s October 2024: The month I become a mother has arrived. Even writing it is one of those things you plan all your life - maybe - and when it happens it still feels strange. I know in just a few days I will hold my daughter, and it’s the single most beautiful thing I have ever imagined. My biggest hesitation about becoming a mother throughout the years was that I absolutely loved my life, and it seemed foolish to make changes. I lived it alone, never lonely. It made sense to believe this path I was on would make me happy. And, ironically, I was sitting at lunch by myself in a beautiful restaurant, thinking about how amazing life was even without anyone in it besides myself, that I started to talk to a cute guy who would end up making me never be alone again. 

Our first picture together,
don't think we saw this coming.        

Making the baby wasn’t so hard; retrospectively, it felt strangely predetermined. The “crazy part” is that from the moment I started dating Francois, I strongly suspected he would be the father of my children, not my boyfriend - although I wasn’t dead set on having children at all yet. However, the circumstances of our relationship were fairly challenging by nature, and pursuing a family with someone who could easily break your heart wasn’t the easiest task for someone like me who wasn’t super upset about being single in the first place. We also knew that the road to being together in the same city wouldn’t be the most straightforward, so one had to be sure the other was “worth it” fairly quickly. I was - thankfully - forced to make the conscious decision to abandon my solitary safety and allow this man to introduce something into my life I knew very little about: companionship, the true love kind. 

Getting a man like that to love me and feel confident enough to have a baby with me when he had all the choice in the world is possibly my proudest moment in life. He didn’t accidentally make a baby with me and took responsibility, he took the responsibility first and built our family on that. Being able to love him back with everything I have been through is my biggest achievement: I learned to love by doing, nobody taught me. Francois kept moving towards our mutual future while I questioned if accepting love would be another mistake I make. The only mistake I could have ever made was to stay safe, alone and without him - thankfully he refused me this option. Although it took a lot of work for me to not pursue a life reminiscent of my family’s generational trauma, knowing my daughter will be born into a family free from it, with a father who is able to truly love her is a gift much bigger than I knew as a young person myself. 

One night last week, Francois and I were lying on the couch, candles were lit, and we were listening to music and watching YouTube visuals. We make this space sometimes, not distracting ourselves by anything but sound, scent and each other. A Kid Francescoli song came on that brought me into quite some depth of my emotion. I suddenly felt every second of my life so far: I saw myself sitting on the back of a convertible in motion along the coast of Albania hitchhiking with my friends Olta and Miriam, raving on my friend’s shoulders at the Scooter concert and Conor and I lying at a beach in Ibiza looking at the stars drunk on one Euro shots because we were so broke. And then, finally, I saw myself sitting on a bench in a Grotto Bay, South Africa, with a guy I had really just met, watching the sunset and having a feeling that I had found the person who would make this solitary adventure come to an end. And now that guy was sitting next to me on my couch. 

My life was so full of adventure, with nobody to consider but myself - but mostly happy. And this life - at least this kind of life - is now coming to an end. I always imagined it would be challenging to get older, abandon independence to invite someone into the decisions you make every day. Even last year, as Francois and I sat on the same couch debating if what we were doing was a forever thing, I had a hard time accepting life could actually not be solitary. Of course I wanted love, but I just never had it; it’s hard to imagine something you never knew much about. And as I sat there that night listening to Kid Francescoli with the love of my life, with our baby in my belly, I did not feel nostalgia; I did not miss a single moment I had lived. My heart was solely filled with gratitude, nothing but a deep light in my belly that couldn’t believe how lucky I was to have lived independently and still been able to let go of it to open the door to true love, now on the couch next to me and in my belly. As wonderful as it was, nothing could make me want to trade in what I have now.

As a writer, having a profound experience like becoming a mother which is so, so common, you always ask yourself what hasn’t been said about it. I saw the videos, I read the books (not really, but ya know!) and everything always talks about this “change”. To someone who isn’t in it, I gotta be honest, it must sound so dire - it did to me. I never understood why people would want to alter their lives, their bodies, their brain chemistry for the fleeting moment of happiness when the baby says “Mama”. These thoughts stopped when I fell in love with the right man. Imagining making him a parent is what makes me love the child, looking into her little eyes that are hopefully her dad’s, giving this human that only exists because I love her dad and he loves me a happy life, is the most motivating feeling I ever experienced. She is the culmination of her dad and I choosing each other, and making it work in a God damn rough environment. One cannot find more meaning than that…