Before I publish this blog, I would just like to say that I love my mother dearly, and I know that she loves me in her own special way. I am blessed to be a mother myself, that can hug, and kiss and tell my children every day that I love them, but for some mothers there is a hardship in showing emotion we do not understand.
I figured it out before i was sixteen that something must have happened during my mothers pregnancy while expecting me as our relationship as a mother daughter never got anywhere near to what my sisters were experiencing. This is how it all came about:
My mother had always been a large, overweight person and this was her struggle after the birth of my eldest sibling. Three years later, my second eldest sibling was born and my mother’s weight surged into a slight obesity. During her breast feeding period, as that is what all mothers did 55 years ago, she went to the doctor with the symptoms of violent pains in her abdomen. The examined her and the prognosis was that she has a tumor. The treatment of chemical steroids started immediately – as the Cancer research was still in its early stages of trial and error, the doctors tried to shrink the tumor before taking the radical option of Radiation and Chemo. She stopped breast feeding my sibling and received medication to stop the milk.
Into the second month of steroids, my mother just got fatter and fatter until the doctor sent her to a dietitian to monitor her eating habits – nothing helped. Her cramps got worse and eventually a third specialist was summonsed for his option. The results had our whole city gobsmacked as ‘Mother was Seven Months Pregnant’
I was born on the 16th November by natural birth, weighing 11,5lbs (5,2kg). I had hair flowing down my back like a two year old and my dad says I was awake from the moment I was born. He always made me feel like i was his favorite for as long as he was alive, as if he knew I needed that little bit of extra love.
My mother registered me Lorraine Susan, but till this day I have carried the name my dad christened me with and that is Lany. I could sit at 3 months and walk at 10 months, I progressed very fast in all my child skills and proved to be quite a handful. My little sister was born eighteen months later and then my mothers womb was removed. Four children was enough. So my mother was very busy with a new baby and I had to grow up and be the bigger sister in more ways than one. At the age of four, it was recommended that I attend school to get the correct stimulation an advanced child like me would need. There were no regulations on minimum ages for school back then so off I went to school and became the youngest pupil in my grade from the start to the end. Nothing held me back, I was top of the class, super is mathematics, read a lot, always lead role in dramas, public speaking, Latin, . . . you name it, I could do it. The only unfortunate area for me was the sports, as they had Age limitations, and it took a long time before the school had other children my age to compete against. You can say, I was always running against the big kids!
Life as a child was normal and I was put in charge of taking care of my little sister. My two eldest siblings share no common ground with me as I always seemed to be a little controversial – Those are my mothers words!
Lets jump to sixteen when i hit puberty. This is a time when all young ladies need the advise and nurturing of a mother – mine was amiss. I do not think it was ever intentional, but after listening to a speaker one day on the ‘bonds made in the womb’ I was convinced that my mother and I did not have, nor do now, have any maternal bond.
Later when I was pregnant with my first born, an emotional experience that overwhelmed me, a dear friend who had qualified as a psychiatrist, confirmed my feelings – and this made me see my mother differently.
“” My mother was fighting for her life, she was told she had a tumor, she was subjected to all different kinds of drugs and steroids as well as many miss diagnosis’s which made her hate her body and what ever was growing inside her. The body and the mind rejected the baby, and still today my mother has no compassion nor shares any emotions with me.””
Medically I cannot give you any resolution as to why my mother and I don’t share the same bond as she does with my other siblings, however I have decided to make peace with the fact that if it didn’t happen in the womb, in will never happen.
Against all odds, I was born and I have life . . . . . . I have a purpose!
Thank you for reading
Ciao
Lany
Lany 