It's his birthday and I'll cry if I want to...

Boy #1 is 9 years old today.

Nine. Years. Old.

How did THAT happen?  I swear it was only yesterday that I was thinking about getting pregnant, then - once I was pregnant - found myself suffering from waves of nausea so bad I couldn't even think about looking at discarded gum on the pavement let alone be anywhere in the vicinity of frying onions.  Then, once the first trimester was over, blissfully wobbling through pregnancy thinking that having a baby wouldn't change me, not at all, and see you on the first day maternity leave is finished...

Surely it was just last night that I lay joking in the delivery room with the doctors (yes, joking - you gotta love those epidurals) about feeling like a cow and asking which was Tristran and which was Siegfried Farnham, before having Boy #1 pulled forcibly out of me - with something that resembled a hoover - and handed to me with powder-blue skin and the biggest eyes I had ever seen gazing straight into mine.

And wasn't it just this morning that we fled the noisy, over-crowded maternity ward with Boy #1 snuggled like a little bear in his maxi-cosy, to the safety of our own flat where Husband and I sat down on the sofa cradling him softly in sheepskin and asked each other, without saying it out loud;

"What now?"

Here is 'now'.  Here, with a happy, healthy, beloved and loving son who delights his parents (when he's not driving us crazy), who is an amazing older brother, and who brings so much to our lives that they are inconceivable without him.

Happy Birthday, Boy #1.  If I were any prouder of you, I would burst.  Love, Mama x

How did you get to the hospital to give birth? Join the March for Mothers...

If you're a mother reading this post, I have a question for you.

When you went to the hospital to give birth (assuming that you did go to the hospital to give birth, and if you didn't - respect. You're a braver woman than I am), how did you get there?

I suspect you were driven. Of course, you may live round the corner from the hospital, and have walked (which was my plan until the contractions kicked in and I was revealed for the wimp I am...), but I think it's more likely your journey was not on foot.

You may have been sitting in the passenger seat of your car with your teeth clenched and your eyes tight shut as you were driven over what seemed like mountainous bumps in the road. You may have been on all fours on the back seat, mooing like a cow (not me, oh no. But I know someone who did...). Your trip may have involved a helter-skelter race through a town in darkness, a police escort, and have finished with you giving birth on a police officer's coat in the hospital car park (yes, a true story - but not mine). Or it may have started with you skulking around a corner whilst your partner hailed an unsuspecting black cab who would otherwise no-way no-how have stopped for a wild-eyed heavily pregnant woman carrying a small suitcase at 2am (OK, that one was me).

Whatever it was, I'm guessing that for most of us, 4 wheels were involved.

For millions of women across the world, however, a long walk is necessary to get any help or medical assistance during pregnancy and childbirth. So on March 17th, the day before Mother's Day, Health Poverty Action are running the 'March for Mothers' sponsored walks in Greenwich Park, London, to highlight the plight of the 340,000 mothers a year who die in pregnancy and childbirth each year and to help raise funds to support them and to reduce this shocking number.

The march is for the whole family, and features walks of both 5 and 10km. Click here to find out more and how to enter.

(This was not a sponsored post...)