Red.

Chris and his mini-me.

I gave birth to a ranga, a ginger, a carrot-head or as I like to see it, a perfect Venetian blond little boy and I'm perfectly fine with it!

Hugo's coloring came as a not completely unexpected surprise. Throughout the pregnancy, Chris maintained that the redhead gene being recessive, the odds were in favor of having a brunette like his mother. My response usually was that recessive genes are recessive until they're not.

The thing about Hugo's hair color is that it creates a very instant likeness with Chris. In addition to his beautiful head of hair, the shape of his eyes is also Chris' and so with this unmistakable combination, anyone who knows Chris always exclaims how much Hugo looks like him (and therefore, not like me...).

It seems that this could bother me. In the past and more recently, I have witnessed on separate occasions a sort of frustration from women with this phenomenon of the newborn child resembling his father. Afterall, we do all the hard work so couldn't they at least look like us?

Most recently, a nurse who had just given me an injection commented on the ginger tones in Hugo's hair. I replied that he got it from his father, to which she said, in gist, "Oh don't you hate it when that happens?!"I joked that it didn't bother me in the least since I had picked the father after all.

While I said it in good humor, it was in fact exactly how I felt. What could be better than to see the man I chose to spend the rest of my life and raise a family with through our beautiful child? While there is no doubt Hugo will become his own person, totally (mostly) independent of either of us, I love the idea of observing and admiring this genetic thread from father to son and I love the idea that Chris can recognize himself in Hugo.

After over 8 years together, Chris has become completely familiar to me, in the most comforting sense. I recognize him at a level which is far deeper than his appearance. As soon as Hugo was placed in my arms, I felt that I had always known him too, instantly familiar and maybe his features played a small part in this. He might not look instantly like me but he looks like my soulmate. That's good enough for me.

In any case, while he was blessed with his father's gingery locks, the lottery of life still had the good sense of giving him my olive skin. It's one thing to play with fire but you wouldn't want to get burned!

"But don't you miss them?"

"But don't you miss them?" is what a woman who didn't 'allow' her children to move to a different neighborhood asked my mother about her own children. I suppose that when generations of a family have literally never strayed from the nest, it might seem puzzling that a mother could let her children move to a different neighborhood, another city, country or in some (our) extreme cases, another continent (and hemisphere while we're at it).

My mother was an expatriate, living for more than half her lifetime in a country other than her birth one and in the process bringing three children into the world who between them, share 6 passports. So what was she going to do when one by one we all looked beyond the walls of our city and went in search of broader horizons?

Of course she misses us, every single day and unlike other things which time assuages, the longing only gets worse... in both directions, I might add. Some might say that if it was so bad, we could simply move back. Well, it's not that simple and life has a way of asserting its place in a way which forces one to redefine the very concept of "home" itself. "Home" is not always made of bricks and mortar.

For me, Nice is home because when I am there, I feel that I could walk around with my eyes closed but my Australian husband and 5 week old son have, as a matter of course, forever eliminated the possibility of a French exclusivity on where or what "home" is. Australia is their home and therefore, it is mine too. After 9 years here, I can safely say that I have followed my father's advice and adapted but it would be misguided to presume that my happiness here is incompatible with a deep longing for my family there.

Many moons ago, when I left home for the first time at the age of 17, I was asked if I missed my family.  Bold and brave as only the young can be, I replied that I thought of them often but did not miss them as such. I was busy living my life and making myself at home but rather than suggesting that this independence came from a shortage of love, I believe and I know that the opposite is far more accurate. It is precisely because of the abundance of love, affection and trust that my parents placed in me that I was able to fly with my own wings from a young age. As I heard once, "there is a time to hold your children close and a time to let them go."

As I watch Hugo as he lies sound asleep dreaming of what can only possibly be milk, I can not imagine ever letting him go. For the moment, it is the time to hold him close and tight but when the time comes for him to fly, I will not clip his wings but my, oh my, will I miss him. 

1 Month: 10.03.13 - 10.04.13

Hugo Vincent van Lint was born on 10 March 2013, in the birth centre of the John Hunter Hospital in Newcastle, NSW. He was delivered in the bath at 11:52am after a relatively short labour (approximately 6 hours, 1.5 hours of active labour) without the need for pain relief. He measured 47cm and weighed 3.38kg. After only a few minutes on my chest, he found the breast easily and began his journey into this world.

After one difficult night in the hospital ward battling a raging bladder infection, our new baby and I were discharged and made our way home. Little did we know our first night as a family would be as epic as in the hospital...

For one reason or another, we decided that he would sleep in our bed that very first night at home but we hadn't realised yet just how much space such a little bundle can take up. Terrified we would smother him in our sleep, we placed him right in the centre of the bed, forcing me to sleep half hanging off the edge of the bed and Chris, the new father, decided that it would be safer if he slept on the floor next to the bed. We laughed about it in the morning.

Something else happened on that first night at home: our baby boy got his name. Sometime in the middle of the night, while he was asleep, I stared at him and it suddenly came to me: Hugo! It was like a lightbulb going off in my head and I had to force myself not to wake Chris up from his slumber on the floor. In the morning we agreed that our first born son would be named Hugo Vincent van Lint.

Over the next few days, we all got to know each other from the safe haven of our beautiful flat by the ocean. Our nights remained ground for experimentation: sleeping with the lights on, listening to the recordings of whales, swaddling or not swaddling, co-sleeping or putting him into his basket... We soon realised that most of Hugo's problems were promptly fixed with a good feed and slowly but surely, life started to take on its new rhythm.

Over the next week, Hugo...

 received his first visitors,

 had his first bath in the kitchen sink and enjoyed it,

 had his first official portrait taken,

and made his first fashion statement!

The end of our first fortnight as a family came too quickly and marked the end of Chris' parental leave. His return to work also coincided with Hugo's grandmother's arrival from the USA. My mother stayed with us for two weeks and made the most of every moment, basically inhaling the scent, touch and sight of her grandson. She learnt him by heart and etched his image in her brain so deeply as to remember it for the long months that separate her from us. She also gave me strength, reassurance and the hugs and kisses a daughter becoming a mother can only get from her own mother. GrandMa Jane's departure came all too soon. That's the simple truth.

We took Hugo on many walks to the beach or into town, had a few shopping sprees as he steadily outgrew his newborn clothes and generally became increasingly more aware of his surroundings, spending more time awake in between sleeps and feeds, slowly sprouting the buds of his personality.

As Hugo's first month in the world concludes, he is 6cm longer (53cm) and about 1kg heavier (4.4kg) and developing a whole range of facial expressions and grunts, coos, and cries. As for us, well, we are smitten. 

♡

Farewell Poppy... Welcome Hugo.

Poppy... Who are you?

For nine months, we called it Poppy. It started with the idea that the little cluster of cells that would slowly turn into a baby was probably the size of a poppy seed when we found out and it stuck through the whole pregnancy.

We weren't planning on finding out the gender of our baby so calling it Poppy allowed us to identify with the growing bulge in my belly and call it something more affectionate than... well... it.
Over time, we developed a relationship with the mysterious being growing inside me. One that I could keep to myself, like when I smiled inwardly, feeling little kicks, while pretending to listen to the conversations around me or share, like when I invited a friend to place their hands on the shifting bump visibly distorting my otherwise perfectly round stomach. Our connection was impossibly intimate and mostly private until one Sunday morning in March, when a little boy emerged from the water and with his arrival, signaled the time to farewell Poppy.

We named him Hugo, a name that immediately became intrinsically linked with this little person we were meeting for the first time. While Poppy represented all possibilities, Hugo is the one and only combination created on that fateful day in June. His hair, not black or blond but light with a hint of red, his eyes still slate grey - their true color to be revealed later, his long feet and skinny calves, his small nose, like a button above a delicately drawn mouth.

Every so often, I have to stop myself from calling him Poppy and for a fraction of a second, my mind goes blank searching for his name... Hugo. We are still getting to know each other, after all.

Like a whisper, Poppy dissolved into thin air when Hugo, a little bundle of flesh and blood came to claim his rightful place into our arms and the world. For nine months, we imagined every possibility and in an instant, Hugo, at once new and  entirely familiar proved to be so much more than we could ever imagine.

He is beautiful and he is ours but above all, he is entirely himself and that is so incredibly exciting!