Before I Forget

Notes on pregnancy and learning to remember.

Feb 17, 2025

Dear friend,

They say as time passes, you begin to forget the little details of what it was like to be pregnant. They say you forget the intensity of the birth, as if the pain wasn’t a kind of its own, seared into your cells as a memory for all of time.

They say as time passes, you begin to forget the little details of their first few weeks, months and years. The tiny memories of everyday minutes morph into a highlights reel of the big moments that stand out. Almost as if our minds had a storage capacity, where instead of paying to upgrade each month, we’re forced to actually filter it.

They say forgetting is an important part of the human race continuing. They joke that if we remembered everything our bodies went through, we wouldn’t keep doing it.

They say, they say, they say…

How strange it is to think that the most profound experience of becoming a mother – of creating and bringing life into this world – could be so easily forgotten?

How strange it is to think that it’s become so trivial – so rushed and managed, so moulded into societal convenience – that we’d forget.

If forgetting is inevitable, then before I forget…

I want to remember the moment I became pregnant. I didn’t know it at the time, but once it was confirmed, it was so clear. I was walking down the street in Bondi the week before Christmas getting ready to go on a family pilgrimage back to Tennant Creek. Suddenly, my overly sensitive body felt this surge of what I can only describe as adrenaline, which triggered an immediate panicked response. I messaged my mum, “Mum I don’t know what’s happening but I think I’m having a sort of panic attack – but it’s not like a normal one.” I sat in the armchair of a bookshop cafe, meditating to let it pass.

Weeks after, when my period was late, and I’d taken multiple negative pregnancy tests, I scheduled a doctor’s appointment to figure out what was happening. It was my first day back at work and I thought to myself I should probably buy a different kind of test, just in case, before the doctors. After our first meeting for the day, I snuck out to buy a test and ran into the nearest toilet in the Westfield Mall. The two lines showed, and I was flooded with the joy of a lifelong dream coming true. I called my partner as I walked back to the office, “Um can you step into a meeting room… Well, I’m pregnant.”

But please never let me forget the look on his face, hours later, as he met me in the driveway and hugged me with tears in his eyes, or the first time I heard her heartbeat the day of my 30th birthday.

Before I forget, let me note down the subtle pregnancy symptoms that I’d never heard of. I remember clearly a moment when I was sitting in the boardroom and I felt what I could only describe as my blood pressure dropping. I thought I was going to faint immediately. I stepped out of the office to try to get some fresh air.

“It’s normal,” they’d respond – as if suddenly you’d been let into a secret club where the truth of the experience was allowed to now be shared. It was a similar experience a few weeks later when the 24-hour nausea set in, eating was unbearable and I struggled some days to get out of bed. I remember calling my boss, barely seven weeks pregnant crying, “I’m pregnant,” to which he responded (knowing I wanted kids), “This is a good thing, no?” to which I bawled, “Yes, I’m so happy I’m just so sick.”

“It’s normal,” the doctor said in the second trimester when I was regularly holding an asthma ventilator (which I found challenging given I’d never been ‘properly’ diagnosed). Or when I was limping in pain because of the pressure on my pelvis. Or in the third trimester when the heartburn set in and I thought I was going to die. I remember being in bed by myself in a new country while my partner was travelling, calling a medical hotline to see if I was in fact having a heart attack.

You are so often told, “It’s normal”, which is of course, a relief, because you want everything to be normal. And at the same time, it can also feel like a frustrating betrayal, that you were never told the whole truth about the range of things you could expect in pregnancy. That so often it is a stranger in a white coat explaining “normalcy,” instead of a warm, old sage woman calming you with a cup of tea and sharing the secrets of what to expect.

Of course second to “It’s normal” was “We’re not sure, but everything seems okay” – the words I heard when I thought it was, “better safe than sorry” to go into the hospital when at 37 weeks, strange fluid kept leaking out of me. Or when after the birth I kept saying to midwives that the kind of bleeding I was experiencing didn’t feel normal. “We’re not sure,” they’d say, “But everything seems okay.” Words I kept trying to reassure myself with as I woke one evening with severe cramps, screaming for my mum who was thankfully still staying with us as retained placenta decided to exit my body four weeks after the birth.

But please let me never forget the pure invincibility of my birth and the pain it carried. Why, you might wonder, do I want to remember that pain? Because it was the most extraordinary reminder of my physical, mental, emotional and spiritual capacity. Because looking back, I still stand by my decision to feel every goddamn ounce of pain and to remember, that my body does not betray me.1

And that as women, through the pain that which otherwise should destroy us, we bring into this world life. That we are, in fact, pure life. Pure creation. Pure love.

Before I forget, do you know in the first few weeks I slept with a towel on the bed? I had no idea that to feel “held in” I’d strap myself with maternity pads in maternity mesh boyshorts and pads in my nursing bra. A bizarre irony you’re thrown into while navigating diaper changes and regular spit-ups (which trust me, you’ll spend a few weeks, maybe months, navigating how much spit-up is normal after a feed vs perhaps too much).

It’s a strange time, where you want support, but can feel overwhelmed by opposing views. I remember doing my best to focus on key principles, and who if needed, I’d ask for advice from. Is she putting on some weight? Is she taking naps (regardless of where she napped and for how long for)? Is she otherwise thriving?

I will forever be grateful for the morning our midwife explained to me how to safely sleep with her next to me. It became my saving grace, understanding what was normal and biologically valuable to expect with infant sleep. And the many moments she calmed my nerves over those first few weeks with random questions.

And while I was deeply grateful for her support – there were still many Google searches and ChatGPT queries on things I had never known to expect. How do I treat baby pimples? Is this colour of poo normal? Do I need to take her to the hospital because I accidentally just dropped my phone on her? (That one was after I wailed for an hour in fear of the harm I'd caused).

And next to the Google searches were many quick Amazon buys. Yes, the more expensive silicone change mat is worth it and the only nappy ‘wipes’ that ensure you do not ever deal with diaper rash is the French approach – Liniment Cream, which you apply to a big square cotton pad et voila, no rash.

Though God, please never let me forget how much I laughed the day when our daughter had her first poonami and my partner, who proudly announced he would do this diaper change, took her upstairs. She proceeded to poop a few more times on the journey, and I found him holding her legs as he shielded himself from a poop spray with a nappy.2

I still don’t think I’ve figured out whether the right approach is to do the washing every few days, or to listen to my mum and do a small load every day.

Before I forget, did you know that I went to bed each night with a thermos of herbal tea on the bedside, and a little mason jar of bircher muesli? I’d put the jar together before going to bed, and by 3 am when I was ravenous from the nursing, I’d take a few mouthfuls of it to stabilise.

If I close my eyes I can see each night of those first few weeks, my partner coming into the bedroom with a dinner tray, beaming with pride. It took weeks to be able to bear sitting down on our solid wood dining chairs, which always seemed to remind me of the stitches still healing. I can also remember the day we first ventured outside, and I needed to sit down in the park across the road to snack. My partner ran back to the house to grab a cushion for me to sit on. That cushion stayed in the bottom of the pram for a couple weeks.

Of course I kept a photo of this moment because I still find it hilarious.

I can also remember how keenly I wanted to get to my six-week checkup for my ‘approved to exercise’ tick. Only to get to six weeks and realise exercise was the furthest thing from my mind. It would take perhaps another 10 weeks before I ventured out for a “run”, and many more months before I’d try and integrate workouts again. (And if I do this again, please let me remember this is very much okay.)

But please don’t ever let me forget each stage of where she put her hand as she nursed. My chest became the ruler of which to measure her growth – first, the hand sat on top of my breast, then above my breast, then on my chest and slowly it reached higher and higher – often symbolised by the scratch marks left there. Then she could reach my chin and then her hand always seemed to find its way into my mouth, of all places. 17 months later and now her hand pulls at my lower teeth and her foot sits on my chest. But regardless of how she grows, she always has a little suckle motion in her sleep long after she’s stopped nursing.

Before I forget, let me remember that the cluster feeds, while they feel as if they go on forever, do not last forever. That in the early months, the breast can solve pretty much everything, but there will come a time, a day, a week, when suddenly it doesn’t. Suddenly their development becomes more multifaceted than just needing the boob, and suddenly you need to be aware of their environment or how stimulated they are.

It’s also helpful to learn different breastfeeding positions, as I had to learn on the fly as I held her like a football one day in a cafe just to get her to latch. Or when I tried to ignore my broken abdomen muscles as I planked in the car to get a boob in her mouth while we drove to Oxford (this one is not advised in cafes).

When they say not to buy too many things because they grow so fast – it’s true, and often a sign of extreme good fortune that your child is of such wonderful health. I was not prepared for this or the storage needs that come with it. We’ve already gone through every size range to a three-year-old in a little over a year. How grateful I am for her health.

I’m sure I won’t forget the big milestones – all somewhat documented in a photo or video – but let me also work hard to never forget the seemingly small ones too. The smaller milestones of her poking out her tongue, or trying to roll it like her Jaju did on the phone. The small achievements when the normal days flowed perfectly, or when my partner would carry her like a briefcase down the footpath so she could see the world. And the smaller moments when I’d look down to see her nursing, and she was already looking straight back up at me. The moments I noticed her hair growing in curls at the back of her head, or the little fine hairs I noticed growing on her legs.

It was her absolute favourite way of being held by him.

Before I forget, before I forget, before I forget…

As I am flooded with the memories I am afraid of forgetting, I can’t help but wonder whether we do in fact, forget these things? Whether it is some sort of necessary potion for the spell of humanity to continue?

I’m not sure it is.

I think somehow we’ve made forgetting seem cute, just like we’ve made not sharing these experiences seem normal.

Somehow, we’ve made the experience silent and almost shameful – like it’s a dirty duty one should forget. We think that motherhood shouldn’t be ritualised and shared with joy to those around us – that even the hard moments of despair should live alone under your nursing chair.

Perhaps remembering is a choice given to us in any moment of how present we can be, and how clear our sleepy mind can be in them.

Perhaps remembering isn’t about documenting all moments on our phones and in those stupidly annoying milestone books3, but about small moments of deliberate reflection, even if it’s 17 months down the track.

Of course, I will concede, we cannot remember every second of every day. I cannot pick a day in a month on a calendar and remember exactly how every moment was spent. I have tried, and in my hormonal states, I have bawled feeling as if I have lost something.

But what I am learning is that these memories are never lost, and even if they’re not retrievable in our minds at a specific moment – they’re woven into our souls – as if, like our births, our bones carry them within us.

It’s in this weaving that somehow they are always there, ready to flash back up in our minds as we do something in our every day that triggers them. If the body keeps the score, the body can also keep all the good memories too.

So perhaps I won’t forget. Perhaps I’ll remember. And perhaps I’ll tell these stories again and again. I’ll trust that the memories of the milestones and seemingly mundane moments alike will drip into my mind again and again, so long as I live and write.

And then just perhaps, one day, these stories about motherhood won’t be about forgetting at all.

They’ll be about sharing and remembering, so that no mother, ever feels alone it.

With love,
Kiya

Ps. Would love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

Before I Forget

Notes on pregnancy and learning to remember.

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