(Not actually) FFS Friday (Tiger Birthday Edition)

I'm not as bendy as I used to be. Not as fit. Because I no longer go to the gym.

I no longer get to spend long, luxurious afternoons writing in coffee shops, over many cups of peppermint tea.

I can't go to the movies. Full stop.

I can't just catch up with friends without having to change the meeting time at least twice, because of Tiger's erratic sleeping patterns.

I can't fit into my old jeans.

I can't go to the toilet without an audience, or eat lunch when I'm hungry or do anything without commentating it (Now, Mummy is buttering her bread! Isn't this fun, Tigesy!).

I never get to sleep in.

FFS (For Fish-finger's Sake).

But you know what? I really, actually, truly, do not give even half a flying fish finger.

It's Tiger's half-birthday today. She is officially a Big Girl. She can roll! She can lift her whole chest up off the floor! She smacks her lips together when she's hungry. Soon, she will be able to eat food with lumps in it! She dresses in pants and tee shirts and even has her very own, very tiny pair of sunnies. 

When she came to us, Tiger was tiny - 2.1 kilograms of tiny and, two days after birth she was even tinier still, at 1.7. She had to lie in a special plastic crib, and Cackle Mummy and Daddy Bear weren't even allowed to touch her for the first couple of days, let alone hug her. Her breathing and heart rate were monitored. She had to be fed through a tube. She slept most of the day. For one night, she lay naked under a special blue light, and Cackle Mummy shed a tear at how small she was.

But I was also unbelievably proud of her strength.

Tiger never needed any help to breathe, or any medical intervention at all, part from that blue light and the feeding tube.  Even as small as she was, she constantly lifted her little bottom off the mattress. She graduated off feeding tube in record time, and we were able to bring her home a full three weeks earlier than expected, because of how well she was going.

Tiger was a fighter. Even before she was born, she endured two threatened miscarriages, three months of contractions and bleeding, one threatened preterm labour and a tumour on Mummy's placenta which was, in the end, the thing that meant Tiger came into the world six weeks early.

And as soon as she was in the world, Man, didn't Tiger own it.

I am so utterly, utterly filled with chest-puffing pride at my little girl. So strong and feisty and happy and determined and totally committed to rolling in the other direction ...

Bah to old jeans.

Bah to the gym.

Bah to the cinema. Bah to everything that I can't do and can't have, because what I do have is worth a million of everything else. I have Tiger and she is not a sacrifice. She is not a "giving up" or a "missing out". She is an absolute privilege. And today, on her half-birthday, I want to thank her, for every second of her life that I've been allowed to share.

She is my heart. 

She is phenomenally lovely.

~ Love, Miss Cackle

PS Read some actual FFS Friday at http://www.dearbabyg.com/