Freya Hill | Stories

One and the Same

I have gained almost 9kgs since I became pregnant with my daughter. When she was born, it was 3.850kg, or 8.5 pounds. Although I look like I have returned to my ‘pre baby size’, this is an optical illusion because I am still growing. With each breastfeed and each nappy change, the total sum of…

Simpler and Harder

Someone asked me the other day if I find taking care of my six month old baby equivalent work to a full-time job. I laughed and said “Yes, and then some.” Babies are intense. They require constant care, patience and love. Yet, they are also very simple. They simply need care, love and patience. I…

Grip

Even though I knew it was a bit of naive cliche, I did expect to be completely head over heels in love with my daughter from the moment I saw her. In reality, I was just relieved; so very relieved and so very tired. I hadn’t slept in almost 60 hours by the time she…

Us

I had expected that after the birth of my daughter, I would miss ‘me’. My independence, my body, my time, my sleep. In fact, I missed what I missed more was us; my husband and I. Our time together, our independence as a couple. It felt like we were floating adrift from each other; two…

Mother

When my daughter was five days old, my mother arrived to help us. I naively had thought we wouldn’t need help in the first days home. I was wrong. I called my mother in tears the second night we were home with our daughter. On the day my mother turned up at my house, I…

The Last Summer

I have many happy childhood memories spent at the local swimming pool. It was a large but simple complex, where I spent school swimming days and had swimming lessons in summer’s evenings. Occasionally we’d have a barbecue dinner with another family at the pools; my parents passing out plastic plates and opening bags of crisps….

Heartbeat

Heartbeat The morning we first saw you, the little flicker of you, started as rainy and wet. It was the first day of Spring, although it still felt very wintry. Your daddy had fixed the brakes on my bike, and I followed him up the hill from our house, on our bikes, in the dark…

Blessing

Blessing A couple of weeks ago I was standing in the chemist, with my 3 month old babe in her almost comically large buggy. Why did we feel we needed the widest buggy we could buy? I was there to buy cream for her, because her bottom was sore. I couldn’t bear to see her…

A Brief and Unusual Obligation

It was a brief interaction. He was in need of help but unwilling to accept it and clearly prone to impulse. Me, just a woman out for a morning jog, not expecting to have the fate of another life placed into my hands before I’d even had my morning shower. I had noticed him as I…

All This Love If You Need It

One out of four seemed a reasonable turn out, given our geographical spread these days. For Dad’s birthday last weekend, I was the sole kidult physically present to wish him a happy birthday. But on the morning of his birthday, there was a kind of digital party created, with first a video call to my…