Three teens and a baby: is the Italian way of life better for my unborn child?

‘Very few things in life are not greatly improved by a few days in Venice.’ This is the very first thing I wrote, on the very first page of a notepad, bought especially for this trip. 

And within hours of arriving in Italy, finding our Airbnb down a tiny backstreet of Castello, beneath colourful lines of washing and bathed in the sweet smell of jasmine, then making for the nearest café under the trees of the Giardini to fill up on coffee, the improvement in my body and mind are palpable. 

I watch old ladies emerging from their garden gates, pulling shopping bags behind them, dressed immaculately in head-to-toe brown clothes they’ve worn and looked after for decades, off to get their morning paper and fresh tomatoes. 

They get a ‘ciao!’ from everyone they pass. Groups of teenagers jump off the vaporetto, and walk to school together, chattering, laughing and trying to chat each other up. Mums with babies are out for a morning walk. They look like mums everywhere – tired and worn. But not stressed. 

There’s a pace of life here, several thousand miles an hour slower than the one I have just left behind at home. And I like it. 

I start to think about our baby, and the life he or she is going to have. The new life I would like to have, from now on. Less anxious. Less frightened. With more dolce in my vita. 

The next thing I write in my notepad is:

‘Dear Boombox, (this is what we are calling our unborn baby. It’s a long story but if you really want to know, I’ll write another column about it).

I am sitting in the sun, on the worn, stone step of an old doorway in a tiny, quiet campo in Venice. 

And I am thinking of you. 

I want to tell you some things. I find writing is the best way for me to talk to people. And I SO want to talk to you now. 

We don’t know who you are. 

We don’t know who you will be.

There have been many times in your short life so far, inside me, with bike crashes and bleeds, worries and scares, when we have not been sure IF you will be. 

None of these are your fault! It’s just the nature of nature. I now need to find a way to understand you, how you can be; and how I can be, for you. 

It’s why I’m sitting here right now, in this hot Venetian sun, breathing, after the longest period of hardly daring to breathe at all, or being able to. 

I believe we are all the sum of our experiences and the lives that have gone before us all shape our own.

So here is a little summary of our present. And, if Venice is kind to us in the next few days, your future. 

I am 42 years old. 

You are 12 weeks gestated. 

I weigh 50kgs. 

You weigh 14g and are the size of a fig, according to the internet, which you’ll learn all about one day, and I’ll tell you to switch it off and go outside to play.

You are currently not very approved of by certain people in my life. Neither, I’m sure, are your Dad and I.  

You might not be wanted, liked or accepted by your three older siblings. 

But you are wanted by me. By both of us, my lovely little fig.

You owe us nothing.

You don’t need to love us. 

It is for us, having created you, to do our best to raise you to be happy, healthy, and to nurture in you the ability to love.

This, we will try to do by loving you, listening to you, and allowing you to develop into who you are. 

I so look forward to finding out, over the days, months and many years I hope we will have together, who that will be, and watching you develop into the person you are. 

I can only try to be the best Mummy I can be. And I’m going to do that, starting right here, on this step, thinking of you. 

I love you already.’