Liam says my mum gives presents if someone sneezes. Actually, that’s not true, because loud sneezes are one of the things that make her really cross. But still, gifts are her love language, and I’m the same. So it was already an interesting dynamic that the man I met and love and married shares his birthday with the day St Valentine met his untimely end. Who gets gifts? Do we just throw out the commercial holiday made to bring more money to greedy supermarkets, or do I get him two gifts and he still sneaks out for flowers/chocolates/wine on February 13th (or 14th…or 15th)? In previous years, we’ve gone with the second option.

Until two years ago, when on this day, we were gifted another Valentine. I’m not willing to take responsibility for poor planning on this one. Granted, our family planning historically has looked like more family and less planning, but on this one we can’t take any credit. I’ve already talked about his arrival to our family on here, so suffice it to say that we had very little idea we’d be sharing our meal for £15 with a tiny newborn that year. But that day changed our family dynamic once again, with a new little one to be grateful for. But what do birthdays look like when you weren’t the one who gave birth?

The very idea of a birthday is to celebrate someone’s birth, their arrival into the world. And, like my mum, I’m definitely up for that. I love giving gifts, I love making that person feel special. And I’m also very nostalgic. I love remembering dates and days and talking memories. But the truth is, that for a lot of people, birthdays often bring a measure of pain in the memories too.

As a student midwife, I quickly learned that the movie idealised birth story, where the perfectly made-up mother with gentle devoted partner pops out a beautiful completely round-headed forceps-mark free baby who is immediately bundled into a pure white crocheted blanket is just that – a story. Birth involves pain. For many people, the pain of labour is put behind them, and they embrace life with a newborn. But I think for possibly the majority of people, there is history that comes with them into the labour room, and that will go home with them too.

In those rooms, I saw mothers who had waited for this day for many many years. They brought fear and anxiety into the delivery suite, and a brave hope that their dreams might at last come true. I saw mothers whose tears of joy were mingled with tears of loss – they’d lost their own mother, or father, a previous baby, or the father of their child, and the birth of a newborn was an intense reminder of that person they desperately wished was still a part of their life. I saw mothers afraid of who their partner was, but they were birthing his baby and clinging to the ideal that he would be who said he could be. I saw mothers who were children themselves, with their own mothers nervously stroking their hair. I saw mothers who hadn’t anticipated this baby, and didn’t know how they felt, how they would bond, if they even wanted to take it home. I saw mothers whose baby was born, and it wasn’t the perfect baby they had dreamed of, it would have needs they didn’t know if they could manage, and their world came crashing down. I saw mothers who knew the baby they would birth would never breathe. Their baby had left earth before it arrived, and those heartbreaking deliveries were sombre with intense, raw grief. I saw mothers whose baby was born far too soon, and they were afraid for its life. And I saw mothers whose baby would be whisked away, because it was too unsafe to send them home to the chaos and abuse and trauma there.

What I learned in those rooms, through my own experiences, and through being privileged to witness so many others, is that often the words ‘happy birthday’ are an oxymoron. Often a birth day is not pure joy and elation. Even in the births of my first three children, I carry buried pain alongside beautiful memories, whole stories in themselves. For my youngest three children, their birthdays are mingled with huge loss. Their loss of safety, of childhood innocence, of the only world they’d known, and the loss of the mother who gave birth to them. I can’t even imagine what goes through her mind on those days. And for me there’s sadness too – all the first moments missed, and all the pain I wish I could have saved them from. But this is life in a broken world, a whirling mess of joy and heartache, a see-sawing of hurt and healing, and with every birth delivered in pain there is promise of hope. A new life, a new story to be written. A new person gifted to this world for a reason, capable of being loved and held and dreamed for, and of loving and holding and dreaming.

I think it’s important to acknowledge the whole story, even if only to myself. I know I’m not alone in these days of mixed emotions. When we celebrate birthdays, I’m not pretending that all birth days are happy days. And I’m not trying to patch over a hard story. But I am celebrating this person. This gift of life. This day that marks another year on earth for them, another year of their unique personality and character and skills changing the world and the people around them because of their individual design. Despite the minor challenges of the two cake-making, double gift-buying, ‘where do I hang all the cards?’ issues related to the double birthday, I feel so honoured that we get to celebrate this little boy. People sometimes tell us that the children are lucky to have us. I don’t think lucky is the right word for such a start to life, but I feel incredibly privileged to have him, to be the one to wrap his presents, light his candles, and listen to him walking around the house still singing ‘happy birthday’ to himself, four days later.

As for Valentine’s Day, I still sneaked it in, with heart confetti on the dinner table and a chocolate for each child. I’m okay with letting it go for myself these days- I’m just hoping for double presents on my birthday to make up for it…