To my daughter, on the eve of your 10th birthday

I can’t quite believe you are going to be 10 tomorrow. Double digits.

This time 10 years ago you were still all curled up inside my body, one of your wee knees wedged under my ribcage. Not due to appear for two weeks yet.

But, on May 8 2006, you decided it was time to make your way into the world. As I dozed on and off at around 5am, hearing the seagulls squawking on the roof, I drifted awake as I felt some pain coming and going. I began to wonder if this was ‘it’.

After an hour or so I decided to have a shower. As I reached over to turn the controls, my waters broke with ferocious speed and noise but, neatly, over the bathmat.

I had a brief moment of panic, then a wave of calm washed over me. After my shower I went upstairs to get dressed. Daddy was still fast asleep, so I leaned over and said:

‘I don’t think you’ll be going to work today.’
‘Why?’ he replied sleepily
‘Because my waters just broke all over the bathroom floor.’
There was a long pause.
‘Then I’ll need a cup of coffee.’

We made our way to the hospital at around 9am and I spent the day pacing around. Daddy says I made mooing noises like a cow.

I think I shouted a very, very, very bad swearword at the top of my voice just minutes before you were born. I hope you didn’t notice…

At 5.37pm, the pain was replaced with the sweetest and most sudden relief I had ever felt. You were here.

I asked if you were a boy or a girl, and the midwife suggested that Daddy tell me. But he couldn’t see for the cord, which was so twisted it looked like a telephone cable – you were already a gymnast before you were born, turning somersaults in my tummy!

‘It’s a girl,’ the midwife said, as she put you in my arms. Your dark eyes were wide open, and you didn’t make a sound. No screaming, no crying. Just taking everything in.

And that’s still the way you are now. Steady in nature, calm and good-tempered. You see everything that goes on, but you don’t need to be right in the middle of it.

You don’t seek out drama, you don’t need to be at the front of the queue. You never feel the need to be the biggest or best at everything.

I love your sense of humour and fun. I like the way you put your outfits together – every colour and print all at once, like a grenade’s gone off in a paint factory.

You are a kind and loyal friend. You don’t exclude anyone and yet you don’t yearn to be in anyone’s gang. You stand up for people who need your help and you don’t tolerate being told what to do. Apart from by me. Obviously.

You have been a loving big sister right from the second you met your brother. You have never once been jealous towards him. You bring out the best in each other, and I hope you will always stay as close as you are now.

You are also UNBELIEVABLY messy. And stubborn. And argumentative. And sometimes too laid back for your own good. I’d love to see you be brave and push yourself a bit harder, because I know that if you were just a little bit bolder you could achieve even more.

But I hope you never change. Always be a dreamer and keep your love of creating and imagining. Keep seeing things from other people’s points of view. Stay kind and caring, stick up for those who need it, and speak out against unfairness. Keep that infectious laugh and your sparkling sense of fun.

Nurture the feeling I know you’ve got that says you don’t want to be treated differently because you are a girl. Don’t don’t let anyone tell you how a girl should behave. Wear that Batman t-shirt with your Unicorn trousers and eyeshadow on your cheeks if you want to.

Keep cartwheeling across this world forever, and never, ever let anyone tell you that you can’t do something. You can do anything.

But most of all, always be yourself, because you are absolutely perfect just the way you are.

Happy 10th birthday Moonbeam. I love you.

(Also, please tidy your room.)

Mummy.

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