“It’s Life Jim, but not as we know it!”

This famous line from Star Trek immediately comes to mind whenever Kenina Court stops to think about being a mother. When her journey into motherhood began, life as she knew it was as a successful corporate accountant, working as the chief financial officer for a group of companies in West Auckland.

From the outside, she might have appeared to have the perfect existence: a husband she adored, who was her best friend and the rock in her life; a fantastic job that she loved and which paid well; a dream home being built in Albany; a dinky car; and overseas trips at least once, or even twice, a year. They didn’t have to worry about counting the pennies because they had enough for everything they wanted.

She went into pregnancy the same way she went into everything; “Here’s a situation, there’s no point complaining about it because it’s not going to change, so get through it as best you can.” As the pregnancy advanced, she became more excited about it, particularly as she bought every book she could find on the subject and started to see and understand what was happening to her body and to her baby. Her life carried on as normal; she was still doing pretty long hours at work and managing the building of their new home. In fact she worked until eight days before the baby was born as things at work were so busy that she didn’t feel as though she could leave. It was only because of her mum’s insistence that she would need a break before the baby came that she eventually stopped.

Looking back she realised she was blissfully unaware of what would happen to her life once the baby arrived. She thought she’d give birth, be back at work within a few months, and everything would continue just as before. She had this picture in her mind of what life would look like with a baby, and there was no real difference between ‘BC’ and ‘AB’ (Before Children and After Birth). She didn’t know it then, but clearly she had some lessons to learn. As Kenina says, “there is nothing like the introduction of children to completely remove you from your comfort zone!”

Excerpt from the book “Mum’s The Word – About Mums, By Mums, For Mums” A collection of stories by 12 mothers including: Ann Andrews, Kenina Court, Lisa Er, Brenda Kirk, Lina Long, Helen Macky, Debbie Mayo-Smith, Robyn Pearce, Marlene Smith, Vanessa Sunde, Raewyn Weller and Aunty Bea Yates.