The Lovettes (Saffron): A Beautiful New Baby Girl, Joy, Terror & 2 Months To Go

Madonna. Before Queen Beyoncé came at us with her messages of buying her own stuff, strong independent women, not being ready for jelly….there was Madonna. She’s more my era and her image of a strong woman in charge of her own destiny was present throughout my more impressionable years. My status as an only child only helped buffer my desire to be an island and to make sure I didn’t have to rely on anyone for anything. After 35 years of what I thought was a satisfactory, self sufficient, perhaps selfish existence, one sniff of Mr Lovell brought all that crashing down.

On the 8th June, amazingly, I became a mother for the second time around. Our beautiful daughter, Dallas Valentine, was born and I find myself no longer an island but matriarch to my own little tribe of four (two human, two pugs).

My overwhelming feeling since she was born is one of utter contentment. It helps that she has been as good as gold, gifting us with a reliable schedule of eat, sleep, poop, repeat.

Instead of crying she seems to prefer making her requests via various bird sounds – the peacock, the pheasant and my personal favourite, the happy shuffling chicken cluck.

No doubt being free of work stress for a few months is buoying my mood, as well as some overdue summer weather, but nothing measures against the bliss I am feeling when we all congregate on the king size, dogs snoring, baby clucking.

The flip side of this never anticipated joy of creating our family is sheer terror. Terror of the fragility of life and how much my entire happiness is now invested in these beings we have created. Protect, encourage, nourish, cherish is now my daily mantra. But would I go back to a simple island life to avoid this feeling?? Not a chance.

Our humanist celebrant Zena recently posted a passage from The First Bad Man by Miranda July which pretty much hits the spot when living the joy/fear paradox of finding your soulmate and having a family together:

Sometimes I looked at her sleeping face, the Iiving flesh of it, and was overwhelmed by how precarious it was to love a living thing. She could die simply from lack of water. It hardly seemed safer than falling in love with a plant.

Tending my little seedlings are my new obsession. Staring at them while they are sleeping and once in a while giving them a little poke, just to make sure they’re ok.

So it’s fair to say the wedding planning has been well and truly shelved for the last couple of weeks. As I’m recovering from a Caesarian I’m trying to stay calm about ‘the dress’ situation. I chose my dress last year, before getting pregnant, from Carina Baverstock Couture, as they had a selection of David Fielden designs available which captured the 1930s old Hollywood glamour I had in my mind. After we had our 3 month scan I contacted them to let them know our news and we agreed to measure up sooner rather than later. They gave me great confidence that they are experienced in helping get the best fit for changing bodies when the unexpected happens! My first and second dress fittings have also been pushed back as close as possible to the wedding date itself to give me the best chance of losing the muffin top.

Early on in my ‘research’ into wedding dress ideas I came across this little number from Jean Paul Gaultier (that’s the one below right!)

Si happened to catch sight of it over my shoulder as I was googling and pretty much fell to his knees pleading with me to ‘rein it in a bit’, and asking where could we source a live owl from anyway?!

As compromise is surely a cornerstone of a healthy relationship I did acquiesce on this one and instead found this fantastic headdress for my page boy from Paradise Gypsies (above right!). The quality is really amazing and it may be that the bride has something similar for the evening if not for the aisle!

Extending this theme I was also looking at teepees for the children to play in during the afternoon of the wedding day. In the end I decided to make my own to save on the budget and found a fantastic vintage Butterick sewing pattern and a secondhand book of Native American stencils on ebay. Etsy and ebay are definitely my DIY bride best friends at the moment. Especially now we can go wild looking for a wedding outfits for our new addition. Pink is go!

While I was in the hospital, I did spend some time writing Our Story for our Zena. A humanist wedding puts a lot of importance on getting to know you as a couple and incorporating this into the words used within the ceremony itself. We first met up with Zena last summer and will be meeting again next month. In addition to face or face meetings, we have completed a questionnaire together about our likes, dislikes, who is attending the wedding and what elements we would like to include such as music or readings from friends or family.

We have asked three of our friends to be involved with this and Zena has contacted them directly so we won’t know the content of their speeches until the day itself. Our other piece of homework is then to separately write Our Story of how we met, to present day, without discussing these with each other. Zena will then weave them together into one reading for the day. I’m really excited to hear everyone’s contributions to this part of the day and it puts the focus back on making pledges in front of loved ones, rather than what can be a pretty bland “insert names here” registry office approach.

So exciting times ahead, the countdown is officially on – just over 2 and a half months to go until I cement my status as ‘The Luckiest Goyl in the Woyld’, with all of my happy tribe around me.

Love Saffron xxx

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Saffron Freeman is marrying her fiance Simon Lovell on 5th September 2015
Location: Camel Quarry House in Cornwall
Photographer:  Matt Gillespie Photography