Name: Sinead Corcoran Dye
Mumma to: Genevieve but we call her Vivie
Job: Writer
On my bedside table... My Frank Green water bottle, my most valuable possession - a nipple shield and an essential oil diffuser. I put it on during night feeds and close my eyes and pretend I’m at a day spa.
I'm reading… My baby is only a week and a half old so I’ll be honest I can barely keep my eyes open so I’m not reading anything except encouraging messages from fellow mums telling me I’m going to survive and it’s going to get easier. But I’m hanging out for Dolly Alderton’s new book, Good Material. She’s my favourite writer, and even if you don’t read her books you should follow her on IG if only to see photos of her cat.
I'm watching….. Catastrophe. I’ve already seen it but I’m making my husband rewatch it with me because it’s so funny and the new parents in it remind me so much of our dynamic as a couple.
I'm listening to ….. Daylight by Taylor Swift on repeat. It so sums up my awful pregnancy but then how I felt when I was handed my daughter. My hormones are cooked right now and listening to it makes me bawl.
Favourite place in the world...The Boat Shed hotel on Waiheke, with my husband. He took me there for my birthday for our first getaway together when we were newly dating, and we spent our honeymoon there four years later. It’s a little luxury lodge overlooking the water where you can stay in a lighthouse and they send your breakfast up in a food elevator. On our first trip there for my birthday I climbed into the food elevator and then slithered out so I could “reinact my birth” for my husband. He was very disturbed. Right now with a newborn, walking to the lounge is as far as I’m travelling, but I can’t wait to take our daughter there one day.
How was your pregnancy experience
In a word - horrific. I had hyperemesis and my obstetrician says it was the worst case he’d ever seen in his twenty year career. I vomited relentlessly for nine months and it was physically and emotionally crippling. At full term I weighed about half what I did before I was pregnant, and I look back on photos of myself from just a few weeks ago and it’s heartbreaking, I look like a ghost. But as soon as my daughter was born the nausea stopped immediately. I still don’t have my appetite back as I think my body is still traumatised and trying to remember what food is, but I can’t wait to want to eat again and be able to nourish and repair my body, especially as I’m breastfeeding. I’m hanging out for the ceviche from Inca, that’s my favourite meal and what I dreamed of all through my pregnancy. That and about twelve chilli margaritas.
How are you finding newborn life and motherhood
A baptism by fire. Recovering from a c section on no sleep while a baby screams at your boiling hot, engorged boobs is an indescribable hell that nothing can possibly prepare you for. But my daughter is already smiling, and those tiny, smug smirks are getting me through. And I have an incredible husband who always puts my sleep before his and looks after his girls like nothing else. Plus, he’s already a dad to two little boys so he knows how to do this baby thing. I highly recommend having a kid with someone who’s done it before, it’s like having a mini midwife for a partner.
Favourite piece from the Dear Mumma collection
The maternity pajamas in chocolate satin.