Mother's Day: 'I love being needed'

As told to Aroha Awarau*

Three New Zealand mothers talk about their experiences - a 'miracle' baby, parenting as a trans woman and what it's like to have three sets of twins.

'I have to run a tight ship'

Tauranga caregiver Tressa Simonsen has three sets of twin sons.

"Whenever I go into town, or I'm out and about, I'm known as the mother who carried and gave birth to three sets of fraternal twins - and they are all boys. Apparently, the odds of giving birth to three sets of twins are 500,000 to one. There's Sharaz and Shaqiel, who are 24, Daklan and Darius, who are 15 and Kelly and Kramer, and are 13. My twins have three separate fathers. I also have two grandsons.

There has been no medical explanation of why I've had three sets of twins. All I've been told was that I must be overly fertile, and I'd release two eggs at a time. When I carried all my twins, the surgeons and specialists said how lucky I was to have no complications or deformities because the chances of these happening for multiple births are really high. To this day, they are all healthy and none of them have had any major health problems.

I've raised my sons on my own and saying it was very challenging is an understatement, but I don't know any different. I was an only child, and I didn't have siblings growing up. The two set of younger twins have been like raising quadruplets because they are only two years apart.

I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia and rheumatoid arthritis back in 2012, and menopause has hit me. My poor sons! That has been a real challenge on our whole family, as you could imagine. Mummy's not as fit and well as I have always been.

Being mum to three sets of twins means that life isn't consistent and there is never a dull moment. We have never lived in a home big enough for all of us. It's always like marae-styles in our whare. I have to run a tight ship. They've all gone to school, they play sports, there's been so many school drop offs and pickups. My boys have been amazing and have worked together to help.

Feeding six boys is like feeding six adults. I don't know where they put all the food. We have tried to live off the land as much as possible. My gardens are growing, and we milk the cows.

Now that my eldest twins have left home, and the two sets of teenaged twins are at high school, believe it or not, I'm starting to feel the empty nest syndrome. I love being a mother. I love being needed and caring for my six sons."

'People say I'm not a mother because I'm not a woman'

Lexie Matheson ONZM, is a New Zealand transgender activist, entertainer, and educator. She has four children.

"There's a criticism that anti-trans people use against me and against other people like me. They say that I am not a mother because I'm not a woman. They say that I'm a man in a dress, that motherhood is something special for cisgender women. Yes, it is special for cisgender women. But there are a lot of women in the world who can't physically have children, who still have the right to call themselves mothers.

I'm used to this type of criticism and the problem with being used to it is you accept it. I push back against it, and one of the ways I push back is that I just clock the critics. If I can talk to someone who's interested in my journey and who is an interesting person to talk to, who wants to know about my journey, I'll talk to them. I'm not going to waste my time anymore talking with people who just want to hurt me.

It's always a surprise to find out that I've got four children and was once a husband and a father. I was married in 1966 and there were two children as a result of that marriage, That marriage fell over because I wasn't ready to be a married person. I then got involved with another relationship and another daughter was born.

I've known since I was eight that I was transgender. I didn't know what the hell to do about it. I got involved with people and didn't want to hurt them. I was a closet cross-dresser for a long time, and my behaviours, my sexual promiscuity and drug use were a signal to anybody who was looking that I was not in a good place. I sought the help that I needed and discovered it was possible to transition. I started my transition in 1997.

I thought I would be a single older person, having a nice job and a nice apartment with some friends. I didn't expect that I would be marketable as a partner. Then doing some work theatre work in Wellington, I met my current wife Cushla. We became friends and it became obvious that there was something more. We talked about getting married. We agreed that marriage would be a good idea so then I had to ask the logical next question; did she want to have children? I would have been quite happy at that stage if she'd said no. I'd have been able to go ahead with my transition and do all my things without worrying about anything. We got married, and Finn, our son, is a wedding night baby. He was conceived, my last act as a functioning male was to start the journey of being a parent again. He's 21 now and I'm in my 80th year. He's the absolute joy of my life.

I think Finn's very lucky, to have mothers like Cush and me. And it was good to conceive a child out of love. we share a lot as a family. We do things together, like share in Finn's passion for karate and support him in all of his endeavours. Finn found that there were kids at school who wanted to ask him questions about what's it like to have two mums. His answer has always been the same, it's all he's ever known."

'It was a challenging journey to become a mother'

Qiane Matata-Sipu (Te Waiohua, Waikato, Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Pikiao, Cook Islands) is an award-winning journalist, photographer, visual artist and activist. She has a six-year-old daughter, Haeata te Kapua.

"It's been very significant that I've had the opportunity to birth a child and have a healthy, wonderful, and very fierce kōtiro because it was a challenging journey to become a mother.

My husband, Willie, comes from a big whanau. He has 10 siblings. I come from a small family. When we got together as teenagers, we always thought we'd have a big family and we'd be able to get pregnant easily.

I was diagnosed with polycystic ovarian syndrome when we first started properly trying. After the diagnosis, I remember going to my car and ringing my mum and crying, because I didn't know if I'd be able to have a baby. We tried various ways to get pregnant. We tried various types of fertility treatments, they're not cheap! We tried mātauranga Māori methods, romiromi, taking away things like dairy and carbs in our diet. We tried for six years of intense treatments and disappointment before deciding to put a stop to it.

I'm a journalist and so I wrote about my infertility experience for Mana magazine. I needed to write about it to get it out of my system, my whānau thought it might help me to move on. Then soon after the article was published - I fell pregnant naturally and we had our miracle child.

We were in Australia when I discovered that I was pregnant. I was cramping really bad; I was moody and I was expecting my ikura (period). After a few days of feeling like this, I said to my husband that I feel like I need to take a pregnancy test. He told me not to do it because he didn't want me to be disappointed and didn't want it to ruin our holiday. I told him that I needed to know because there was something going on with my body. We went to a supermarket to get a pregnancy test and I took it into a public bathroom in a camping area in Byron Bay. As I was waiting for the results, I remember scrolling on Instagram and there was a women's magazine cover with a celebrity mother celebrating Mother's Day. I remember reading it and thinking of people like me who struggle to become mothers and feeling negative towards the celebration of Mother's Day. Then, I looked down at the test and saw two lines. I'd never seen two lines on a pregnancy test before. I hyperventilated, washed my hands and walked towards my husband. I was crying and then I'd laugh, then I'd talk to myself. There were 50,000 emotions going through my body.

I gave birth to our daughter Haeata te Kapua on a super moon, she is now six years old. She is the splitting image of her dad but when she opens her mouth, then she is her mother.

Four years after Haeata te Kapua was born, I fell pregnant again and had a miscarriage. I felt a great sense of loss and grief. We dealt with it by coming together as a whānau. I was adamant that we were going to be open with each other and speak about it. So many of us don't talk about the fact that we've lost children, we've miscarried children, we've had issues of fertility. It's not something that we as a society talk about easily.

Our daughter's name means the beam of light that broke through the clouds of darkness. She's come into this world very equipped with the knowledge of who she is and how she got to be here."

*Aroha Awarau (Ngāti Maru, Ngāti Porou) is a journalist based in Auckland.