Honey Hireme-Smiler: "People want to put you in a box." Photo / Photosport
Honey Hireme-Smiler: "People want to put you in a box." Photo / Photosport
One day, you’re lying in a hospital bed, holding the baby you’ve just given birth to and wondering if there’s anything more beautiful on earth.
The next day, you’re lugging crates of beer at the Putāruru pub, breastmilk soaking your shirt.
My introduction to motherhood was a bit of a shock. A few hours after Karasharn was born, we transferred to the flash birthing unit and stayed there one night before I had to get to work and help Mum and Dad reopen the Putāruru Hotel.
The first time I looked in the mirror, I freaked out. I’d been flat-chested all my life, but suddenly I had these huge boobs, and they were so sore.
Trying to get the baby to latch on and feed at first was more demanding than any beep test.
Before a stream of whānau arrived to meet Karasharn, I watched as Koko lifted the baby out of his car seat and held him on the couch, tears rolling down his face. I hadn’t seen Koko cry since.
Nan passed away, but these two had an instant bond. Karasharn brought new life and joy to our home.
In the afternoon, Koko took us to the pub to help with the opening.
The Putāruru Hotel is a huge building and it was a hive of activity even before its doors opened. Karasharn and I settled in the lounge bar where the fire was roaring, but I was soon pitching in.
It was a real whānau affair. Aunty Sally and Uncle Hina were helping my parents run the pub, a couple of uncles were on the doors and Poppa Bo was driving the courtesy van.
As I hovered from room to room, different people took turns holding the baby. If he made a little squawk, I’d come back and feed him.
Soon patrons began flooding into the public bar.
The restaurant was booked out. We had a reggae band playing and it was packed ... by 10pm we were running out of beer. We had to sidestep the people dancing and singing to get to the wholesale shop at the other end of the hotel, grab beer kegs and wheel them back to the bar. But they were draining quickly.
Even with the fresh stitches from my episiotomy, I was carrying crates up from the dingy little cellar. We had to close at 11.30pm because the whole town had shown up and drank the pub dry.
In contrast, my milk had come in and was leaking everywhere – I had to change my top twice and get on with it.
In the meantime, the baby was sleeping peacefully in the flat upstairs. He was already settling into our crazy pace of life — and I was in no hurry to slow down.
The national rugby league tournament was coming up and I’d planned to be ready for it. But that was before Karasharn’s arrival was delayed by two weeks.
In the week after he was born, the Waikato team asked me if I could turn out for them, because they were short of players. The team were driving to Christchurch the following week, and I was welcome to bring the baby with me.
I started expressing my breastmilk and testing if Karasharn would take a bottle. I figured if I could express enough for four days, maybe he could stay at home with my parents.
I told them, “I’m just going to quickly shoot down to Christchurch, play these couple of days at nationals and then fly back.”
They were okay with taking care of this newborn, even if they were still in the early days of running a pub.
Ten days after I’d had my son, I took turns driving the coach’s Ford Falcon through the night and started playing league the day after we arrived in Christchurch. I doubt my midwife would have approved.
I’d gone for two or three jogs before we left and I was nowhere near fit. But they appointed me as captain and we had to face the might of Auckland first up. I played three games that day, expressing milk in between. We were a young team and we got slammed throughout the tournament.
Honey Hireme-Smiler's new book.
Before I flew home on Saturday night, I was shocked to hear my name called in the tournament team, which was effectively the Kiwi Ferns side. Really? When I’m still so far from getting back to my best? But to be honest, my main reason for going had been to get back in the Kiwi Ferns.
I wanted to test my body and, although it probably wasn’t the best time to do so, I made it through. I played every minute of every game, at centre or fullback trying to avoid the big contacts, and I ran in a few tries. The plan was to run around people – not run into them.
I reckon I unconsciously adapted my game, knowing my body was far from where it had been, and somehow it knew to get through two intense days of league.
But I was so happy to come home to my baby, who was already transforming my life.
I took Karasharn for his six-week vaccinations and he woke up grizzly the next morning. It was unlike him, so I put it down to the jabs. But when I picked him up, he screamed in pain. He was burning up and when he wouldn’t feed, I knew something must be very wrong.
We’d stayed at the pub that night, so I ran down the street with the baby in my arms, burst through the doors of the medical centre and cried, ‘What’s wrong with him?’
Our GP, Dr Rosie, took one look at Karasharn and called an ambulance. En route to Waikato Hospital, he had a seizure. I held him close all the way there, terrified.
Within minutes of arriving at the emergency department, he was surrounded by doctors and nurses, trying to get an IV line into the tiny veins in his arms that were now limp. They asked me to step back because he was really ill. It was the worst moment of my life.
They suspected Karasharn had contracted an infection, so they did a lumbar puncture. Mum and Dad had followed us to the hospital, and Dad threatened to punch someone when he heard our baby screaming his lungs out as they tried to insert the needle between the bones of his spine.
Karasharn was put into the high-dependency unit, where we were told he had meningitis. For those first 24 hours, we knew it was touch and go whether he’d survive. When, on the fourth day, he broke out in a rash, patches of purple and red all over his little body, I was beside myself with fear again. They reassured me it was a good thing – a sign the infection was passing through.
They told us we were lucky I got him to the doctors as fast as I did or it could have been a very different story.
We spent 10 days in the hospital before Karasharn was well enough to leave; my parents were beside us all the way. Doctors said the long-term effects of the infection would be on his hearing, and he ended up having seven sets of grommets throughout his childhood. Otherwise, he fully recovered from meningitis, and I knew how lucky we were. I’ve never been so scared in all my life, frightened I’d lose this special gift I’d only just received.
It only strengthened this innate bond I had with this tough little fighter. I knew we were going to be sweet.
Honey Hireme married Rochelle Smiler in a ceremony at Waikato Hospital's chapel in 2019.
I had massive Fomo when the Kiwi Ferns played, and won, two tests against Australia while I was pregnant. I’d had such an epic league season in 2003 and I wanted more. I’d do absolutely everything to play in the national side again.
When I came home from those 2004 nationals, I was bruised and battered, my legs black and blue. But it gave me a starting point: Okay, now we go. I launched myself back into serious training after that.
Next to the Putāruru pub was the old bottle store, which I converted into a gym using a lot of Dad’s gym equipment and my big stereo. I invited a local artist who frequented the pub to paint murals on the walls, so he drew Stacey Jones and Tana Umaga. It became my training spot.
I started hanging out with the NFX Crew again and returned to playing netball for fitness. Next thing I was running power poles. I got fit quickly and dropped a lot of weight.
I breastfed Karasharn for seven months, but then I got sick and was told I was severely anaemic. An iron injection in the butt set me right.
In early 2005, I flew straight back into the sevens for Aotearoa Māori – where we won the Hong Kong Sevens for a fourth straight year – and had a Kiwi Ferns camp. I was playing rugby for Tokoroa Southern United women’s team.
But women’s league in Waikato had dried up. There weren’t enough teams to make a competition anymore, so I needed to find a club in Auckland. Papakura Sea Eagles were the closest to home, so I asked Rona Peters if I could come and play with her side.
Rona was a rising star who’d had to wait till she turned 16 before becoming one of the youngest ever Kiwi Ferns. I was seriously impressed when I saw her play halfback for Auckland at the 2004 nationals. She was one of the hardest hitters in league, with a clever kicking game.
We were at a Kiwi Ferns camp together in early 2005 when I asked Rona about joining her club. Within an hour, I had a text message from her parents, Alwyn and Georgina, who were the Sea Eagles’ coach and manager. They ended up taking both me and Karasharn under their wings.
Rona’s two sisters, Kahurangi and Hilda Peters, were also outstanding footballers and would go on to play for the Kiwi Ferns. Hilda had a son four months older than Karasharn, and another Kiwi Ferns player in our club side, Kathleen Wharton, had given birth to her son one month before me.
Georgina Peters looked after all three babies so we could train. She was a supermum. Our three boys grew up on the sidelines.
I’d always seen myself as the little country bumpkin, wary of big city life, but I started making new mates in Auckland, like the Peters sisters and Laura Mariu. I also quickly fell into the huge club rivalries that existed in the Auckland competition.
In my first year, we won the championship for the first time, after Richmond and Otahuhu had dominated it for years. Our team came out of nowhere to start winning title after title. With that, we became a hated team and tensions ran high – which led to me getting into a fight off the field.
It was with one of my Kiwi Ferns teammates, Vicki Letele. We got caught up in a scuffle at the club and the police came.
No one was arrested, but the club stood me down for a game, which was fair enough, and I had to apologise to my teammates at training. The following weekend we were playing arch-rivals Richmond. The club held over my suspension for a week so I could play in that important game. Vicki and I got over our fallout and became mates.
I struggled with being consumed by this club rivalry. It wasn’t nasty, but it was hardcore.
I knew there was always a target on my back – the outsider who’d joined a young team which was suddenly kicking everyone’s butt.
We didn’t have much to do with Karasharn’s dad, but around the time Karasharn was two, I’d started seeing a lovely guy from Putāruru.
Then I met a woman through rugby league and, for a short while, I was seeing them both. I really fell for this girl, so I broke it off with him.
She was living in Auckland, so I was either spending time with her up there or she’d come down to Putāruru. I told people she was ‘my teammate’, but I think they clicked on quickly – and I was worried because my mum didn’t know.
It wasn’t until I moved to Hamilton with Karasharn that I got up the courage to tell Mum I was in a relationship with a woman. Mum came up to stay for the weekend and I explained I wanted her to find out from me rather than town gossip.
Her response was, “All good Bub; I knew she was more than just your friend.”
Relieved, I asked her to have the conversation with Dad for me.
I’d tried to block out that part of my life for a while, concerned about what my friends and family would think, but they were cool with it from the get-go.
‘So, you finally came out,’ they said. ‘We’ve known for ages.’
I find the labelling of sexual orientation interesting. People want to put you in a box. Back then the language was you were either straight or gay and it was always said in a negative tone if you were gay. I was just Honey and happy to be with whoever I wanted to be with.
Honey: My Story of Love, Loss and Victory Honey Hireme-Smiler with Suzanne McFadden published by Bateman Books, RRP $39.99, Release Date October 2024
