~She spent 9 months waiting for you to arrive~ She spent every day talking to you, singing to you making sure you knew that she was here. She gave you kisses and snuggles, even though she couldn’t see or hear you. When it got closer to your Birth Day she begged and begged for you to come out. She would sprint around the house bringing toys to you hoping that you could see them and feel like popping out to play. The night you were born, she was the 3rd person to lay eyes on you. She woke up as you were emerging and came in to see you. I’ll never forget her face, her excitement, her squeal as she spoke your name for the first time “Otis!!!!!!!! My little brother Otis”. She ran out of the bathroom to get her toys, to show you, to play with you. Now after having you here for 8 weeks she’s falling more and more in love with you every day. You’re lucky to have this magical little guide to walk hand in hand with my Sun ☀️ And we’re all so blessed to have this beautiful, kind, caring and patient girl to be our teacher, our friend and our daughter. 💕18w~She spent 9 months waiting for you to arrive~ She spent every day talking to you, singing to you making sure you knew that she was here. She gave you kisses and snuggles, even though she couldn’t see or hear you. When it got closer to your Birth Day she begged and begged for you to come out. She would sprint around the house bringing toys to you hoping that you could see them and feel like popping out to play. The night you were born, she was the 3rd person to lay eyes on you. She woke up as you were emerging and came in to see you. I’ll never forget her face, her excitement, her squeal as she spoke your name for the first time “Otis!!!!!!!! My little brother Otis”. She ran out of the bathroom to get her toys, to show you, to play with you. Now after having you here for 8 weeks she’s falling more and more in love with you every day. You’re lucky to have this magical little guide to walk hand in hand with my Sun ☀️ And we’re all so blessed to have this beautiful, kind, caring and patient girl to be our teacher, our friend and our daughter. 💕
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This photo was taken the day I went into labour. I took it in the morning before we went out cubby building.
This was the last day as “just the two of us”. Just Edith and I at home making magic. Today was the first day with “just the three of us” home. Ricky went back to work and I went back to my little housewife role that I love so dearly. I cried when he left. But the day was beautiful and those moments where Otis slept Edith and I got little moments where it was just the two of us again. When Edith played on her own Otis and I got to experience moments with just the two of us as well. ✨ A wise guy said to me only two weeks ago “maybe this is just the spiritual path you’re meant to be on. Maybe through raising your babies you’re working on your inner self without even realising it”... and I totally think he was onto something 💕 ~ Three weeks of post partum bellies~
Just like that my body is slowly returning back to what it was... This time a bit more stretched, worn out and bouncy. The first time I was fucking mortified. I loved what my body had done but I think due to the birth I’d had I just couldn’t love my body as I felt it had let me down. So every stretch mark, scar and flabby bit was a reminder of... How shit my body was. It’s painful to even describe my body like that but at the time that was my mentality. A failure. Disgusting. Then you throw in some birth trauma and PTSD and the idea of intimacy and touch becomes a recipe for a flashback. I look at these photos, and the difference between 3 photos each a week a part and I’m amazed. The first one was the shower I had only 9 hours after Otis came Earthside, the second a week later, and the third a few days ago. I still have what they call a c-section shelf, old stretch marks and new but look at it?! Look at this body and what it has done. Housing two babies, birthing them and nourishing them. All while nourishing my own needs as well! What an incredible thing. I want to love this body with each and every inch of my being for what it has done and what it is capable of doing. Can I do that? Some days I would probably say no. But I’m working on loving it each and every day. Stroking each stretch mark, breathing in each breath, touching my face and admiring my hands... Each little step is a step towards falling in love with my body for what it is EVERY SINGLE DAY. Not just some days. You are a legend body and sometimes I wish I could just kiss you all over because you deserve it. A roller coaster of emotions thrashing you around to the point where you don’t know what to truly feel. You’re so happy, yet you are also the saddest you’ve been in your life when reality kicks in. Your family rhythm that you spent years perfecting is suddenly non-existent and between having your boobs out, changing nappies and trying to rest all you want is to snuggle your toddler who doesn’t understand why you’re so tired and can’t get down into the floor to play properly.
You long for your Yoni to be healed so that you can perhaps grasp a sense of ‘normal’ in yourself again with a moment with your partner. You miss the kicks in your belly, cry when you get in the shower as you birthed your baby in there and have never felt so powerful and alive... Yet that power seemed to slip away with the sleepless nights while you snuggle your newborn who has a tummy ache again, or the hours you spend trying to burp your baby and talk words of encouragement “I know you can get this poo out little guy”. You want to and know you should rest during the day but also want to soak in these moments as it’s the only time off your partner ever has, you know you should sleep but you want to hold your toddler so that they know they’re still there, you lay in bed slowly fall asleep only to be woken up with a little human needing more boob. You love everything in your life but are grieving what you were so used to... the snuggles you get with your baby are so precious, the sounds that they make as they latch onto your breast are so special, you’ve never seen your toddler so happy and in love with having her Dad home, visitors bring treats and food for you and this is the first time you’ve been able to have your feet up since you were pregnant the first time 💕 it’s pure bliss. This won’t last forever I know. And in a month I’ll be missing this bubble of quirky, tired, perfection but my oh my do you forget how hard it is coming off the pregnancy hormones and trying to readjust to a new rhythm. “This is the roller coaster of post partum theme park, keep your boobs out for baby and legs closed together at all times for optimal healing”! 😆 Isn't it funny how two experiences of the same thing can be so incredibly different? The memory of my last birth is already slowly slipping away and if anything it is making me sad that I cannot relive it again and again. Whereas the first time I did not even want to think about it, it was too painful to process and deal with.
The birth experience that I had last week was hands down the most incredible experience of my whole life. I still cannot believe I did it, that I pushed through and that laying next to me as I type this is my beautiful baby boy that was delivered in the comfort of our own home, into his Dad's arms. The day that I went into labour was such a beautiful one with my toddler. We had so much fun and had spent the afternoon exploring in the forest, building cubby houses with my sister and brother. I kept joking and saying "I wonder if this walk will put me into labour" and "I wonder if building this super, sick cubby will induce me". By the time we had got back to the car something felt different. Sure enough when we got home I started to get waves. I had of course been getting them for weeks and had been slowly losing my mucus plug but that afternoon there was another chunk and I could just feel in my body that it was time... Our little baby was ready to begin their journey Earthside. When my partner got home I was SOOOOOO excited. It was FINALLY happening! The last birth experiences was sort of robbed from me and this time I was going to do it, all on my own. I'd made a HUGE batch of pasta, finished some loaves of sourdough and just knew. I kept thinking to myself that perhaps this little baby was hanging in there until I had cleaned the lounge (birth space), dusted my birth altar and made my sourdough loaves.... All things I had completed earlier that day. Or maybe the baby just needed me to be 100% calm and getting out into nature with my toddler created that... Perhaps he heard how much fun we were having and wanted to be part of it too. We carried on with our usual routine... Dinner, bath time for Edith, then we started getting her ready for bed. I tried doing some yoga cards with Edith before bed and it just felt so gooooood to stretch my body, warm it up a bit. While I read her a bedtime story I could feel my body changing, my stomach dropping and more and more waves. It would have been about 8.00pm when I got in a bath. I was having waves over and over, watching my baby kick and my uterus contract... It was pretty wild. I spent an hour in there before getting into bed. 32 weeks pregnant. Feeling all the feels. Feeling emotional.
This week I've found that so many thoughts have crossed my mind. Compared to my last pregnancy I am often caught thinking more about how BIG this change is going to be. I know they say that going from one-two kids is meant to be much easier than going from no babies to one... But with a toddler who is truly showing some incredible emotional development at the moment (which is more often than not a tantrum and high pitched screech that makes your ears bleed), I find myself just plain exhausted. Not tired, not like I'm lacking anything in my diet... But just that I am truly exhausted as a whole. I am sure that I am not alone in this weird feeling of grief going on right now. The world is changing and the constant "new normal" and "things won't be the same again" is nothing short of terrifying to hear. I think that the fact I am pregnant during this weird time is just making me think "what the actual fuck, how can I be bringing a beautiful, innocent human into this world". And it's scary. So, so, so scary. I have roughly 12 weeks to go give or take. 12 weeks to prepare, 12 weeks to gear up for birth, 12 weeks til I become a Mum of two... And what am I doing that time? The total opposite of what I imagined I would be.
I had these visions of meeting other like minded Mums this year, creating more of a Community, finishing my Sacred Pregnancy course so that I could hold circles for other Mumma's to be, where we could hold each other, talk and fall into the flow that this journey of pregnancy is, getting out more to fun places like the park and the Library with my little one, having play dates and truly working on getting out of my comfort zone to make friends. We also had the intention of having another little 'Baby Celebration' to celebrate that we created life and a Blessingway which I truly believe is so important for mothers.... So yes, I am absolutely gutted at what's going on. We moved to a new town at the beginning of February this year... There were a number of reasons why but I felt an absolute breathe of relief when I realised that I could get out, socialise more and not be so isolated. I had spent so many months with just a toddler, my friends were all working, weekends a majority were partying (or working), my partner was working late, getting home later due to the drive to and from work, my family lived a min. of half an hour away (which does add up) and it really started impacting me closer to the end, closer to the day we moved I knew this is what I needed in order to thrive. We settled in, my family was just up the road, I could go out to places, explore, not be stuck in the car for longer distances... Oh my was it great. Fast forward to now... And I am more isolated than ever. This is a journal insert about how I am struggling with my pregnant body.
I find it really hard to work through past trauma and experiences... They take some time for me to process and really work through properly. That's why I am finding that with this second pregnancy it is quite hard to keep up with the processing and the dramatic changes that are happening so quickly. When I fell pregnant a second time 10kgs under the weight I had fallen pregnant with my first I thought "I am going to smash this out". Before I got pregnant I was like a lot of the population... You see the births and pregnancies on TV and movies, how quickly the baby pops out, the Mum is fine, everyone goes home, the routine check ups, ultrasounds with heartbeats and the woman screaming out for an epidural (just to name a few). However it is so much deeper than that. There's birth plans, informed consent (or lack of), different birthing options, Doctors who may not have your best interests at heart, co-ercion, fear mongering, unnecessary intervention (like this article on the dangers of ultrasound), early induction, inadequate training, lack of funding, lack of support for the new mother and overall a dim, dark and corrupt system.
Birth is one of the most natural things on the planet, alongside the deed in making a baby and of course death. So why is it treated like some disease? Women have been birthing babies forever and it was normal, natural and just something that happened. Now it's all "get this test done, that test, you can't go past your due date, c-section is needed, we don't do breech deliveries". It has become an over-medicalised and quite frankly in my opinion dangerous environment for women to be in. *I am going to talk about something a little controversial here... I expect to get hate from this but I think it is a really important issue and something that isn't going to just go away. The media recently has gone totally CRAZY with censorship, blacklisting and removing things from groups that support alternative lifestyles to independent journalists and in the process it is slowly, but surely taking away this marvelous thing we have as a human on this planet to have... Our freedom of speech. But why? Why the sudden attack? After all aren't we all allowed to have a freedom of speech and more importantly a freedom of choice. |
A Mum on a mission to raise an Earth Warrior.
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