remember when I used to go for all of those rambling walks in the woods?
well life shifted and I got to pursue one of my long-time dreams – building a house. we’d work on the house three days a week and i’d go to work three days a week and then the last day was spent mainly doing chores and those woods walking days really fell by the wayside.

adventures would still happen, but the whimsical ease of those days – where i’d wander as the inspiration took me – was gone. lost to the structure of schedules and fitting it all in. the house building schedule ramped up over the past couple of years to this full-on enterprise, but as of close to a full year now, a new trajectory started forming, another long-time dream – a little baby started growing inside. the house building continued in its intensity until late june when the nausea became too intense for me to do anything but sleep or sit on the couch and try not to vomit. I couldn’t even knit while sitting, it took all of my concentration to keep from vomiting. after that, as the nausea became less intense and eventually disappeared, daily headaches took its place. when I figured out the headaches and they petered out, there was probably a couple month window to continue working before I started feeling more cumbersome and too tired to be as effective as I used to be at construction.
our little babe arrived in late february, and I now have a new little dictator of my days. motherhood/parenthood – WHAT A TRIP. I expected to get little sleep and have my life taken over by this monumental job, but it still bowled me over, and continues to. he is now nearing two months old and I am starting to figure out some sort of groove, but those first five plus weeks were intense. some things I expected and some things I didn’t know to expect. I didn’t expect to have my vagina busted up by his entry into this world, causing it to swell to the size of a baseball, making it nearly impossible to sit with any semblance of comfort for the first two to three weeks. even now at nearly two months it is still healing.
after that first hump came the volatile fluctuation of emotions. my hormones shifting and plummeting after the calm stability of late pregnancy’s hormones. after that came mastitis. had I known to watch out for it I might have been able to avoid the path I took that led to being on antibiotics, but I didn’t see it coming. we thankfully got through that and I am now sure to drain my breasts with every nursing, and know what to watch out for in case it tries to come back (which it has already tried to – twice!).
the next hump was baby gas. gas so intense that he would squirm and grunt and whine and make various noises of distress, every few minutes, while he was sleeping. this led to us not being able to sleep, even less than we already were. we’ve been able to rid him of the intense gas by cutting brassicas and beans out of my diet (i’m not sure if it was one or both, but I like what little sleep i’m getting too much to experiment), though he still has gas that makes him grunt and squirm in his sleep until he poops. so though he doesn’t seem to be in grave discomfort, the lack of sleep continues for his parents.
somewhere in the midst of all that the headaches returned for a stint, but luckily they petered out a while back.

through it all, we’ve had several blessings. the main one of course is this miraculous little being who has entered our lives. despite the sleepless nights and lack of time to myself, he continues to bring daily joy as we watch his so slow but so fast evolution into himself.
another was/is the blessing of community. community that came together to both organize and provide nourishing meals for our family for most dinners for the first month-ish of his life. I did not know how necessary this service was for new families until experiencing it myself. I of course knew it was helpful and beneficial, but not to the degree I now know. were it not for our friends, both here at home and over on the big island where we birthed and spent the first week of his life, we would not have eaten nearly as well, and not been able to focus as much of our already taxed energy on our new little family.

one thing that I learned about prior to the birth was the concept of the “first forty days”, a tradition that exists in many cultures, but is called by different names. the idea behind it being that a new mom spends roughly the first forty days in a sort of confinement (though not the most positive sounding word) with her new babe. this is done with the idea of the mom and babe getting to know each other, so that the mom can devote all of her energy to this without the distraction of catering to anyone else’s needs, but also to rest and recuperate after the amazing and taxing event that is birth. isolation is perhaps not something that everyone wants after their baby arrives, but it worked really well for me. we did see friends every now and then, for very short windows, but I could feel that I didn’t want this for very long at any one time and also wanted it to be a very low-key visit whenever it did happen. I spent the majority of those days in bed with the baby, only venturing out very slowly over the weeks. it was amazing to me just how well the forty days matched my energy returning, along with my desire to see and spend time with others. it was probably around day 36 or 37 that I finally felt ready to venture out and to socialize. I am so grateful that I did this for myself – not only for the short term – but the feeling that it probably has benefits for my long term health. it’s not an easy thing to do in a time when people generally want to wish you well and meet your new little one, but all of our friends were so respectful.

now that i’ve been getting out more and my energy is coming back, i’ve been taking the babe out for walks in the forest. it’s amazing that it takes this to slow down again…

…oh guess what, it’s now MONTHS later, and he is 6.5 months old now. ha, such is parenthood. any time I have to myself is generally spent making myself a meal or showering or doing laundry, not something frivolous like writing! however, I realized (remembered?) a few days ago, how beneficial it would be for me to try to squeeze it in more. I was reading a post of a woman I follow who is also a new mother and realizing that I am so immersed in mothering that I don’t have time to reflect on it. it often even feels surreal to call myself a mother. perhaps this is the nature of the first year (or two or three) of a baby’s life, but i’d still like to give it a go every now and then – taking time to pause and reflect. so i’m going to try to post this before the wee babe comes home from auntie time and another several months go by. perfect or not. such is the messiness of life. so grateful am I for this new tributary I get to paddle.