the end of a year, and the beginning of....

2013 is coming to it's end.  it has been amazing and it has been stressful, it has been painful and it has been healing.  i am finding my way through motherhood.  i am leaning against my husband more than i am being a wife.  i have to change this.  i am learning that i must let go of some things i didn't know i needed to let go of.  i am feeling so sad, broken and hopeful all at once.  life is heartbreaking.  and a child makes it so worth it.

i wanted to start the new year with a clean house.  it didn't happen, but it got at least sort of clean.  the main floor is 'husband clean' (as my husband puts it).  our bathroom is wife clean.  floors and baseboard clean.  outside of the toilet bowl clean.  that makes me happy.  i'll take it.

if i could re-cap the year, i would say that i learned that sometimes we lose things that we weren't expecting and gain things we never knew could exist.  my body will never be the same after having Ivy.  i don't mean the stretch marks and the loose skin.  i mean prolapse, i mean scar tissue, i mean never being able to lift or be as independent as i am used to again.  the year has been marked with this fact and learning to live with it and trying to change it despite what google says.  and in grieving my previous tyndall hauling, piano moving, snow shovelling, house renovating self, i am learning to accept.  accept that we don't get to leave this earth with all that we entered with and grace is learning to live the the fullest despite that.  learning how to model a strong woman to Ivy even if I can't be the one who carries her on my shoulders and swings her around.  even if i have to say, 'mommy can't do that' each and every time she wants me to do the body jungle gym stuff that daddy does.  i want her to see me as strong even if i can't do it all.

more importantly, what stands out for me is the amazing gift of watching my daughter grow.  when the year began, she was still so close to newborn.  she amazed me just as much at that stage, but i just can't believe how much she has grown and changed.  she is becoming a little girl.  if we say 'no biggie', she shrugs her shoulders like it's really no big deal.  when i say goodnight, she kisses me goodnight.  when she hugs me, she pats my back.  the love i have for her could light the whole world.  i feel so lucky to be her mother.  and i love every little bit of my pelvic prolapsed, stretch mark ridden, paunchy bellied body for having brought her to me.  i felt sometimes over the past year that my body let me down, but i was wrong.  it provided a home and a place to grow for my daughter, got her here safely, and pushed her out into the world.  i am eternally grateful.

hello 2014 :)

Ivy

                                       

 So, now I am a mother. I have been a mother for some time. Since sometime in February of last year when my body began to house a little girl who would turn out to be Ivy. And more traditionally for six months and five days, I have been a mother. I tried to start other blogs. I tried to write it all down on paper. I always end up missing my old blog. I always come back.

 Because she is six months old, it's hard to know where to start. From the start of her life on the outside, she has made the world quiet down around me. Those first few weeks, my body was so broken from birthing her and I couldn't do much, but I could hold her and stare at her and be amazed. My favourite times were in the middle of the night when it felt like the whole world was asleep except Ivy and I. I would sit in the yellow chair in the living room with music playing quietly and nurse her. The peace of her existence was so intense to me. The extent to which everything had just changed felt like a relief somehow. Maybe life had been getting too busy and ebbing away at my perspective. I joked that motherhood was the new traveling. I felt the kind of clarity I had only ever experienced traveling, except it ran even deeper. I never knew that motherhood would feel so freeing. I had always feared it would steal freedom. Not once we were pregnant, but for years in the not so distant past. Instead, it opened me up. I began to look so forward to each new day. I wake up to this beautiful smiling little face and I am excited to be graced with the gift of her light and her laughter and getting to help her learn the world. Every day there is something new. Every day that light in her eyes brightens my whole world. I am so lucky to be her mother.