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.
