irl

There is so much new in our lives at the moment that I'm really struggling to harness it all to write about. On a daily basis we're discovering, learning, experiencing new things and like any such patch in one's life - when your days feel more nuanced, sharper-hued, faster and slightly surreal - it's near impossible to process it as you live it, and invariably one feels one's leaving stuff behind.

This throws up a conundrum for me, because I record and remember by writing - but this last month have felt too busy living to write. The only time I've really sat still is to stare at our new view, and I reckon people are rapidly tiring about hearing about that all the time (at least my facebook friends are!).

Not having a phone or internet connection for the first seventeen days was a contributing factor (and kind of an 'excuse' not to unpack my laptop for the first few weeks), all of us having had a dreadful flu for the last seven is another - and in between it's been too much about living around here to spend any time recording, or examining.

It's been a month since Husband and I pulled an almost all-nighter packing up the last of the Observatory house, him nursing a partially severed finger from an incident with a pair of secateurs that afternoon, me harbouring a deep and abiding resentment that he was.
A month since the long, long day moving - an exhausting process no matter how well prepared or well supported one is throughout it - a day which culminated in one of our beloved cats going AWOL in Obs, causing me to lose my shit completely and break down in the KFC drive-thru, sobbing so hard I couldn't make myself understood to the bemused counter-lady.
(My heroic brother and sister-in-law did not rest until the errant kitty was found and finally brought her to us in disgrace at 9.30 pm that night, causing me to break down sobbing again because how on earth were we going to cope without them just down the road anymore?)
It was a long hard day.

Was it really only a month ago?

I don't wish for the pace to slow down really, I'm enjoying this. And I certainly don't wish for the exciting newness of it all to wear off, time will guarantee that soon enough. But I am feeling the effects of living too fast.
In the evenings when the girls are asleep my head gets restless. My dreams are weird and fitful. The memory of a person or place that I'm missing catches me unawares and digs a little hook into my heart.

I need to process some of this, I need to write.
Live Write
Live Write
Live Write.

your baby magazine

Hey! I'm so pleased to be featured as this month's 'mommy blogger' in Your Baby magazine!

I'm never sure about this phrase 'mommy blogger' (sounds a little exclusive - a word which we credit with far more positivity than it deserves - don't you think? My thoughts on this are, as always, better crystalised by someone else, in this article.)

However, I'm damn pleased for the magazine feature - 2 pages! - and am print-virgin enough to feel a bit flushed and giggly at seeing my words in print. Thank you Your Baby!

first look

Not sure what invited them, but I spent lots of time this weekend visited by memories of the first time I laid eyes on my children.
These are memories one imagines you'll always have, how on earth could I forget those first adrenalin-fueled, surreal, painful, magical, weird moments? But I've started feeling paranoid that I might.

The present version of my girls always takes up so much space in my world that I can't think they're not all branded onto my memory. But the mind is not as reliable as the heart in this case, and as life starts moving faster and faster (Sunday will be 2 next month!) I find myself folding over the corners of our days, desperately trying to bookmark moments, words, feelings before we finish this chapter.

So to go back to the beginning ...

Both my births were emergency C-sections, so both my first looks were over the green curtain of surgery, both were through the disembodied (literally) haze of spinal blocks. I met my girls in the company of a half dozen strangers, strange masked half-faces hovering in my periphery, voices in the background, machines and strange smells.
And of course their Dad, present for both, his face on my right an enduring memory, one which I have no fear I'll ever forget.

Friday's birth, being my first, was still all about me. The decision to Caesar was made so fast, the adrenalin from my water's breaking and labour starting (3 weeks early) still coursing within me, my brain still holding the complete unknown at bay, that when they held her up over the curtain - impossibly quickly - I couldn't process what I was looking at.
This tiny (3.2 kg) purpely thing - what was it? Had they removed an organ I wasn't aware of?

I stuck out one finger and touched her. So warm. And then she opened her mouth, impossibly wide, and shrieked - and became a person.
She was taken to be cleaned and weighed etc. Her Dad went with her and although I couldn't see her face from where I was lying, the enormity of her was written all over his.
I looked down at my finger, still goo-ey from touching her, and wiped it on the edge of the surgical blanket.

Hours later, alone in my hospital bed, her asleep in the nursery across the hall, I rubbed my feet together and felt like her. It's not really possible to describe, I refuse to bow to the corny 'my heart walked outside my body' sentiment, but I felt like her. A part of me was, I guess, apart from me.
The next morning my husband told me that in our bed at home he'd felt the same.

For Sunday's birth I knew to expect an actual person at the end of it. The process, although also being my first real experience of labour, was so much more about her - namely getting her out safely. As we were attempting VBAC we knew there was the possibility of complications and ten hours in, when her heart rate started dipping and we were heading into theatre, I was overwhelmed with excitement at meeting her.

It was a difficult Caesar and it felt like forever before she appeared over the curtain, much paler, much bigger (3.8 kg) than her sister, one eyeball rolling wildly.
Although she'd been in distress I was allowed to hold her briefly and apparently, as she was handed to me, I said, 'Aw, let's have another one' to my husband - the anesthetist reckoning that was the soonest he'd ever heard the sentiment expressed, and not one I've ever repeated since!

Sunday was born in the morning (Friday late at night), and I think that's part of the reason those first 24 hours have so much more clarity. She hardly left my side, she latched well, we co-slept, I handled the pain meds better.

Friday's birth was a massive experience, on every level. It rocked me physically, emotionally, it rearranged the foundation of my life.
Sunday's entry (while my doctor would disagree) was somehow so much more peaceful. She slipped out of my body and onto the crook of my left arm. She slotted into an anticipated space in our lives, and that life went on, fuller and richer.

I need to remember this. I write it to remember it.

suspended reality

I wake in the night, needing a drink of water and a pee. Liquid in, liquid out.

Slide from my bed - comfy, warm, partially filled by my favourite person in the world. Our room is large, pretty empty for two people who've cohabited as long as we have. It's cool too, I'm already looking forward to coming back.
Down the passage, two soundly sleeping cats on the back of the couch, smooth wooden floorboards under my feet.
In the light from the patio the tree-tops whipping around, but all is very still inside.

Our dog in her basket snores in perfect unison with the whrrrr of the fridge. She doesn't even seem to know I'm here.
The tap turns, water fills my glass. Relief floods my throat.

I stand for just a minute, staring out the window. Keeping myself dozy, there's still a lot of night left.

Back down the passage, a quick check on the girls. Their door creaks and I pause to listen to the sounds of their breathing. Blindfolded I could tell who is who, I probably shall 'til the end of time.
They sleep with the sprawled limbs of supreme security and peace, their brows uncreased, fingers relaxed.

Their butterfly mobile dancing in the draft is the most active thing in this house.

And it is while standing there in the dark, in my house of comfort and love, that the crushing weight of my privilege suddenly bears down on me.
My heart seems to buckle - guilt, entitlement, horror, rage, indignation, justification - the emotions which one must continually counter-balance when living a good life in a world where so many don't. The knowledge of one's innate privilege is always there, it must be always there, but like a cancer or a conscience one can't live in its light all the time. One must suspend this reality and just ... live.

I force myself back to bed, to sleep. I leave these thoughts buried in the dark of the night. Where they remain, for remain they must.
Sadness, unease, discomfort, guilt - we need these things to throw the goodness in our lives into relief, to be grateful. But we can't, I can't, live with them every day.
I bury them in the dark - keep the knowledge of them active, confront them when I must - but try not to let them leak out into the light.

Reality suspended like a trip-wire in my house, waiting for me to get up in the night.

international blogger of mystery

So, confession time ...

I've been blogging for a number of years. But I never actively sought followers for the other one, that was always my piece of the internet where I ranted and laughed and worked stuff out for myself and occasionally used Very Bad Language.
Starting C is for Cape Town has been my first experience of really making use of the blogging community. It's my first time on Twitter and my first time networking with other related blogs and writers. And so far it's been really rewarding.

It was on Twitter that I saw Bod-for-Tea's call for non-UK bloggers to contribute to her Parenting around the Planet theme and I was very pleased when she used my post to kick off the series.

This week saw the second post, a funny parenting story from a Canadian contributor, and I'm looking forward to the rest of the series.

Thanks Bod, for my first guest-posting experience. This seasoned blogger is learning all the time!