Or it used to be anyway, not so long ago.

This evening, I had a green smoothie for dinner in an attempt to shed the baby weight and then ate an entire Easter egg to myself because lets face it, I’m breastfeeding so obviously burning loads of calories and because, well, since when did a smoothie constitute dinner?!

I’ve then bathed with my beautiful daughter. I usually get in with her because it’s a lovely bonding experience and it’s the closest thing to a relaxing bath that I get these days… Anyway, I digress.  This evening, as we sat down in the bath I heard a farty bubbling noise and then smelt the whiff of baby poop and, as the waters around me slowly turned yellow, I realised she had shat in the bath. For those of you who have never experienced such a joy, it’s like the world’s worst bath bomb! Needless to say, bath turned into shower pretty quickly amidst much hilarity from me and baba.  It’s just as well she’s cute!

I’m sure there was a party in Glasgow one night where someone did actually shit in the bath.  Someone certainly shat on our doorstep after we kicked him out of the party.  God only knows what we kicked him out for, all manner of craziness was de rigeur those days, I blame the buckfast personally.

So, with my child in her bedside cot, I’m working on the theory that she will sleep through as she usually does and I am having a wee glass of Malbec and trying to figure out how to blog. Today has been a little odd, pretty lonely to be honest, sometimes it really is a struggle to keep a smile on my face.  I love my daughter so much but lets face it, at 3 months old she isn’t providing me with much intellectual stimulation. My brain is also slightly mushy in this post partum phase, completing a Guardian crossword the other day was a fairly major achievement.

I figure that I should declare my hand so to speak, and explain how I got to be here, on a Friday night with my blog and a baby next door.  I registered for this site last year after a few illuminating months in Bali where I did a lot of yoga, my teacher training in fact, I did a lot of surfing (pretty badly!) and I did a lot of partying and played with a lot of men.  But mostly, what I did was just be present in my life.  I gave up trying to plan, I gave up worrying about the past, I forgave myself for just being me instead of being some wondrous unicorn type A overachiever. And I was happy.

And then I ran out of money and came back to a pretty good job for the summer, roaming around surveying birds in scrubby woodland, with plans to return to Bali in Autumn.  I was lonely then and quite isolated in my living arrangements (a wee cottage in the middle of the woods!) so after a cocaine fuelled weekend in Edinburgh, I arranged to meet up with a friend from facebook that I had never met in reality.  There had been a lot of flirting and fairly sexual chat and needless to say, one thing led to another.  And it was good.  So we did it again the next weekend.  And the one after that.  And then I found out I was pregnant. And I was happy.  Terrified but happy.  I knew I would keep the baby despite the far from ideal circumstances, because she was a person to me from the second I found out.  I have had terminations before and had no qualms whatsoever but this was different.

And then he freaked out.  He vaguely tried to be enthusiastic for a week or so.   And then resumed freaking out.  And that’s pretty much where we still are.  I didn’t see him from the time I was 3 months pregnant until 3 weeks before I gave birth.  He wouldn’t speak to me on the phone, would only message me and kept telling me that I should have got rid of my baby until I was 31 weeks… Suffice to say, he made my pregnancy a lot harder than it would have been if he had just left me alone.  I invited him for the birth in the hope that perhaps it would trigger some actual emotion in him.  And I think it did.  But he won’t/can’t/doesn’t express himself.

Having a baby rips you open both physically and mentally and those first few weeks are exhausting, exhilarating, terrifying, hilarious and everything else in between.  And you need told that you’re doing well.  If you know any new mothers, and them and their baby’s are alive, then tell them they are doing fucking amazingly.  And do their washing up.  And tell them they are beautiful, even if they are flabby and covered in random stains which probably originated at one end or another of their darling child.

So, my baby daddy, to use the modern parlance, isn’t interested in pursuing a relationship with me.  He doesn’t even want to try.  He doesn’t tell me I’m doing well.  Which kind of breaks my heart a little bit.  My sister asked me the other day if I was in love with him.  I told her ‘No, but I want to be’ and then cried quietly during my facial, hoping that the cotton pads would absorb my tears and the beautician would not notice.

And that’s it.  That’s where I am.  I am finding new strengths as well as new vulnerabilities.  I am finding the feeling of love I have inside me grows with every day. When my daughter laughs I am happy in the very pit of my stomach, which is not a place I even knew you could feel happy.  And that, that feeling, will carry me over anything.