happy

The end of an era?

It's life Jim, but not as we know it, parenting, , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

My daughter hasn’t breastfed all day.  She refused this mornings feed although, she still wanted to sit with my nipple in her mouth and the same has happened this evening.  I’m both heartbroken and hopeful.  Why does parenting always seem to result in such a dichotomy of emotions?  No wonder we’re all a wee bit barmy!

I mean, for anyone who has practised baby led breastfeeding and gentle parenting, self-weaning is the dream we hope for.  It’s the thing that many people tell you is impossible… ‘Oh, you’ll still be feeding her when she’s at school’ and ‘she’ll never stop by herself’ and ‘you’re babying her’ and other such choice parenting titbits from the wankers who always proclaim to know better.  Well, my just turned 2 year old seems to have decided that she’s done.  She clearly still wants the closeness and was insistent upon cuddling up to my naked torso.

5 days further in and she now calls them boob snuggles.  Still no actual feeding though.  I do wonder if this is one of those ‘feeding strikes’ that one reads about and in a few days she’ll want to restart.  I guess time will tell.  I’d have thought the milk will remain for a while.  From my perspective, I’m finding parenting a wee bit of a struggle without the defined 20 minutes of breastfeeding that used to bookend my day.  I miss the closeness and the warmth and the feeling of her relaxing into my body as she nursed.  I miss knowing that I could settle her from trauma with my breasts.  Like the time she fell down the stairs and was pale and scared and I just breastfed her for a few minutes and it was as if it had never happened.  Magic boobs!

I miss my baby.  I love my toddler.  She’s getting so grown up already.

If I had a husband, I’d be trying for another baby right about now.

Wanting to breastfeed again can’t be the worst reason anyone has ever had another kid, surely?

But, as a 38 year old very single parent, I am trying to come to terms with the fact that this may be it for me.  I’m so grateful for how easy it was for us and for every moment of special bonding that we got to enjoy together and for the feelings of overwhelming love when she made her little happy dinosaur noises as she fed, which way surpassed the pain of engorgement in those early days.  The frozen cabbage leaves were still vital and I did remain topless for 2 weeks (my postie still can’t look me in the eye!). I’ll tell her all about it when she’s older and hopefully one day, this will be a joy that she can experience with her own children and I will reminisce with pride.

Still me, still standing

It's life Jim, but not as we know it, , , , , , , Leave a comment

Sometimes, being a single mother is gut-wrenchingly lonely.

I sit here, alone of course,  with face dripping as I finally release and let the tears flow.

Mostly, I just don’t find the space in which I can allow myself to fall into sadness, I have a baby to take care of and her needs come first and I don’t have the time to indulge in my own emotions.  But today, today has been different.  Today I realised that I was developing feelings for a man who has been messaging me daily for a matter of months.  Real feelings, real hopes, real me, real future.

So, the question that I have been avoiding because I didn’t want to pop the bubble, ‘how is tinder life going?’ I asked and he replied ‘Well, I went on a date last night and she’s still messaging me so I must have done ok’, I nearly threw up on the floor in Waitrose.  Spontaneous physical response to emotion is not a sensation I have experienced for a long time.  And despite the sensation of my insides heaving, even then, I found gratitude for experiencing such a real feeling that was just mine to breathe through.

Thing is, having a baby rips down all your barriers.  You are so in love with this little person that everywhere you go and in everything you do there is love emanating from you and you are free.  Free in the oddest sense really as on a daily basis my routine completely revolves around my child.  But free in the sense that there is a little person who needs you so completely and whose needs you fulfil so completely, that there is no need for the sort of barriers and walls that we all tend to create around ourselves when it comes to fully experiencing love.

And yes, obviously, the love one has for their child is of a different sort to the kind that one might experience with a significant other but there is a commonality.  And I found that I let this man in, which is not something I do as a general rule, in my entire adult life I can only think of one relationship in which I ever allowed myself to need.  It ended horribly.  Anyway, the point being is that I’m finding myself to be more open than ever before, because of the depth and nuance of the relationship with my child.  And what that means is that my barriers seem to be gone.

And so I’m hurt, a little deflated and lonely again.  But actually, I’m still happy, I still have an amazing child and somehow, I’m still able to experience all the joys and all the heartache involved in letting someone in.  I’m so unbelievably grateful for that.

I am grateful that I met this amazing guy who ticks so many of my boxes and I am grateful that he has let me down somewhat and I am grateful that I still miss him and I am grateful that this journey has led me to crying in my meditation practise on the living room floor.

I know that I’m alive.  I’m fucking buzzing with life.  And I’m excited to know which sensations this new me can experience next.

It’s now the next night and yes, I’m still fucking grateful for this experience.  I do, however, feel as if I’ve experienced a break up and so duly got round one of my oldest friends and drank two and a half beers and smoked three whole cigarettes.  Which was also fucking amazing.

I guess what’s really happened is that I’ve realised that I do still have feelings that are just mine and that don’t relate to my child.  I’m still me.

And that’s just the best revelation I could have asked for.