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Showing posts from August, 2016

sweet challenges and joys

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  i’ve concluded that nothing can prepare you for the intensity of becoming a parent, or the wild adventure of mothering a newborn. since i was practically a baby myself, i’ve learned about babies. as a child and then onwards throughout all the years of my life, i have been around a lot of tiny humans, and have heard a whole lot about the joys and challenges of new parenting – all the dreamy details and all the gory details. yet, i’ve realized that no impassioned description of profound parental love, or detailed explanation of postpartum toil, or lengthy narration of inconsolable crying and uber-sweet newborn cuddles could allow me to truly understand the depth of this joy and challenge. it’s just one of those things that you can’t comprehend until you experience it.   the past forty days with moses have been so very sweet, and also pretty grueling, and all around just really incredible. there’s been a bit of worrying and so much adoring, some persistent pain and soreness and

at the hospital with our brand new baby boy

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  i wanted to share a few more photographs from the time we spent as a brand new family of three at st. thomas’s hospital after moses was born. we ended up staying at the hospital for two nights. i was really itching to go home, and there were some aspects of our stay that were quite uncomfortable, but when i look back at those 48 hours i am filled with sweetness. it was such a tender and beautiful slice of time.   before i share, though, i’d like to respond a little to the comments left on my last post detailing moses’s birth story. i really appreciate all the well wishes and support expressed and am so glad that many readers shared tidbits of their own experiences with childbirth and varied perspectives and opinions stemming from those experiences. i am grateful to understand how my storytelling was interpreted differently by different readers and i truly value the opportunity certain comments have given me to examine my fallacies and broaden my perspective. i think it’s imp

moses thames: a birth story

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our tiny son is three and a half weeks old. mothering a newborn is quite a bizarre time warp - time rushes and time drags, and time is so so sweet, and time is so so grueling. the past twenty six days have been more wonderful and more difficult than i possibly could have imagined (even though i very much expected a lot of happiness and a lot of challenges). i am sore and exhausted and sweaty and uncomfortable and haggard. but i am thrilled by the new height of joy that has been woven into my life, and most of all, i am absolutely in awe - astonished that this little boy is ours and that i can love this much. the way our moses came into the world was miraculous and amazing and awesome, and also pretty traumatic. the experience was immensely powerful and beautiful - more than i could have ever expected or hoped for - and it was also quite harrowing and a bit heartbreaking. the sentiment of "all that matters is that you have a healthy baby" has been shared with me several time