A portrait of my daughter, once a week, every week, in 2014.
My little yogi.
Sunday, 19 January 2014
Sunday, 12 January 2014
2/52
A portrait of my daughter, once a week, every week, in 2014.
Marvelling at her mastery of the spoon.
Tuesday, 7 January 2014
THE 52 PROJECT 2014 - 1/52
A portrait of my daughter, once a week, every week, in 2014.
A photo in which I can see the baby still there in my toddler - a rare and precious event.
Thursday, 4 April 2013
AT LONG LAST
As some of you have pointed out, I have been rather quiet on the blogging front for some time now. Strangely enough, this is not really due to a lack of free time to write; there are several draft entries (a couple of which are fully formed) on standby that will most likely never see the light of day. As time post-baby has elapsed, I find that I am increasingly self-critical, and for some topics - missing my pre-baby life and my excitement on returning to work, to name a couple - I have been hesitant to voice my thoughts for fear of coming across as heartless and cold.
I've started to realise that this may be an insecurity of mine in this whole motherhood journey. I suppose it stems from my feelings during pregnancy. If I'm perfectly honest, my feelings were definitely more toward the apathetic/anxious side of the emotional spectrum, rather than the more common (or at least, more widely voiced) feelings of jubilation. Needless to say, I surprised myself with the pure unbridled joy that M, in her deliciously chubby flesh-and-blood existence, has evoked - but the guilt and doubt from my limited maternal feelings prior to her birth have obviously stuck around and become magnified over time. Why else would it be so important to me for everyone to know that I do love my baby and I am happy being a mother? It's the beast that is holding my lips tight at the times when I want to talk about how I do love my baby but by god she can be trying, and I am happy being a mother but by god I do miss my carefree childless days.
Undoubtedly all mothers feel these conflicting emotions to some degree (though I'm sure many would never admit it, perhaps due to a similar fear). After all, motherhood is about having a baby, not a lobotomy. I disagree that motherhood changes you - I think you are still the same person, much as you are the same person after you have sex for the first time. But you have another dimension of experience, another colour of yarn weaved into the tapestry of your life. And that's certainly not to diminish the power and majesty of that experience, but at the same time it's not to detract from the person you are. Not you as a mother, but you as a person, in the fullest extent.
I've started to realise that this may be an insecurity of mine in this whole motherhood journey. I suppose it stems from my feelings during pregnancy. If I'm perfectly honest, my feelings were definitely more toward the apathetic/anxious side of the emotional spectrum, rather than the more common (or at least, more widely voiced) feelings of jubilation. Needless to say, I surprised myself with the pure unbridled joy that M, in her deliciously chubby flesh-and-blood existence, has evoked - but the guilt and doubt from my limited maternal feelings prior to her birth have obviously stuck around and become magnified over time. Why else would it be so important to me for everyone to know that I do love my baby and I am happy being a mother? It's the beast that is holding my lips tight at the times when I want to talk about how I do love my baby but by god she can be trying, and I am happy being a mother but by god I do miss my carefree childless days.
Undoubtedly all mothers feel these conflicting emotions to some degree (though I'm sure many would never admit it, perhaps due to a similar fear). After all, motherhood is about having a baby, not a lobotomy. I disagree that motherhood changes you - I think you are still the same person, much as you are the same person after you have sex for the first time. But you have another dimension of experience, another colour of yarn weaved into the tapestry of your life. And that's certainly not to diminish the power and majesty of that experience, but at the same time it's not to detract from the person you are. Not you as a mother, but you as a person, in the fullest extent.
Tuesday, 23 October 2012
ONE MONTH
Dear M,
I wanted to write you a letter each month - a way of immortalising all the little moments and events that fill each day but are in danger of being lost or forgotten with the business of life, the passage of time, and my ever-worsening memory. However, your first month has come and gone, and for various reasons I never had the time to document a single word - although, they have been swimming in my head since, and now that things have calmed down a bit, I finally have time to write.
You are five and a half weeks old. You have spent about three of those weeks in hospital, which is about two and half more than I would have wished for the start of your life, but sometimes these things can't be helped. One thing you've taught me is optimism (and that's no small feat for your glass-half-empty mother!). Since you came along, I've learned to see the positive in things, and not to dwell too long on the negative. The fact that you, my bright light, exist makes it easy to do. The past month has not been smooth sailing though, and at times I realise that it's all been a lot more stressful and emotional than I really allowed myself to acknowledge at the time. I can't look at photos of you in intensive care without crying.
For all the unforeseen turmoil, there has been unbelievable joy - the highlight for me was just the other night, when you smiled for the first time. Given that your first smile managed to completely overshadow another milestone (the first time you slept through the night), I think you can understand how much it means to me to interact with you, to see you grow and develop as a new little person in this world. You have your own personality that has already emerged in full force - you are strong, stubborn, gregarious (always turning on the charm for company, so no one believes us when we say that you've spent the past hours screaming), alert, assertive. You love music and being waltzed in my arms. Other things you love include: bath time, car rides, walks in the pram, being outside, being around people, having your head stroked as you sleep. You have been breastfed in public and together with your dad, we've been out as far as Bronte and Marrickville, which for a newborn is pretty adventurous.
Inevitably, there are moments in every day when I feel utterly exhausted and depleted - these moments usually occur at 4am and/or after you've been unsettled and crying for long periods. But the happiness I feel with you here seems to cut through that in a way I hadn't anticipated and could never really have imagined before. I can't wait for the coming days, weeks, months, years with you.
Love,
Mum
I wanted to write you a letter each month - a way of immortalising all the little moments and events that fill each day but are in danger of being lost or forgotten with the business of life, the passage of time, and my ever-worsening memory. However, your first month has come and gone, and for various reasons I never had the time to document a single word - although, they have been swimming in my head since, and now that things have calmed down a bit, I finally have time to write.
You are five and a half weeks old. You have spent about three of those weeks in hospital, which is about two and half more than I would have wished for the start of your life, but sometimes these things can't be helped. One thing you've taught me is optimism (and that's no small feat for your glass-half-empty mother!). Since you came along, I've learned to see the positive in things, and not to dwell too long on the negative. The fact that you, my bright light, exist makes it easy to do. The past month has not been smooth sailing though, and at times I realise that it's all been a lot more stressful and emotional than I really allowed myself to acknowledge at the time. I can't look at photos of you in intensive care without crying.
For all the unforeseen turmoil, there has been unbelievable joy - the highlight for me was just the other night, when you smiled for the first time. Given that your first smile managed to completely overshadow another milestone (the first time you slept through the night), I think you can understand how much it means to me to interact with you, to see you grow and develop as a new little person in this world. You have your own personality that has already emerged in full force - you are strong, stubborn, gregarious (always turning on the charm for company, so no one believes us when we say that you've spent the past hours screaming), alert, assertive. You love music and being waltzed in my arms. Other things you love include: bath time, car rides, walks in the pram, being outside, being around people, having your head stroked as you sleep. You have been breastfed in public and together with your dad, we've been out as far as Bronte and Marrickville, which for a newborn is pretty adventurous.
Inevitably, there are moments in every day when I feel utterly exhausted and depleted - these moments usually occur at 4am and/or after you've been unsettled and crying for long periods. But the happiness I feel with you here seems to cut through that in a way I hadn't anticipated and could never really have imagined before. I can't wait for the coming days, weeks, months, years with you.
Love,
Mum
Thursday, 27 September 2012
THE UNDRUNK CUP OF TEA
So, dear readers, the babe came.
If I had to give an analogy for life with a newborn, it would be the undrunk cup of tea (followed closely by the unanswered texts, the eternal pile of washing, the milk-stained everything). Tea made at an interval of peace, when the video monitor showed baby to be fast asleep, the clock showed baby due to stay asleep for another hour or so (that's the rare optimist in me). Yet to be sure, the kettle boiling must be an alarm clock in babyland, for as soon as the water hits the mug, a scream is bound to be heard, and away from my beloved hot tea I must dash. Cut to hours later after a long bout of feeding and fussing and, on a good day, the baby is re-swaddled and placed down to (hopefully) sleep, before rinsing and repeating ad infinitum.
And as my tea sits cold and forlorn, with a smile I think of how I said aloud just two weeks ago with such blissful ignorance, "How am I possibly going to occupy my time when I'm on leave?"
The catch is (and I never would have believed it if I'd been told before), I've never been happier.
If I had to give an analogy for life with a newborn, it would be the undrunk cup of tea (followed closely by the unanswered texts, the eternal pile of washing, the milk-stained everything). Tea made at an interval of peace, when the video monitor showed baby to be fast asleep, the clock showed baby due to stay asleep for another hour or so (that's the rare optimist in me). Yet to be sure, the kettle boiling must be an alarm clock in babyland, for as soon as the water hits the mug, a scream is bound to be heard, and away from my beloved hot tea I must dash. Cut to hours later after a long bout of feeding and fussing and, on a good day, the baby is re-swaddled and placed down to (hopefully) sleep, before rinsing and repeating ad infinitum.
And as my tea sits cold and forlorn, with a smile I think of how I said aloud just two weeks ago with such blissful ignorance, "How am I possibly going to occupy my time when I'm on leave?"
The catch is (and I never would have believed it if I'd been told before), I've never been happier.
Friday, 31 August 2012
PACKING UP
Today is my last day at work (and by work I mean both paid employment and postgrad studies), for a year potentially...
Packing up my desk, I feel surprisingly emotional. While physically I am craving the time off - the opportunity to nap during the day, to have my heat pack handy, to not have to change out of my pyjamas - it's a different story emotionally. I enjoy having a daily routine, somewhere to go to (even if I have been getting in shamefully late these days). More than having somewhere to go is having people to see - I like that on any given day at work, I will interact with people, share an office with my colleagues, have people to discuss publications, research, blogs and personal stories with. It sure beats spending the day alone at home, and it helps that I genuinely like my colleagues.
What I will also miss is feeling like I have a purpose, something that has become more important to me since entering (step)motherhood. At home sometimes, it's so easy to become bogged down in domestic routine almost to the point where it starts to feel vaguely oppressive - and not because I have a partner who doesn't contribute his fair share, because this isn't the case. It's simply that some element of your individuality, a sense of command or equal footing - of reaping immediate, tangible rewards of your hard work - is lost among the chores and tending to of children who (despite being appreciative at their core) do not thank you for your efforts. At work, I feel as though my thoughts, my intellectual input, is sought and valued. The work I do is acknowledged and appreciated, and there are tangible rewards to my efforts. I feel like I am truly in my element as myself and not someone merely fulfilling a required role.
By no means do I mean to to imply that parenting is not fulfilling and rewarding in its own way. Neither do I mean to deride or belittle those who don't work or those who are stay-at-home parents, or suggest that one even needs work to have meaning in their lives - far from it. But for me personally, there is a certain sense of self-actualisation that I get from my work that is truly meaningful to me, as corny as that may be. It's this, along with the friendly faces in my office and along the corridors, that makes me a little misty-eyed looking at my bare desk today.
I like to think of it though as not the end of an era, but the end of a chapter - one that heralds the start of another chapter, and does not preclude a reappearance of this current chapter's contents later down the track.
Packing up my desk, I feel surprisingly emotional. While physically I am craving the time off - the opportunity to nap during the day, to have my heat pack handy, to not have to change out of my pyjamas - it's a different story emotionally. I enjoy having a daily routine, somewhere to go to (even if I have been getting in shamefully late these days). More than having somewhere to go is having people to see - I like that on any given day at work, I will interact with people, share an office with my colleagues, have people to discuss publications, research, blogs and personal stories with. It sure beats spending the day alone at home, and it helps that I genuinely like my colleagues.
What I will also miss is feeling like I have a purpose, something that has become more important to me since entering (step)motherhood. At home sometimes, it's so easy to become bogged down in domestic routine almost to the point where it starts to feel vaguely oppressive - and not because I have a partner who doesn't contribute his fair share, because this isn't the case. It's simply that some element of your individuality, a sense of command or equal footing - of reaping immediate, tangible rewards of your hard work - is lost among the chores and tending to of children who (despite being appreciative at their core) do not thank you for your efforts. At work, I feel as though my thoughts, my intellectual input, is sought and valued. The work I do is acknowledged and appreciated, and there are tangible rewards to my efforts. I feel like I am truly in my element as myself and not someone merely fulfilling a required role.
By no means do I mean to to imply that parenting is not fulfilling and rewarding in its own way. Neither do I mean to deride or belittle those who don't work or those who are stay-at-home parents, or suggest that one even needs work to have meaning in their lives - far from it. But for me personally, there is a certain sense of self-actualisation that I get from my work that is truly meaningful to me, as corny as that may be. It's this, along with the friendly faces in my office and along the corridors, that makes me a little misty-eyed looking at my bare desk today.
I like to think of it though as not the end of an era, but the end of a chapter - one that heralds the start of another chapter, and does not preclude a reappearance of this current chapter's contents later down the track.
Monday, 27 August 2012
NINE MONTHS
Things I have previously taken for granted and really miss:
- Being able to put my shoes on by myself
- Being able to cut my own toenails
- Sleeping on my back
- Not waking up twice a night to go to the bathroom
- Rolling over in bed in one smooth motion
- Wearing jeans and other non-maternity leggings attire
- Walking properly
- Drinking (what I wouldn't give for a cold cider in this glorious spring weather...)
Things I am enjoying about being 9 months pregnant:
- Having an excuse for guilt-free afternoon naps
- Having a peculiar motivation to clean the house and do other previously dreaded domestic tasks (I think they call this "nesting")
- That the end is in sight!
Friday, 10 August 2012
THE JUGGLING ACT
Driven perhaps more by morbid curiosity to hear the vast array of responses, rather than a desire to find a definitive answer, I have read article after article addressing the (not-so) age-old question, How can women successfully juggle having a career and raising children? To be honest, I am getting tired of reading the same unhelpful content that goes along the lines of one of these options:
a) Women can have it all, they just need to reassess what "all" is and become comfortable with this new definition of "all". Through this, women should learn to accept the guilt they feel about doing an inadequate job either at home, at work, or both, as opposed to wider society making any changes or concerted efforts to reduce the need for these feelings of guilt (to me, not too dissimilar to the argument that if women don't want to be sexually harassed, they shouldn't dress inappropriately).
b) Women can't have it all, and it would be beneficial to them to stop pretending that they can.
c) In order to have it "all", you need to have enough disposable cash to be able to afford full-time childcare/a full-time nanny to help raise your children, or a supportive partner who is willing (and can afford) to stay at home to raise the children and tend to domestic chores. Not so feasible for anyone who isn't rolling in it, or doesn't have a partner (or one who can/will give up his/her career to become a stay-at-home parent).
d) Instead of trying to offer an answer, simply create a dialogue where women offer advice and insights from their personal experiences, which are usually along the lines of "There is no right time to start a family, so just go for it", and "It will be hard, but you will be so in love with and derive so much joy from your children that they will automatically become your priority at the end of the day".
Let me rephrase my earlier comment by saying I'm not fed up with women making an effort to try and discuss, reason and hypothesise about how we can reach some semblance of equality in achieving the career/home-life balance that men have been privilege to for decades. I think it's admirable and encouraging that women are creating dialogues about how things can be improved, or even if a solution isn't offered, at least the problem itself is being given air-time.
What bothers me is this attitude, like with so many other issues relating to gender equality, is that the burden of responsibility of change seems to always fall on women. We are the ones that must come to terms with these shortcomings, we are the ones that must resign ourselves to these facts, the sooner we do, and the sooner we stop fighting it - the happier we will be with what society offers us!
There is also commonly the token comment (I hate to say it, but usually from a man) who offers a "feminist" opinion that essentially states women need to stop "whinging" about this problem and, if it really is such a problem, they shouldn't try to have both kids and career in the first place. Basically, stop complaining and just pick one and be happy with that. Wow, what a great solution. Rather than trying to address the broader prejudices that make it challenging for women to have both, and making not just women but society (including, yes, men) accountable for these prejudices, let's place the burden on women to reign themselves in and shut the fuck up. How progressive!
Maybe the key is that answering this question will not suffice with words and verbal definitions of why or how there is difficulty in this balancing act. Maybe actual, practical change needs to come first, to facilitate the construction of an answer that doesn't involve a sacrifice of desires or resignation for women.
a) Women can have it all, they just need to reassess what "all" is and become comfortable with this new definition of "all". Through this, women should learn to accept the guilt they feel about doing an inadequate job either at home, at work, or both, as opposed to wider society making any changes or concerted efforts to reduce the need for these feelings of guilt (to me, not too dissimilar to the argument that if women don't want to be sexually harassed, they shouldn't dress inappropriately).
b) Women can't have it all, and it would be beneficial to them to stop pretending that they can.
c) In order to have it "all", you need to have enough disposable cash to be able to afford full-time childcare/a full-time nanny to help raise your children, or a supportive partner who is willing (and can afford) to stay at home to raise the children and tend to domestic chores. Not so feasible for anyone who isn't rolling in it, or doesn't have a partner (or one who can/will give up his/her career to become a stay-at-home parent).
d) Instead of trying to offer an answer, simply create a dialogue where women offer advice and insights from their personal experiences, which are usually along the lines of "There is no right time to start a family, so just go for it", and "It will be hard, but you will be so in love with and derive so much joy from your children that they will automatically become your priority at the end of the day".
Let me rephrase my earlier comment by saying I'm not fed up with women making an effort to try and discuss, reason and hypothesise about how we can reach some semblance of equality in achieving the career/home-life balance that men have been privilege to for decades. I think it's admirable and encouraging that women are creating dialogues about how things can be improved, or even if a solution isn't offered, at least the problem itself is being given air-time.
What bothers me is this attitude, like with so many other issues relating to gender equality, is that the burden of responsibility of change seems to always fall on women. We are the ones that must come to terms with these shortcomings, we are the ones that must resign ourselves to these facts, the sooner we do, and the sooner we stop fighting it - the happier we will be with what society offers us!
There is also commonly the token comment (I hate to say it, but usually from a man) who offers a "feminist" opinion that essentially states women need to stop "whinging" about this problem and, if it really is such a problem, they shouldn't try to have both kids and career in the first place. Basically, stop complaining and just pick one and be happy with that. Wow, what a great solution. Rather than trying to address the broader prejudices that make it challenging for women to have both, and making not just women but society (including, yes, men) accountable for these prejudices, let's place the burden on women to reign themselves in and shut the fuck up. How progressive!
Maybe the key is that answering this question will not suffice with words and verbal definitions of why or how there is difficulty in this balancing act. Maybe actual, practical change needs to come first, to facilitate the construction of an answer that doesn't involve a sacrifice of desires or resignation for women.
Saturday, 4 August 2012
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