Balancing Motherhood, Yoga and Writing

The poor Pibler is ill again - he’s only just got over his cough and cold, and now has a fever again. I’ve been quite concerned because the fever is the only symptom - other than him only wanting to be nestled up against my chest all the time.

We just had a bath together - the first one together in a while - and he lay on my chest the entire time, not moving or playing. I felt overcome with protectiveness and love, because he’s quite a big boy now and I remembered bathing with him as a newborn, how small he was.

Today at the breastfeeding drop-in there was a one-week-old baby… it’s so hard to imagine I was once in the throes of that stage, and utterly clueless about what I was doing.

I borrowed a poetry book by Heid E. Erdrich called “The Mother’s Tongue“. I’m excited to read some poetry about the experience of being a mother, as my own poetry has run so dry since the Pibler’s birth, and I could do with some fresh inspiration.  I was blown away by reading ‘Sisters, Stay on the Other Side’, her poem that speaks from the world of motherhood to those who have not entered that state. It perfectly captured the sense of never being able to go back, and that making the choice to be a mother is not a choice all mothers should make:

Sisters stay dry on the banks, do not even
touch toe to test the water. Stop your ears
when you hear siren sounds: wet, sweet wails
that insist you can never understand
life, love, woman, man – until you birth
or nurse or raise a child in this world.

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