Balancing Motherhood, Yoga and Writing

This week is a bit tricky because all the usual things that structure my time are on ‘holiday mode’ - the breastfeeding drop-in, children’s activities at the library, toddler music groups. In a way it’s great to get some time to just hang out with the Pibler, and be able to have a nap whenever he does!

But it also has the potential to be a bit lonely, because my partner’s back at work as usual while other people’s are generally still off work…so I don’t want to impose on their ‘family time’, but I also think I won’t be in a good head space if I don’t have some social interaction this week.

Today it took me three attempts to simply get the dishes done, then eventually managed to leave the house for a walk after lunchtime. I love walking through the cemetery with the Pibler - it’s so peaceful and hardly anyone else is there. There are plenty of flowers for him to look at, and it was moving seeing the Christmas displays that people had added to their relatives’ graves. And he said ‘tree’ for the first time today! His vocabulary is increasing steadily: he now has about ten words! I’ve been pointing out trees to him since he was very little, and guiding him to touch their bark, so it was exciting to hear him say it finally.

I’ve just finished reading a fantastic book on breastfeeding, “The Food of Love” by Kate Evans, a gift given to all of us who finished the breastfeeding peer support course. The author is a cartoonist and uses cartoons to wonderful, hilarious effect to illustrate, for example, the advantages of co-sleeping over getting up umpteen times per night to attend to a crying baby, and the reasons why babies are adapted to need lots of contact. She puts all the information and points of view across with such a unique, humorous and matter-of-fact style, yet not at all prescriptive. I particularly love the way she openly criticises the childcare ‘routines’ so beloved of Gina Ford and Tracey Hogg,  and calls much parenting advice of the past century ‘a lot of rubbish’. I took part in a lactivism protest on Facebook on Saturday, where participants posted photographs of breastfeeding on their profiles to protest Facebook’s anti-breastfeeding action. It felt good to be part of a larger movement.

I’m busy planning the yoga workshop I’m booked to run this weekend. I am missing my own practice so much but am finding it hard to do it in the evenings now that the Pibler has been going to bed later again and waking up all the time. I have no idea what we’re doing for New Year yet!