Balancing Motherhood, Yoga and Writing

Spooky. There really is something going on with computers. First my home PC goes on the blink, and has yet to be resuscitated. Now I’m typing on a public access computer and the blog post I’d just half-written disappears. What’s going on? I’ll start again then.

Seriously, though, the past couple of weeks of being unable to communicate regularly with the electronic world has been a welcome hiatus. Sometimes the only things that stop me being too busy, and finally ‘taking it easy’, are technical breakdowns and illness. I’ve had both recently: a bout of mastitis (an infection of the breast tissue not uncommon in breastfeeding) and a completely dead computer.

I’ve been forced to take up residence on the couch, catch up on my reading (I haven’t read a whole book in a couple of days, for a long time), read countless books to the Pibler because I was incapable of much else, and rediscover the joys of handwriting, rather than typing.

I’ve gone back to the basics of letting pen move over paper, a la Natalie Goldberg and Julia Cameron - ‘just shut up and write’ (i.e. no ‘but I don’t have a computer’ excuses).  I’ve been brainstorming ideas for non-fiction works, re-vamping my novel’s ideas - inspired by Paulo Coelho’s brilliant The Witch of Portobello, a birthday gift, to start writing it again - and continuing with my short story collection.

Of course, I’ve not written much during the mastitis, feeling too nauseous, exhausted and feverish. Despite all my breastfeeding knowledge, experience and training, I couldn’t shift a blockage in my right breast and ended up with mastitis; having to go to the hospital on Saturday night and getting antibiotics. I would have ridden it out stubbornly but my partner was insistent.

In a way I’m almost glad to have had the experience though, because I feel much closer to the Pibler after a few days of spending so much one-on-one time with him, doing very simple things and slowing down so drastically. He seemed concerned about me and gave me lots of ‘cuggles’; he couldn’t seem to understand why I wasn’t bustling around as usual but just lying there. Also, I now have first-hand experience of a breastfeeding problem that I had only theoretical knowledge about, which will be useful in my breastfeeding counselling. I begin the training course on Monday and am very excited about it!

My Kundalini Yoga practice has fallen by the wayside due to sheer physical inability, but I have mostly kept up my  meditation practice. Unfortunately my committment to the 1000-day sadhana meditation only lasted weeks, as last night I fell asleep putting the Pibler to bed at 9:30 and woke up at 3 am, thus missing a day of the meditation! I was disappointed but it was the first time I’ve had more than 2 hours sleep at a time, for ages, so I couldn’t be too upset.

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