This first month with Kaya has been hard. Many parent-friends told me it would be of course but there is this thing about life that you can never truly understand something until you experience it yourself.
The sleep deprivation + raving hormones + trying to figure out how to be a good mother to this very dependant little person. It is all consuming and it is just plain hard. I adore Kaya. I am still a little in awe that we made someone so amazing. But still, some days, many days, it is hard to step back and remember what an incredible gift this is.
When I’m covered in spit up and poop and have only had four hours broken sleep and she’s crying again and we’ve run out of nappies and I haven’t left the flat in days and the flat itself is so dirty it’d probably be condemned if anyone from health and safety came by and I really just want an adult conversation that’s not about breast pads or sleep patterns…
So I started a new practise, by accident really. Kaya and I take daily selfies together. It started in the delivery room, in those precious two hours after the birth when they deposited my daughter on my chest skin to skin and we stayed that way, vernixey and exhausted but oh so happy. Rasmus handed me my phone for the first time in 12 hours and I held it up and took a photo of me and my girl, snuggled in close to me.
Since then I’ve taken a selfie of us every day. I may have missed a couple, but then there are days with multiple selfies. I generally look exhausted in all of them but I tell myself to smile anyway.
Already I look back through them and see my precious girl growing and see her tired mama who is doing her best. And her best is good.
It’s hard work, this fast and surreal growth into motherhood. But as my wise man keeps reminding me, hard does not equal bad. And those selfies help me to see the good in this hard. They help me to see past the bags under my eyes and the stains on my top and recognise the transformation happening in me and see that it is good.
