Our son, Oskar James, was born late last Friday 19th February, at home in the birthing pool, after a long day of labour. After a whole pregnancy of having no intuition whether this baby would be a boy or a girl, I realised part way through the afternoon that I’d been thinking of it as a boy all day. And then my boy was born, all eight pounds ten of him, and was suddenly oh so real.
We are so in love, all three of us, and already can’t imagine life without him. We’re doing well too, healing quickly and slowly figuring each other out, remembering all those little things that happen in the first weeks that we’d forgotten in the last 20 months since Kaya was born. And we’re pretty exhausted.
I’m grateful for all the messages and cards we’ve received, for the kindness of relatively new friends who have given meals and flowers, for the friend who have brought me ibuprofen when I ran out and then milk the next day, for family who have cleaned and baked cakes and put up with rail-replacement bus trips to get to meet our boy. We feel very loved and supported.
There’s not much new writing happening right now of course (not much cleaning/showering/sleeping either) so I thought I’d share a few of my favourites from the archives over the next few weeks. Some of them you might remember, some are long enough ago that even I’d forgotten about them. I hope you enjoy reading them, and I’ll be back just as soon as my two babies let me pick up pen and paper again…
