A life like a rainbow

Last Friday a friend and I flew to Melbourne and drove to the Yarra Valley for a night. Under any other circumstances it would be my ideal getaway. But not this time.

We were going down to attend a funeral. Of a little boy, not yet three who died suddenly the Friday before last. The much wanted, first child of our good friends. The loveliest couple you’d ever meet. And he the loveliest of boys. His mother is six months pregnant with his little sister.

The Monday before his death I saw him. The family were up here in Brisbane for a brief visit. We hadn’t seen them since April. I remarked how much he’d grown. Such a strapping looking lad. Tall. Healthy. His cherubic baby face becoming that of a little boy, framed by a head of blonde curls.

If someone told me as I waved goodbye to him that he would be gone by the end of the week I wouldn’t have believed them. No one would have believed them. Especially his parents.

One post wonder

The post was becoming a thing of beauty – well to me anyway – juxtaposing the imagined thoughts of 80s one hit wonders Dexy’s Midnight Runners after C’mon Eileen became an international smash hit with my current emotional state – fearing a similar fate; that of a one post wonder.

And then technical glitch hit, the post was gone, replaced instead with a solitary letter r.

At first I tried resurrecting the post – but this only frustrated me. The train of thought nuances were now lost to me having spilt out on the page previously.

So now all that remained was an emotion, the reason I started writing the post in the first place. Behind all the witty references to dungarees I was scared. Scared of being a one-post wonder.

As My boy with the Crooked Smile became one of this week’s feature posts on Aussie Mummy Bloggers I was both happy and fearful – what if I never write a post that resonates with as many people as that one?

What if? What if? It’s the ifs in life that hold us back.

What if I never write anything that resonates with people as much? It really doesn’t matter. What matters is what I do now. Do I believe its a foregone conclusion that I don’t have anything else worthwhile to share and stop now? Or do I feel the fear and do it anyway?

Feeling the fear and writing about it, I feel the pressure valve release. Which reminds me why I’m doing this anyway.

Reconnecting with B

I am starting to see how motherhood can be a series of small goodbyes. Saying farewell to different stages, only to welcome new ones as our babies gradually move towards independence.

A few weeks ago J started daycare two days a week. I am not due back at work for another two months so the plan has been to gradually ease him into a full day over the next few weeks.

The first day felt like a leap into the great unknown. Even though I’d visited the centre a few times and had met his caregivers, I was still nervous and didn’t know what to expect. Would he sleep there? Would he take his bottle? Would he be happy to interact with his caregivers? but with all the questions in my mind focused on ‘will he be okay’, I really didn’t stop to ask myself if I’d be okay.

Something magical

I’ve always believed in the power of the universe, but never as much as I do right now. After writing about my feelings about my son on Friday night, I felt a weight lift off me. It felt good to get my emotions out on the computer screen and sent out there into cyberspace, where I thought perhaps a few friends and family members may read them. But then something magical happened.

My boy with the crooked smile

I’ve held my baby boy Jarvis in my arms now for nearly as long as I held him inside me.

Alongside the exhaustion of sleep deprivation and muscle ache from climbing the steep learning curve of mothering, I have been lugging a bag of emotions that weigh heavy on my shoulders and threaten to spill out at the most unlikely of places.

Anger, guilt, resentment, fear, worry and self-pity. I feel them all regularly and intensely. Even in the moments of sheer joy, they are still there. That sheer-shot of guilt from the corner of my beautiful boy’s smile.

A suffering sanity and a writer’s block

It’s superfluous to say that I haven’t posted in awhile. Not so much nothing to say, just unsure of how to say it and where I want this blog to go.

Save Mum’s Sanity started as a concept of exploring ways to ‘get out and about’ with a baby in tow and I saw it as a way to motivate myself to try new things and write about them. A way to keep the writer in me sated while I’m on maternity leave, with a view to opening up other options when it came time to go back to the paid workforce.

What I wasn’t counting on was how much an internal battle my journey into motherhood would be and how much my thought patterns could end up holding me back.