amomthatblogs

[amomthatblogs]

A poem for my daughter:

You are my Sunshine

The only thing that I feel I ever did right in this lifetime

You light up my life

A furnace that warms up the forgotten, dark and cold parts of the me that I think I used to be

You changed me

Rather, I found the courage to rearrange those distorted parts of me to create a mosaic that glimmers with just these newfound memories of you

Now, I walk around with the heaviness of a million butterflies in my stomach

You see, before you I thought I knew what love was, what loving someone meant, what being loved felt like

You are the light that shines over my horizon before the Sun sets

Your voice is a melody I can never compose again; it is satisfying

The grasp of your hands feels like the glue that binds my soul to the afterlife

This love anchors me

This love nourishes me so I can nurture you

I gave birth twice on that rainy afternoon

I gave you life and I birthed love into my life

I no longer want strength to define me -

For you, I need to be vulnerable

I have finally found the light at the end of the tunnel

Handpicked the flowers that my lonely tears watered;

I need you to smell the roses every single day and twice on a Sunday

You are my altar

All my unanswered prayers summed into one

You are a culmination of my existence

The closest thing to Perfect

What just enough is

You are what my love is

You are the light of my life

The Sun rising at the break of dawn

Your laughter is the warmth that engulfs our home; it beckons me out of the dark

You are the fire that they see in me

You light up my life

My darling, you are my Sunshine

[amomthatblogs]

Lately,

The world is changing, yet I'm reminded of that saying about how the more things change, it's the more that they stay the same. There's an eerie feeling of things returning to the normal we thought the pandemic had afforded us a clean slate from. At the forefront of this unchanging world remains racism and femicide. What black people are saying is that we are tired of being treated like the scum of the earth. What black women are saying is that we are tired of being subjugated because of the colour of our skin, our gender and moreover we don't want to be slaughtered anymore.

Due to my baby reaching another milestone (her two bottom teeth sprouting) that caused her to have a weakened immune system, I have missed much of the news and I am playing catch up on all of my social media channels. I read about the American protests, the toppling of a slave owner statue in the UK, a black, Muslim refugee girl (11) being found by the river bank dead and the suspects being her white classmates who were bullying her and then the devastating news about Tshegofatso Pule, a pregnant woman who was stabbed and then hung on a tree. In a matter of days so much has happened in the world while we're knee deep within a pandemic.

Before I was a mother, I could stomach the gory details and would want to find out what happened. I would go on rants on Facebook, vent to my partner over the phone while recounting word for word articles written in light of women that had been raped or killed or raped and killed. I was boisterous in sharing my opinions about these matters and more. Now, I don't want to know the details, I am too terror-stricken to be loud about what happens to black women in particular.

As a rape victim and survivor, I live in a constantly agonising frenzy of negative emotions whenever I think of my daughter. I used to not even want to be a mother to a girl child because I knew that I would never have the means or ability to protect her from reality when I can't even guarantee that for myself. At the back of my mind I am sick with worry for her life, her safety and the possibilities of her ever becoming a statistic. She has just turned 7 months old but these are the daunting thoughts that boggle my mind whenever I think of what possible reality is in store for her.

I weep for her, I hug her ever so often and squeeze her gently while I tell her I that love her throughout the day as I cower away. I am defeated because there is nothing that I as a woman can do to ensure her safety. I have failed my daughter as my mother failed me without even knowing.

Then I am inclined to believe that the passing of time changes nothing, that the world will always remain like this. Even in the midst of a supposedly deadly pandemic the most dangerous things in the world are femicide and racism...

[amomthatblogs]

Finally,

I feel as though I now know what I meant in the past about wanting to be the best version of myself.  I have reached the epitome of my self actualisation and I have my daughter to thank for that. I remember what an emotional mess I was the first couple of weeks after finding out that I was pregnant, it was emotional chaos to say the least. I was simply afraid. See, the thing is that for a good decade in my life prior to my pregnancy I was dealing with trauma that had catalysed itself into a destructive mental health bomb, a concoction of PTSD, acute anxiety and depression and in the 8 years out of that decade,  my life was in turmoil.  I felt as though there was nothing good that happened to me that I didn't ruin, I crashed and burned the good parts of myself on purpose mostly because what happened to me made me feel unworthy of anything good in my life. 

So, when I knew I'd be responsible for another human, my own human at that, I had to do the unavoidable; I had to let go of the misery that had found solace in my godforsaken mind. I had to forgive myself and God. I even felt as though my pregnancy was God's way to repent for all the pain that I had suffered (that is another blog awaiting to happen altogether,  no need to share all that darkness here). It  was my atonement but I needed to commit to making changes in my life to best suit my mini-me.  

I remember reading an article about how trauma could alter your DNA and that it could be hereditary. I had to kill parts of myself instantly after that because even though I wasn't sure of the gender of my unborn child, I knew that I didn't want any part of my pain to latch onto them; I needed them whole. So, the work needed to be completed, I needed to be whole again and to find peace. 

My first Mother's Day reaffirmed me that I am doing my best, that I am at my best with all aspects of my life. The relationship I have with my parents ever since I too became a parent has reached an even better level, my friends continue to love me over the distance and my relationship with my partner is mending parts that we never thought possible.

My daughter looks at me as if I am her world and I am able to look at myself with pride for what I have achieved as a mother for almost 7 months.  

She truly is the culmination of all my dreams,  all that I am in human form...

[amomthatblogs]

Recently,

I had to change the content of my follow up blog post to this one. What initially was meant to be me writing about my journey to falling in love with my body all over again has become about something else.

You see, a few days ago my daughter almost suffocated to death post her morning nap. We have a routine for our mornings, we wake up and have a chat and play, she has her bath where she plays some more in the water (it's really gotten interesting since she can sit on her own now), she feeds and then has her nap (which is usually an hour long if not more). While she naps I then roll out the yoga mat outside to do my daily exercises for about 30 minutes or more if my mother isn't at work. While I prepare myself to sweat some baby weight away, I always ask someone (read our helper) to inform me when my daughter wakes up but I do constant checkups on her during my exercise routine. I'm not entirely sure how but on this unfortunate morning, she rolled over and over tangling herself further and further under her blankets. It hadn't been more than 5 minutes since I had checked up on her and I had this nagging feeling to rush to our bedroom, on my way there down the passage I heard the most terrifying, muffled up wailing and I ran to find her little head under the blankets and her tiny hands flapping all over the place. My heart literally dropped to my knees rushing to free her. My heart was beating so fast and I could see the relief washing over her perturbed face when she saw mine as if just the sight of me slowly put her at ease. I wondered if she knew what could have happened had I been 2 minutes late. My mother (a nurse) is constantly telling me about asphyxiation and babies, how quickly it ends for them. Again, I felt my heart drop further. 

I have never felt that fear in my whole existence, to almost lose the one thing that you love with everything in you is another kind of emotional rollercoaster I haven't quite imagined. To know that right now I am solely accountable for every and anything that happens to her is the kind of responsibility I hadn't fully grasped until that moment because even though there were other people in the house, at the end of it all everyone will ask "where was her mother?". In that moment I realised that I need her father more than ever to watch over her while I burn the fat away. 

When dusk fell rapidly and everything was still, when my heart finally traced its steps back to its origin and I was finally certain that she had long forgotten about the morning, I wept for what could have been a possibility...

[amomthatblogs]

This time...

Everything feels so different, even  the humour has a sombreness that lingers soon after a good laugh. Nobody seems to have an idea of what's coming next, we're in a state of limbo and it's just so awkward. I have found myself pulling myself out of an apparent anxiety attack (I have a history of acute anxiety and this is not the time to crumble because my anxious unraveling comes with a side of depression that we are trying very hard to keep at bay). 

I wonder how other mommies with similar medical histories as myself are handling it all. We are kept on our feet, while having to juggle the normal of our little one's world. My baby is a week away from being 5 months old, so none of this matters to her. She's still going through her milestones, the recent one being able to sit on her own; she's quite chuffed about this one even though she loses balance in less than 30 seconds. Her other favourite thing to do the past few days is biting my nipples when I'm feeding her, it's very painful but she laughs when I wince and I can't seem to lose my marbles after that. She has dimples and when she smiles my whole world collapses to create a mosaic of her tiny face. Even in these trying times and trying to not let the sadness of an unknown future get to me, I am constantly loved by a tiny human and I am grateful for these memories that we get to create. 

Our country is on lockdown, unfortunately her father isn't with us. It's not easy; having to constantly worry about taking extra care of our daughter and wondering if he's cautious enough to meet us at the end of this lockdown unscathed. The last time that we were together it was blissful, the kind of serene moments you need injected in your soul as you watch doomsday hovering at the horizon and getting closer like ships preparing to unload by the dock. We laughed, bonded, hugged and kissed as if we were saying silent prayers and asking God to grant us more of these moments after the dust has settled. I miss him, he misses his daughter and worries about how much he will miss out on as she grows by the day. 

I am reminded of something that I always say to my friends in times of despair; that we ought to have faith like potatoes. I say this with conviction all the time and now it is my turn to have this unwavering faith that we will get through these nitty gritty moments. 

Perhaps, when all is quarantined and done (said and done, obviously) I will write a short story titled Love In the Time of Corona (hahaha do you get it? Okay it's time for me to breastfeed I am starting to show signs of being couped up indoors for longer than normal...) 

[amomthatblogs]

Somehow,

I found myself unravelling a couple of days ago. There I was having what seemed like a meltdown in the shower for all but a good two minutes. I was hiding my tears with a cold shower because I felt bad for even allowing myself to have that moment. I was simply overwhelmed. My daughter has been going through a lot if milestones and the recent one being teething. The most painful part about it is that I cannot take her pain away and I hate it when she cries. In that shower moment I  realised just how exhausted I am and how much my life has changed in a matter of months. 

The transition from being a single entity to being a package deal just happened so fast, it even felt like an out of body experience, as if I was watching myself from a distance slowly morphing into this other persona. Sometimes, I feel like I don't have any idea where who I am begins and where myself as a mother ends. I don't even know if I'm allowed to see myself outside of being someone's mother anymore. However, I feel like I ought to. I need to separate me the individual from the role that I've been blessed with. I don't want to let go of myself; whatever that means. My baby came in my life after a long battle with my own demons sprinkled with therapy sessions, my biggest fear was not being good enough for her and every day I pray that I don't plummet into that darkness while she witnesses that side of me. She came when I was trying to reconnect and integrate the best parts of my old self with who I want to be moving forward. 

I just wish I had been better prepared to keep myself in check before having to be someone else's foundation. When you want to have a child in future, consider how prepared you are for the whirlwind of emotions you're yet to experience. Are you psychologically prepared to be the end all and be all for your child? To sacrifice yourself? I haven't had a drink in a year nor seen my friends. I miss these simple and seemingly insignificant pleasures in my life, the drinks more though (jokes...!) but I am a full-time mother now so something's gotta give.

So, for now I will settle for my 2 minute meltdowns in the shower.

I will be back though, to enjoy sundowners with my precious friends and my little mascot tailing at the helm of my summer dresses...

[amomthatblogs]

You see,

I have been contemplating my next piece for over a week now. I have typed and retyped what I want to post over and over again until a voice inside me was like "screw it!". This is when I was under the weather and I was caught between my active baby and fighting for my life (perhaps a tad bit dramatic but trying to sleep in while being a full-time mom to a 3 month old baby girl feels like a war!). 

Any-who, whilst I was heaving and puffing, stressing about what to write and how to write it, I realised that this is not me. What I mean is that I am not the kind of woman who worries about seemingly futile things, I have never been a people pleaser and I will not start now just because I'm now a mother. I am a simpleton who doesn't follow crowds or trends, I love knowing that I do things how I want to and when I want to without following any protocol of some sort. There's nothing to write home about, nothing revolutionary about how I've chosen to live my life. 

I mean even my pregnancy was the most simplest in every way, there were no baby showers or gender reveals, no cute "bump fits" or photoshoots and there was no other reason behind it except for choice. I chose to immerse myself in the experience and to own it in every way without the need for memorabilia. I was also avoiding any conflict with people along the way because I've seen too many friendships go down in the name of chipping in R200 for a surprise baby shower with pastel colours I wouldn't be caught wearing like ever!

So, when the time came for me to be a mother, I chose to remain myself and to be a simple mom who enjoys every single moment, who cries when the need arises and has to do improv karaoke at times while her daughter watches in excitement. In those moments I know that I'm being the best that I can ever be while not getting lost in this fortress of motherhood. 

So when the time comes for you to balance out fighting for your life (with a cold) and having to change 5 poop infested nappies in less than an hour, I hope you choose to do it your way without worrying about how the next mom is doing it or thinking that you're not good enough. Be a mom but be yourself more than anything...

[amomthatblogs]

So...

I've been contemplating to jot down things related to my journey as a new mom for a while now but I either haven't had the time or I've wallowed in self doubt for what feels like eternity. I tend to marinate myself in a lot of emotions lately! As if being a mom came with a whole new floodgate of emotions and it gets overwhelming at times. I've probably cried more in the past three months than I have in 5 years! 

I had absolutely no idea how this whole being a mom thing works, it seems like nobody knows either, it's just a bunch of idealistic moments and meltdowns along the way until you get it right! Almost like changing a nappy, you'll need a couple of tries until you get it right and can do it while on the phone (I've mastered this part! *insert a dancing emoji). 

I'm not blogging to teach anyone how to be a mom or bragging about being mom of the century cos in all honesty I feel like I have no clue about what it is that I'm doing but when I see my daughter's excitement when she opens her eyes in the mornings, I am overjoyed because I know it's a start to an adventurous day filled with learning and growing for the both of us!.