I remember reading at the beginning of this phase of my life that ‘you are always post-partum’ and now, a year on, it makes sense. Mara has been in nursery for nearly three weeks and in that time, I have had a few hours a couple days a week to think. And I found I have so much healing to do, mostly emotionally and cognitively, accepting what happened in the past two years to me. My body and my mind is slowly being returned to me. Where has the ‘me’ been in this time? She was consumed. She was literally and figuratively consumed by her baby.

Two years ago, I was stimming. I was giving myself up to 6 daily injections of hormones to hack my cycle to ripen around 40 eggs, rather than one, in that month. 27 were harvested under light sedation, 15 were mature and fertilised, 11 survived, 10 were viable. And now 5 remain frozen, waiting. I needed 3 months to recover from the overstimulation and then, I was impregnated, with Mara. In this time, I published a book started a new job, found somewhere to live in Glasgow (twice as first place did not work out), and was then made unemployed. 

I gave birth to Mara, and to my new self, Mother. I still must come to terms with the fact she grew in me, and then I pushed her out of myself and then fed her for 8 months. When I am alone, as now I get alone time, I cannot conceive how this happened. It seems incomprehensible. And that is where the healing needs to occur. To connect my past and present self to the pregnant and breastfeeding self. 

The upside, is now with a few hours a week for me, I am learning what I like again. How I like to spend my time, what I like to read or think about, what is important to me and remembering how to hear my own needs and wants. I am hoping with more recovery, I will be able to be a friend and partner to Max again, rather than what we have now which feels like colleagues who also flat share.

A big challenge right now is chronic sleep deprivation and continuous ill health from viruses Mara brings home on top of chronic stress about money and Mara’s severe food allergies, eczema and what looks like asthma. 

But after months of not knowing what I like anymore, I can tell you this! 

I love my husband, adore my daughter, thoroughly appreciate my parents and cousin Alyson, grateful to my new mum friends and their openness. I enjoy tea in the garden watching my hens peck about my feet and looking after them and reading about gardens and other female lives. I like walks by myself. I am really into complimentary and plant medicine right now. I seek female healing spaces like sound baths, sea swimming meets and Pilates groups. I am yearning to fit creativity into my daily grind. I love reading books, cycling with Mara on the back of my bike, and playing with my family on the living floor or walking with them at sunset and attending village family events, finally as a family.