What I Have Been Up To

And Why I Haven't Published a Newsletter in a Month

Well, hello there! It’s been a minute. I had a goal of publishing a newsletter once a week, but in the past month that goal has fallen to the wayside for a few reasons.

The first is that I actually wrote quite a few pieces, but couldn’t hit publish on them. One was the birth story of my first child. This is a story packed with a lot of information and lessons I learned that I want to be available for other parents who I think would benefit… and yet it feels too intimate to publish. I suffered a lot, and so did my daughter. My daughter’s birth was one of my first sort of “ego deaths”, and that’s a lot to put out on the internet. I haven’t absolutely decided that I won’t publish it, but for now it’s sitting in drafts until I have peace about it.

The reason why I’ve been sitting on this recently is because one piece I do feel compelled to write is how after two traumatic birth experiences, I still am open to having a third baby — even though the things that happened to me in the first two births very well may happen again (and my intention was to publish my birth story with my second daughter one week after the first). I feel like some people will find that piece more impactful if they know what I and my husband endured to get to this point as opposed to just vaguely saying that my first two births were traumatic.

So there’s that.

I have also wanted to share about my Mother Academia plans for the foreseeable future, but I’m not sure that I want to publish them because I took a detour on them in the past two months so it feels a little… I don’t know, dishonest? To publish them. Now that I write that out, it sounds silly. So maybe that is the piece to come next week!

I’ve also had quite a few just life events.

At the beginning of April we closed on our very first house. It’s an a 1850’s classic New England farmhouse with lots of nooks, crannies, and the classic main house connection to the barn. We are on just under two acres but it has to be mowed which means we are mowing almost every day while we figure that out. We are thinking about converting some of it into a wildflower meadow or a pumpkin patch. We also had to do some lead paint encapsulation which involves a lot of painting. As you may know we have two toddlers which means painting can only happen when they are in bed… which means it happens one layer at a time, typically one layer per day, as with lead encapsulation you want to make sure all the layers, including spackle, are fully dry so as to prevent peeling and cracking in the future. My husband and I have been joking that it finally feels like we are living our Stardew Valley dreams — everyday has felt like a very fulfilling grind, with endless tasks to do. It feels like we can’t get ahead, but in a good way. I can never seem to get all the fruit bearing trees and shrubs properly weeded and pruned, and we can count on a tick attaching to someone at least once a day. If you are in the northern midwest to east coast you also know that we have gotten so much rain the past couple of weeks, which is not helping our mowing problem at all. Last week, we also had a cold snap which made me glad we haven’t started our garden yet, but I’m hoping to make big headway on that this week.

Shortly after we closed on our house, I also exited the first trimester. That’s right, we are expecting baby number three! As far as pregnancies go, this one has been somewhere between my last two in terms of how challenging it has been. With my first I had debilitating morning sickness from about 8 am to 5 pm everyday and was averse to everything except Taco Bell and crackers. With my second, I barely knew I was pregnant because I never had morning sickness. This pregnancy has been somewhere in between, but as I approach my anatomy scan in the next few weeks, nausea has almost entirely passed. What this pregnancy has in common with my previous ones is that I am so ghostly tired every single day and second trimester has hardly brought any relief. I hit the pillow each day just utterly exhausted. I get headaches and nauseous when I’ve worked too hard, which doesn’t feel like very hard at all. Regardless, I am so excited to have a newborn again and to bring a new baby back to our forever home. In previous pregnancies, the concept of home has been somewhat, if not entirely, unstable. I am so grateful to have that constancy in this pregnancy.

As you can imagine, I haven’t made great headway on my reading goals this year. But I did manage to finish the Narnia books alongside some of my best friends. This was my first time reading them and I was shocked at how violent and gruesome they can be. I enjoyed them, but I won’t be allowing my children to read them until probably age 7 or 8.

I am about halfway through Kristin Lavransdatter, my second Big Book of the year. This is the second time I’ve read it, but the first time I’ve read it as a mother which is a very different experience. In general, there are some authors where I feel edified just by reading their words. Sigrid Undset is one of them, so it’s been lovely just to read a chapter or two each day. Next I think I will tackle Shogun by James Clavell so that I can try to watch the Hulu show before the next baby comes.

As we get the house in order, I’m excited to get back into sewing this summer and making some things for the baby. This is our first time waiting to find out the gender which means I have to prepare some more gender neutral things just in case it is a boy, since we’ve only had girls so far!

Lastly, we celebrated my eldest’s third birthday. Most people will laugh, but I can’t believe I’m old enough to have a three year old. Motherhood has made me very sentimental and I get so weepy approaching birthdays and major holidays. It feels like it’s all going so fast, and I can’t believe that my eldest will never sleep all night on my chest like she did when she was a baby, and she’ll soon be too big to go in a baby carrier. She talks my ear off in the best way, and she’s got lots of opinions and preferences and she’s started telling me made up stories that start with “Once upon a time…” I feel so unbelievably lucky and undeserving of this great task to raise my kids. I fail every day. I’m excited for what’s to come, but every day I’m grieving the days that pass.

Anyway, I feel almost overwhelmed by all the things I would like to write here. If there is something specific you would like to see from me, please let me know so it can help me hone in!