Wow. I haven’t updated since April 2023.
I’m trying to think where I was at then.
V was 4 and a half, in preschool as one of the oldest. She started school September 2023 and is absolutely thriving. Reading like a much older kid, keeps getting moved up stages. Writing all the time, papers everywhere round the house which is simultaneously annoying and incredible to watch h her development. Her social life is off the chart, she has lots of friends and it feels like constant parties and play dates.
I’ve found my mum tribe and we do coffee, we’ve had parties over Christmas, it’s been lovely.
Christmas this year has been really nice. The first one since Covid, and mum being in hospital for her transplant, that we’ve actually just been able to enjoy. It was 3 years on the 27th of this month since mum died. It felt different this year. Still incredibly sad and I’ll never not miss her, and I don’t know if I agree that time heals all wounds, this one will always be open, but perhaps not as gaping as it has been the first couple of years. Not as all consuming, not as many massive peaks and troughs of emotion, just the low level sadness of living without someone.
Another reason, the biggest one of all, is that in November 2023 Chris and I discovered I was pregnant!
We had talked about adding another baby, it was a chance neither of us thought we would have. Chris thought the opportunity had passed him by and I didn’t imagine meeting someone who a) wanted kids or b) that I’d be young enough to consider it still if I did meet someone.
We had said we’d give it a year of trying, we didn’t know how it would go, but that neither of us wanted to be any older than we would be at the end of that year, just a personal choice. Also the age gap with V was getting bigger. Inevitably, after imaging it might not even happen, we became pregnant almost immediately that we tried which was a revelation after going through ivf with Joey (admittedly for his fertility issues).
Baby Ivy was born at the end of July and she’s just been an absolute dream. Chris and I have really found our groove with parenting together and V is an amazing big sister. She’s had her moments where she’s found it hard to share, understandable when she’s had me alone for so long, then me and Chris to herself after that, but we’re making time to do things with just her, and we’re all off to Amsterdam in April for our first abroad holiday.
I have been lurking around, reading everyone, it just seems to be a longstanding thing for me that I write more in times of trouble than joy and honestly, I’m at the point at the moment where I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy!
There are things of course, parenting a sassy six year old is HARD some days. Co-parenting with Joey, if we can even call it that for the amount he contributes, is an entry all on its own.
Grief is a thing, I visited the cemetery this year, my dad is visiting my brother in Australia so I said I’d go in his place. I don’t normally go, I think about mum all the time anyway, and never more so than this year. Having a baby without my mum here has been incredibly hard. But also, we are so surrounded by love. Ivy has two doting grandads, my sister and brother in law adore her, and so many friends and family who love us and love her. Despite all of that, and it is wonderful to be in such a different place this time around, no stress and drama and a partner who adores his child (and me), I’m just incredibly sad that mum isn’t here to see me getting it right. All I could think of when I was at the cemetery was ‘I had a baby, and you’re not here’.
So an eventful year and a half since I last wrote!
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