Quetzalcoatl

As Oscar bathes Olive and plays with her in the bath, I have the time to write. We've had a weekend away from him and we've missed him so much. Their bond is just so heartwarming. Makes me want another...oh wait, we've already made one...just got to get the little one to Earth safely now and we don't have long to go...  This pregnancy is totally different to our first. Kicks are the same, same sickness at the beginning, same waves that roll in my stomach that make me feel so lucky and feminine. Same power. Same tiredness. Same overriding feeling of so. Much. Love. Same feeling of fear. The fear is now: how on earth will we cope with two? I think more about post-birth than the birth itself. As soon as I'm on Mat Leave, at the end of this week, I can feel a shift moving towards preparing for birth and the arrival.  I literally have no idea how we'll cope but we will. It's amazing how much courage and reserves we have deep down. Oscar said the other day that we...

It feels good to be writing today. I've set myself a new little goal to write a blog post roughly once a month. My last post was September last year and I can't quite believe it. It's been a while. Lots of things have happened; a third lockdown has hindered how I've gone back to teaching - we're now remote learning whilst juggling a toddler at home. It's been hard for everyone. I think of the first time mothers with no baby club support in those early weeks. I think of the teenagers who are missing out on parties and first kisses. I think of grandparents who don't get to smell and cuddle their grandchildren. I think of the parents who are home schooling whilst juggling life. I think of the people on their own. It's all so heartbreaking but we are now slowly coming out into Spring and into a more sociable way of being, thank goodness. This third lockdown has been the hardest - I'm so grateful for the local support around us for dragging us through. At...

Olive is mid-nap and I am busy dunking as much galaxy chocolate into my tea as I possibly can. Heaven. So...I'll try and be brief and not waffle too much but I know that will hard. I started The Odyssey after reading The Blood Meridian as they compared it to the Odyssey in the introduction. It's always a book that I've wanted to read but it's always scared me. Greek epic poetry always sits highly with me as the greatest pieces of literature but I put it out of my reach because it felt like I needed to climb a mountain to read it. But, no - what I've found is that it depends on the translation you read. I'm fascinated with translations. During my teacher training year, I got an Italian sixth former to read a Petrarchan sonnet in Italian and I read the English. The Italian proceeded to tell us how different they actually are in meaning. It fascinates me what is lost in translation. Not just the words change, the entire meaning.  Right, Olive is up. I will cont...

10 days before birth When I started this blog, I wanted to bare all about certain aspects of motherhood and I guess I'm now happy and ready to open up. The biggest reason for publishing this is for there to be some positive stories out there. I found that, during a lot of my pregnancy, everyone would tell me about the horror birth stories that have been passed down from friend to friend and generation to generation equalling a progressively worse story as it passes on. Like someone rushed into A&E with a hand shoved up there. This can happen, yes, and I've heard a similar story since giving birth so it's not actually that rare. Giving birth is hard, and it can also be the most enlightening, uplifting, and empowering thing ever to experience. I remember being pregnant and someone asking me how I felt about birth. I was looking forward to birth. I actually couldn't wait. They were surprised. It's like the person that had asked me thought I should be nervous ab...

I wrote the following on April 4th 2020 just as Lockdown started to really kick in: "Today, I spoke to a 87 year old woman who was upset about her husband who's in a nursing home and could be suffering with Coronavirus. It's the first sentence of this blog post and I've already mentioned the word that is circulating the world. It's a scary idea. People are full of fear. We are told to stay in and be safe. Of course, we know it's for the best but it doesn't mean it's easy. It feels we're in a future dystopian novel but also like we've stepped back in time into the rationing times of war. I miss popping into the pub. I miss going out to my new yoga class (it's not the same at home). I miss going to baby clubs so all the mums can sit in a room and feel like zombies together because it's more better feeling like zombies together. I miss Oscar going to work because I miss Olive's face when he comes home from work. But most of all I miss...

I started reading this to my daughter when she was a few months old in her playroom/my library (my playroom!). She was listening intently but then she started crawling and, well, all the nice playing went to pot. She wants to get everywhere. So, I finished the little book at nighttime when I’d get into bed. I’d dissolve into a world unlike any other. I was transported into the trusted, childhood memories of our favourite characters such as the white rabbit and the mad hatter. The imagery is surreal, the world we are transfixed by reminds me of the nonsense poems that I’d read in my first year of studying poetry at school, like Jabberwocky. The nights I’d read this book, I was able to remove myself from weaning, sleeping cues, nap times, play time, and able to morph into a new world that was all my own creation. Well, Carroll helped me, but it was still mine and I was still Alice. Most of the time, though, I did realise how obnoxious Alice is and how confident she was. It’s remind...

This book was discovered during pregnancy in my local WHSmiths. I used to go there as a little child and pick out some new gel pens as a weekend treat. Yes, I love my stationery. My children I teach will tell you that! I have a special drawer with stationery treats in for star of the week presents. I have a special box with my stationery in that they can’t touch and I have my classroom stationery box that they can explore and use. Anyway, I’ve gone off piste. I could talk pens all day. But I’m here to talk Blood Meridian. I picked it up because McCarthy’s The Road is taught in the A-Level Dystopian module. We compared The Road with The Handmaid’s Tale (when it was on the cusp of going big). The Road has a sparseness to it like Blood Meridian. Like HT, BM was published in 1985. From the start, I was enthralled with McCarthy’s exceptional descriptive writing. The way he describes landscape is like nothing I’ve ever read: simplistic in lexis but detailed in syntax. He uses plenty of syn...