ah, life – degrees, pregnancy, trees etc etc etc

This is a longer post, please get a beverage of your choice and settle down to read it should you wish to do so …

As I write, there is a sleeping baby curled up on my chest. Don’t fear – the baby is mine! 2026 was a year in which I finally attained my degree and also gave birth. (No photos or details such as name or gender, I’m afraid. The internet is not a safe place for children. I will state the species though: human.)

It has really been an extraordinary year.

And now we are mid-way through October, in my favourite season, with a nip in the air and changing colours on the trees. Yesterday, we ventured forth, and I showed the baby trees and we stood (or rather, I stood, the baby was held) underneath outstretched branches – me for the umpteenth time, them for probably their first. (I don’t know what the baby gets up to at night! They might escape and caper around the local park or dabble in communism!)

(To be pedantic, there have been other outings around trees but as a sleep-deprived human, at the time I thought it was the first time at the time. But there was a trip with family to the local high street and I am sure we walked under a tree then and then, of course, a walk with my husband and there WERE trees present then and are we counting pregnancy because if so – this was FAR from the first and what about before then when the baby was an egg or when I was an egg or when my mother was an egg and … so on, and so forth. Ah-hem. You get the picture.)

It is quite magical, to realise this little being in my arms had probably never seen a tree before, or heard of Georgette Heyer, or conceived of elephants or oceans or oh, an innumerable collection of wonders. There are many concerning things about the world right now, perhaps there always have been, but holding the baby reminds me of the wonder of it all, the magic. There is lots of good too. And I find so much of it in their eyes.

on pregnancy & birth …

Pregnancy was a curious thing. I was not a woman who took to it very well. One could never accuse me of flourishing during pregnancy. There was perhaps a singular week when I thought, hmmmm could this be a ‘pregnancy glow’ but it equally could have been a long hot flush. There was a lot of time spent with my head over a bin that was transformed into a reluctant sick bucket. There was even more time lying down, feeling exhausted and dreadful. My poor husband tried very hard to find food I could eat. (Plain bagels, cheese, tomatoes, and butter kept me going for weeks.) It could have been far worse, however, the internet held horror stories and I did not live one, and I am grateful for that.

Birth was also very curious. Inevitable, one might say. Quite fascinating but on the whole, a rather painful slog.

And now I slowly return to having a body that does not contain another (apologies to all of the trillions of microorganisms that dwell on and in me) and stepping into the state of motherhood, with my brain irrevocably changed and my heart metaphorically enlarged to hold a whole new person.

In our journey to parenthood, I kept a journal entitled ‘how does one make a human being’, documenting our first pregnancy which left us terribly early before it was much more than a line on a stick, and then the one that stayed, and this is one of the final passages:

How does one make a human being? You have to be enormously, incredibly, fantastically fortunate.

There is nothing more to say, really. (Though it is probably some form of narcissism to quote myself.) When we were in the hospital bay, afterwards, we heard a lay chaplain in next bay over, praying a blessing over another fresh enfant. We nabbed her, and asked for the same over us and ours. The blessing was simple but deeply moving; life felt, right then, as a momentous and beautiful thing.

in other news …

This year, I also received my degree – first class! – in English Lit and Creative Writing of which I am quite proud; I didn’t go to university as I was convinced it was a den of sin and hotbed of depravity (HA! What a hoot I was), so I was quite pleased to finally close this chapter. (And eye up the next, naturally.)

And in reading – more on this later – I have reached sixty books this year which I am quite pleased with as I was only aiming for three. (Set low bars, dear reader, and you will soar over them.) I have read very interesting books about meth use in Nazi Germany, tuberculosis, nuns, and even Zapata’s newest slow burn romance.

Writing? Oh it continues on. It paused as the later part of pregnancy was a bit, ah, laboured (ho ho ho) but the words are starting to trickle in once more.

Ah. The baby will soon awaken, and I as servant and slave, must tend to their needs.

I bid you adieu and wish you the best. It has been 13 years of writing on this blog and I thank you for reading my scratchings.