It is almost one week since we celebrated Little L’s first small anniversary. I have never been aware of time passing as much as I am now. Past 6 months have gone so fast and so slowly at the same time. My own perception of time has changed so much. I’ve experienced minutes that seemed to be hours, and days that seemed to be seconds. Little L turned my whole life upside down.

One would expect that after waking up next to Little L 174 times I should be pretty much used to it. But I am not. Sometimes when I hold him in my arms I get this strong feeling that is hard to describe. I feel shocked, surprised, terrified, happy that I am a mother and he is my son and that it is perfectly real and it will never change. Other times during our walks when I look at him so peacefully resting I feel almost physical pain caused by an enormous amount of fear that paralyses my whole body. There is this little person that I will be worried about every day for the rest of my life. Every single moment in my unconscious there will be fear if he is ok, if he is healthy and if he does not suffer in any way. I realise how helpless I am, how many things out there I can not influence or change. I realise that all I can do is be there for him and the rest will happen in front of my eyes as a theatre play.

Past six months have been beautiful, intense, overwhelming, difficult, confusing. I stared to question everything much more than before. Making decision is not that easy anymore. Suddenly every litte thing seems to have bigger meaning. I am not responsible for myself only, I influence another life. This little person will be experiencing life through me for the first years, I will be middle of his universe. I feel the need, the necessity to do things right, to show him right, to teach him right whatever that right might mean, cause who is to decide.

I am wondering if one can ever get used to being a mother, a parent. For me its is so new every morning I wake up. Just like  Little L is changing every day, he discovers something new every day, he learns something new every day, I look at him and this simple statement “I am your mother” becomes so overwhelmingly meaningful that it fills up the room and takes us on a new ride.

April from Bart Pogoda on Vimeo.

First of all there is the well known not interesting “I have NO time” reason, everybody knows about IT, I knew about it before giving birth, well at least I thought I knew. And I was sure I will be able to manage without any problems, but THE reality exceeded my expectations. I really really have no time. 90% of my day I am a full time servant to his majesty Little L and the rest 10% is the time that I’d would like to spend spoiling myself by such a fancy treat as shower, maybe even drying my hair with hairdryer – what a luxury – or just a simple sitting staring to nowhere and doing nothing. But the list of to do’s is way to long and 10% is 10%. I have to set some priorities and writing a blog post is sadly not one of them. OK don’t get me wrong I am NOT complaining I am simply stating the facts here. But even when impossible happens like it did tonight and Little L, who seems to think that sleep deprived mama is FUN mama, goes to sleep at reasonable hour leaving me confused and lost with my laptop, I have a problem…WHAT should I write about. If I don’t want to bother you with small milestones of Little L’s everyday life than I would have to talk about my achievements in my own game called winning on dogs shit battlefield which basically means trying to step into least possible dog’s shit during our everyday walks in Skaryszewski.

But who would care about that? I can not turn this blog into “what I wore today” kind of blog because all you would look at would be photos of me wrapped around some blooming tree in the same sweatpants most of the week, and that is not a true fashionista style :).

I also can not run a food porn blog. I see myself standing in my pyjama with spots from leaking milk on my breast, here and there fresh traces of Little L stomach content, using only one hand to eat really quick while rocking Little guy who is sitting content in his chair, content unless the chair is rocked by me of course even though he can rock himself pretty well. Having a nice breakfast small talk with Mr.B is a story from different reality…But we did have a dinner together the other day, in the bathroom, Mr.B standing me sitting next to the bathtub eating soup that was not even warm enough watching Little L enjoying his evening bath…I do cook from time to time, and the food is even tasty but to upgrade this fact to a keystone on which food porn blog could be built is impossible as it is simply missing that final touch…so what else can a woman who is full time mother to her FIRST baby write about…/FIRST is in capitals because I do believe that by some miracle everything gets easier with the second one/.

I could write about Little L’s achievements, but as he is in his teething period the biggest achievement is one uninterrupted hour of sleep during day. I remember reading somewhere in some smart ass article that good mothers know why their babies cry. What a bullshit! Or maybe I am not a good mother. Anyhow there are times when he screams so much that he is all purple short of breath and I am worried he is gonna faint, but even if I try to be the best mother I can, I really have no clue what is his problem. There are common symptoms for teething, for stomachache but what if your baby does not show any of those and still cries like insane and than suddenly out of a blue something happens and its quiet followed by huge smile from ear to ear. I wonder who writes that kind of articles and how are they supposed to help to anyone.

Good mother – what does that mean anyway. When I was pregnant and complaining that I feel as if my belly was a public property I was warned that what comes after the baby is born is even worse. People telling you what to do and how to do it and by people was not meant the closest family but complete strangers that don’t know you at all. That was something I could not imagine and I thought it must be some kind of bad urban legend, but guess what IT IS NOT. This shit happens for real and I am amazed how it is even possible that somebody who has never ever talked to you can judge you as parent. How does that happen that some people are convinced that they can comment on other people’s lives. I don’t want to sound pissed or frustrated by writing this because I am not and by far I don’t even want to sound like I am defending myself because thats again something I don’t need to do. I just want to say that I hate judgements and monothematism.

So to make things clear to those who are having concerns about Little L’s health or wellbeing. We take Little L for walks in his trolley  in a sling or a carrier. He loves the trolley and he loves carrier but he is not a fun of slings, and I love what makes HIM happy. Sometimes when I carry him for hours around the house I am happy my back can rest a little and we go for a walk with the trolley. Or I want to take photos and hanging a camera on your neck when there is a baby is quite impossible. There are times when he spends half a day in carrier because thats what we both want to do that particular day. I don’t understand almost surreal obsessions of some mamas over how to carry a baby. Common ladies take it easy. Our mothers raised 90% of our generation in the trolleys  that were archaic compared to what we have now and it does not seem to have damaged us for life or everybody’s family relationships. There are women out there who are on wheel chairs, women with back problems, women with other issues that bring some restrictions on the way they carry their babies but that sure does not categorise them to be bad or non carrying mothers. Women tend to become somehow militant when it comes to kids raising questions and that is freaky dangerous. Easy going mothers raise easy going people and easy going people are nice to be around.

…………….and some long forgotten photos from Vienna……….

Days are passing by and I see Little L. growing into small person that is not a veggie anymore…He starts to laugh a lot and I love to wake up next to him and see his smile first thing in the morning…A lot of things changed for us, for me…I start loving being a mother…I am not nervous any more about everything that I can’t do…I am not nervous about constant lack of time and days filled with repeated actions…I feel like a helpless observer when looking at Little L….he is changing daily…he is growing at ultra fast speed and only through him I am now able to understand passing of time…I know everything will be different in month, in half a year or in one year and I will miss these moments so much…moments of him being so taintlessly and absolutely dependent on us…A lot of things changed….the worse fear I had before giving a birth was me breast feeding…It was my secret night mare..I was googling any kind of information about women who refuse to breast feed because they don’t feel comfortable about it…I just could not imagine it happen…My breast were for my whole adult life a synonym for sexuality and now they were about to change their designation and a small human being was supposed to suck them all day long…HOW????….I desperately needed to know that it is OK not to be into breast feeding in the times when women fight for society to accept public breast feeding as something normal…and here I am, two months after giving birth breast feeding and what more…I find it absolutely beautiful…it’s the time when me any Little L. are completely detached from rest of the world and closed in our own bubble…I see him calming down, feeling secure, holding my finger and examining my face over and over…I love those moment and that incredible bond that it creates between us…

This year was actually the first time that I was sort of thinking about making some sort of resolutions for coming year…and surprisingly it has nothing to do with the need and necessity to plan that is essential when having a baby….my urge for resolution appeared while watching Winged Migration…I know it is an old movie, but I was never able to watch it as there are birds dying…this year I watched the movie while breast feeding Little L….it seemed as good time to give it a try and I was hypnotized…completely and absolutely…paralyzed by by the beauty and perfection of the nature…the majesty and flawlessness of birds…and the combination of those two was breath taking….and than comes the human to the picture and everything is fucked up…each trace of human action is like a black depressive cloud full of shit….humans and their creations their greed their ignorance their arrogance and ability to damage and devastate…many times I feel ashamed for human race…many times I wish they were not given a chance to spoil such beautiful place…but there are moments when I feel hate, strong extreme hate…and watching Winged Migration was one of them..I felt I need to do more, much more, to change more in my life…not that it would change the world but it would make me feel better about myself…it would make it easier for me to live with the fact that I am also contributing to destruction of nature by the way I live….So my resolution was to find ways how to lower the negative side effects of my being here…I plan to cut down buying crap, I plan to be more precise when it comes to choosing products I use…we already use only not tested cosmetics and cleaning products, but there is still place where I have to be more aware of what I use and choose, I plan to go more for second hand chooses when possible, I plan not to buy shoes, clothes this year, I plan to take some plastic bags when we go out for walks in the nature and pick up the shit that people leave behind…I simply plan to be more aware of my actions than I was until now…And I plan to illustrate a book for Litte L.

This little man changes in front of my eyes every hour, every day he is different, he grows up crazy fast and what was yesterday is gone with a blink of an eye.I have to admit that I still have not figured out some kind of regime that would allow me work on things I was working on before the big bang, but I believe it is also a side effect of the fact that in Mr.L short 5 weeks life we have moved from Wawa to Klodzko to spend some time and than further to slovak hobbiton….It looks like we are staying here for little longer so I might even be able to start to draw again…For now I am happy to share with you this little publication – collection of theater plays written by 12 different authors – where I had a chance to illustrate portrait of Julia Holewinska as well as her play….that is all for today…end of fun back to work :)