and little video from our trip….enjoy your sunday
Primorje from Bart Pogoda on Vimeo.
camera, edit, colors – Silvia & Bart Pogoda
music Pink Martini – Anna (el negro zumbon)
www.bartpogoda.net
www.silviapogoda.com
Primorje from Bart Pogoda on Vimeo.
camera, edit, colors – Silvia & Bart Pogoda
music Pink Martini – Anna (el negro zumbon)
www.bartpogoda.net
www.silviapogoda.com
During last months of my pregnancy when I looked like a whale abandoned on the shore by greenpeace I was dreaming, dreaming, dreaming about going for a road trip somewhere as soon as I could fit into the car seat. Mr.B and I planned all sorts of possible scenarios. Of course we knew there will be one more person with us, but we had no clue. Logically if parents love to travel the kid HAS to love it just as much.
Out of all the options we were thinking about, road trip to Brittany won. It is not that far, it has an atmosphere and there was a great house on airbnb to rent. I could see all the photos we would take, I could see Mr.T playing with a ball on the beach the only thing I could not imagine was Little L, but I was sure he will do fine. We planned to spend whole february traveling around north cost of France. That was until Little man did not enter our world. Yes we took him for 9 hours drive when he was three weeks old, and than again seven hours when he was six weeks old. I wont say it all went without problems. He made it quite well in the car, but he sure was confused when changing places. Than we drove to Vienna for couple of days and back to Slovakia and Little L was responding better to the changes of enviroment. But we still could not imagine taking him for 20 hours car trip….and so even though we love to travel and he sure loves to travel just as much we quit our idea and started looking for easier options.
First idea was Venice, there is always a good time to go to Venice…..well maybe not when you have a stroller to get around with and its carneval time. And so there was only one possible place left….Piran. We ve been there before and we knew it is always good time to go to Piran :). I could remember how much we walked, chilled, read books and how much I was drawing last time we took couple of days of and drove there from Vienna. It really seemd to be crazy close…almost not long enough for propper conversation and there was even possibility to survive being vegan and eating in restaurants.
So I packed my book, my sketchbook and we were ready to hit to road. Little L did well….he slept most of the time probably did not even realize we made a roundabout and stopped for one night in Plitvice in Croatia. That was supposed to be something new for us, so we would not only repeat what we have done before. And it was also our first big fail traveling with a baby. Plan was to sleep three nights close to Plitvice national park and show Little L a little bit of beauty of the nature. BUT the park was only partially opened, which actually meant 90% was closed – something they forgot to inform about on the web page – which did not stop the lady at the counter to ask us to pay for the full ticket. She offerd us to buy the tickets so that we could get to the place from where we can have a look at the road we would be taking if the park was opened. This information made Mr.B very depressed, he took it personaly and was fighting with his own dissapointment and professional traveler ego. And so we packed everything what we unloaded the evening and hit the road to Slovenia.
Piran was cool as always, no bad surprises, no problems, easy going place where you know exactly what you ll get…but this time we experienced it differently. I unpacked my book, my sketchbook and my computer and that was actually the only time I touched them….Little L enjoyed sleeping in the stroller while we were discovering Isola, Strunjan or Portoroz…but he sure did not enjoyed sleeping in the night. The aircon in the room that served as heating was killing him. He litteraly slept on my tits, like a true hedonist…every hour having a little drink and falling asleep again…Nights became my nightmares for the first time in his short life. But appart from our sleep deprivation we had a really really good time, eating great food, walking at least 10 km per day, taking photos, enjoing ourselves in our new situation ….On Valentines day I reminded myself how I freaked out exactly one year ago when I took a pregancy test in Japan. It was something I could not imagine, and I did not even want to. We were in Japan, traveling around, planing what we ll do in sommer, we had no responsiblity for anyone, we were free and we liked it. And there was this strange writing telling me it is actually already three of us. I freaked out so much that the first thing I did was that I smoked two cigarettes in a row. This year on the same day I pushed the stroller with sleeping Little L the muddy road of Strunjan national park…I could breath without any problems, I did not smell like an ash tray and I was happy. I am my biggest surprise :)
Now we r ready to unpack, wash the clothes, pack again and take Little L for a next trip to Klodzko and than one week later take him to the place which is his home but he does not know about it, because last time he left it he was just a small blind veggie…now he is a 8 kilo little man :)
Warning: If u dont feel like looking at loads of photos of two cuties Little L and Mr.T dont scroll down! But hell even though Little L is tought subject to photograph as he lays on his back most of the time, its nice to shoot somebody else not just Mr.B’s back for a change :)
…greetings from our first real trip with Little L …. I hope soon I ll have time to write a propper blog post, but for now we still have two more days left and I want to enyoj them to the fullest…
I have been wanting to write this post for so long. I was dreaming about it. I planed to do it before Christmas, than during Christmas, than I thought I would post it on 31.12 or maybe 1.1. but I just was not able to take that time. To steal one uninterrupted hour, without beeping of finished washing machine program, barking of Mr.T, crying of Little L., without having to look at pile of clothes waiting to be ironed, diapers waiting to be washed, Mr.T’s hair on the floor screaming to be vacuumed. All those things that have to be done in short breaks when Little L. has successfully finished his visit in milky bar and fell asleep.
Now when it looks like this may be THAT one hour (there is still clothes waiting to be ironed, and full washing machine waiting to be turned on, and Mr.T will probably bark within next 5 minutes) – lets say almost uninterrupted hour I can’t remember what I actually planed to say. To be focused and concentrated exactly when that short moment of peace happens is quite impossible. I feel as I would probably feel if I was a man and I would be expected to have erection on demand – impossible – and I chose this comparison because I don’t even want to talk about mental possibilities but it looks like physical ones stand even more the way.
As soon as THE short moment of peace happens I feel like falling asleep right away…my body stops listening to me and requests to fill up the missing gas. It is not saying that Little L. is a difficult baby,not at all,but time management is different and I find it sometimes difficult to divide the rests of my free time when Little L. sleeps between Mr.T, my family, things I have to do and thing I want to do – the last ones always loose :)
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.
Little L is 9 weeks old today…in his short life he spent first 3 weeks in Warszaw, next 3 weeks in Klodzko, now 3 weeks in Slovakia and we are already packing to move a bit more south to Vienna…we make him live the way we live which means to constantly move between three places, three countries…just as I did for last 5 years without knowing which one is actually “home” and I already resigned on actually trying to define one of those places as my home…I don’t have that need anymore…the need to attach to one place, to imaginary strike my roots somewhere…my home is where Mr.B, Mr.T and now Little L is…and we have loads of travel plans for near future…dear Little man I hope u don’t mind :)PS: Some of these photos are taken from my INSTAGRAM account, so I apologize to those of you who have seen them already
Its been 16 day since Mr.L made his appearance into this world….16 crazy days…emotional roller coaster ride. There has been a LOT of crying….crying for no reason, crying for millions of reasons…out of sentiment, out of love, out of pain, fear, happiness, sadness, exhaustion, despair, simply loads of crying. Whatever I have thought that might happen after I become a mother was galaxies away from reality. And it started with birth itself. I was dreaming of a home water birth….I saw myself in that funny plastic pool in the middle of our living room. Mr.B would be cooking a dinner, Mr.T would be shocked running around, and I would be giving a birth to our son looking into the garden on those huge black crowns that wander around, of course with the assistance of a skilled midwife that I would fully trust. My dream of a home birth was cut short when I actually met the midwife which is known in Poland for promoting home births. Well the first thing she did when we met was telling me to give birth in the birth house that she runs and not to do it at home without actually giving me some reasonable explanation except for bureaucratic obstructions. I was so shocked that I could hardly talk to her back. The reason why I came to give birth in Poland was that I wanted to do it my way – the way it is not possible in Slovakia. And there is this “most” competent person who should help me and support me telling me that I should do it in her facility which , as she thinks, looks almost like at home. I was trying to fight back but when she asked about my past and heard about my miscarriage 3 years ago there was no more talking. I was simply not qualified to give birth at home. So I was trying to refocus myself to the idea that Mr.T will not be there during my labor, that Mr.B will not be making dinner and I will not look into the garden instead I will walk down that sterile hallway with plastic floor, horrible lights to end up in a room which is supposed to feel like home but in reality it feels like a fake room pretending to be “home” with fake bed pretending to be my bed, the room where nothing feels like home. But it seemed that there is no other way so I had to and I did sort of adopted that idea, but soon after new circumstances started to pop out. It looked like my pregnancy will never end and Mr.L has decided not to ever come out for some reason. I even started to think that he was gonna start to get smaller and smaller again until he would just disappear. The longer I was past my due date, the more confusing opinions I was getting from different doctors that were seeing me almost daily. Suddenly I did not even qualified for birth in the birth house because according to USG Mr.L was over 4 kg which meant I had to give birth in a proper hospital. All the pictures I had in my mind faded away and I was left with nothing to hold on to. All my plans, everything was gone and I lost the solid ground under my feet. After two very stressful and chaotic days of decision making I ended up in completely different hospital than planed, with midwifes I did not know. I did all I could to give natural birth, not at home in the water, not in the birth house…in the hospital but at least natural. I wanted the best for Mr.L and I am sure natural birth is the best. After 17 hours of labor my last dream exploded and it only took half an hour until I was connected to all kinds of machines with blue courtain in front of my face and Mr.B holding my hand….in a terrifying fear prepared for C section – something that I did not even think of as a possibility for long 10 months. Something that was such a bad option that I just forgot that it existed. The reason I am writing all this is the one short but monumental moment when I thought I’ve gone insane, the moment when I felt as if I traveled into the space around the earth and back in one second…the moment when I heard Mr.L cry, I could not see him, all I could see was tears in Mr.B’s eyes… I think if I gave birth the way I hoped it would be great peaceful and quiet experience, but the way things turned out made me go through something overwhelmingly strong….I felt so sorry for giving birth that way, I felt sorry for that little guy who was cut out of my body and held by some strange guy with a mask on his face and plastic gloves on his hands into the cold white hospital lights and sounds of surgical instruments instead of Nigel Kennedy as I planned. I was so sorry that first people touching Mr.L are those anonymous silhouettes doing their routine in the most emotionless way possible. I was following Mr.B with my eyes just to read from his face if everything is OK and the moment he looked at me and gave me a sign that little guy has all his fingers and other body parts on the proper places I could finally start to cry… Its been 16 days since the big bang day and I have cried every single day. I cried because my heart or whatever is the place where we store our emotions got so full that it felt painful. It was full of love towards Mr.B for being the best father, to Mr.T for accepting little man and towards Mr.Leo who came from some unknown galaxy and crawled on my chest as a little / ok maybe not so little / warm looking so lost and confused. I cried because in one moment I could feel all the fears of generations of mothers, I cried because I thought I can not handle having one more person to worry about in my life, I cried because I was looking at Mr.Leo and I had to think of mortality in a completely new way, I cried because I was afraid I will die while he is still a child and I will not be able to be there for him when he goes through hard times of growing up, I cried because I wanted to pause life for a moment, I wanted to have a chance to record all his facial expressions, every single sound he made, just to remember it. I cried because I knew it was not possible and that I am going to forget tons of beautiful moments and it felt so unfair. I cried because Mr.Leo cried, I cried because I was tired of Mr.Leo crying, I cried because I thought I will not make it – we will not make it, I cried because I thought I am the worse mother ever, I cried when I realized this is for real and I can’t give him back in hospital claiming that he is not what I asked for after not sleeping for 4 nights. I cried because he was so vulnerable, so fragile, so helpless that it hurt me. I cried for Mr.T because I was worried how he feels, I cried because Mr.B was the best husband I could wish for, I cried because I was so happy that it was literally taking my breath, I cried because I was feeling ugly and worn out, I cried because I forgot my bathrobe in the hospital, I cried when I went for the first walk with Mr.T alone, and I cried for no reason at all. Yes I did jump on a craziest emotional rollecoaster of my life, going up and down, going really high and really low within seconds. Most intense 16 days of my life and I believe of Mr. Leo’s as well :). Its has been very exhausting both physically and mentally, every single day brought some new challenges to fight with and I know this is just a beginning. For now all I can do is take it as it comes hour by hour, day by day. I don’t even plan for tomorrow, because tomorrow everything happens according to Mr.Leo’s decision and I will go with the flow. I’m learning a lot these days….I m looking out of the window thinking of novembers…november three years ago when I was short after loosing our “first” child and than I have to pinch myself to remind me that this all is happening for real.
PS: My instagram feed naturally became Mr.Leo and Mr.Teo feed…oh yes now I understand why that happens….simply because I spend 24 hours with those two polyps at home, ironing and doing washing in the short breaks between nursing.
PS 2: I have received a beautiful letter…true letter not an email from a person who did not leave any contact so I can’t write back. But I hope that person will read this one day and will know that I am very very very thankful for those words as much as for the fact that it was a letter and also for the fact that that person had to think how to deliver it to me as she did not know my address and simply for deciding to write it. Thank you so much !!!!
I don't want my life to be a reason for other's life to be a suffering that is why I am vegan and that is how I want to raise my son. I love my little family, birds, rainy days and life on the road. I believe in life before death :).