The Days are Long, but the Years are Short.

How can my little peanut be 8 months old already? When he was first born I asked the doctor to put him back inside, unfortunately she told me this was not possible so Josh and I told ourselves, with great hesitation, that we could handle this, we would get through 10 hours of non-stop screaming and his hunger strike, surely he would eat eventually. He was more stubborn then we thought and after 24 hours of breastmilk refusal we were transferred to another hospital. That's when Josh and I turned to each other and said "What have we done." You see, I never had that instant bond with Cyril, when he came out I felt nothing, no elation, no relief, no oh my god you're the cutest thing I've ever seen. In fact, my first words were look at his fat parsnip fingers. Then I asked if he should be nursing and why he was screaming. I knew nothing despite the plethora of books I read in pregnancy. What a waste of time all that reading was.

They finally released me from hospital, although in my opinion they shouldn't have because we definitely did not have the nursing thing down, for the record I never got the hang of nursing. I used to think I failed, I used to feel a great amount of guilt over it, I actually said to Josh at one point that I want a second baby so I can have the experience of breastfeeding. I'm pretty sure that's not a reason to have a second baby. I thought I was over it and then we arrived in California and the lady at the farmer's market asked a simple question, "Are you still nursing?" Shamefully I told her no and nearly burst into tears over the question. I had to reassure myself that it was fine that I wasn't nursing, Cyril was happy and healthy. I thought to myself, this is ridiculous, you need to just get over it.

Then I went to my first mindfulness and meditation course on Tuesday night and just like that I think I'm over it. We were told to just let thoughts of guilt pass through us, don't suppress the thoughts but just let them come and go and anchor yourself to something in the present, even if it's your hand. Rob, our teacher, said that life will continue to carry on, with or without us. He said 2 things that really stood out for me. The first was that his son is now 22 years old and he still remembers him being born, the time went by just like that and he snapped his fingers. The second thing was that he's heard of people getting to the age of 80 and wondering where all the time has gone and thinking to themselves, you know what I haven't really lived any of it.

These 2 comments really resonated with me. How often do we find ourselves so distracted that we're not even focusing on the present moment? How often do you race to the top of the mountain your hiking for the sake of getting to the top and then on your way back down you realise that you haven't noticed anything in your surrounding? Or maybe you don't hike mountains but you drive to work and you arrive at your destination without even remembering driving there.

When we first brought Cyril home from the hospital the days seemed so long, everyone kept saying it gets so much easier after 2 weeks, I kept waiting for day 14 to arrive but it always seemed so far away. Now that he's 8 months old I don't know where the time has gone. I remember reading this quote from somewhere, "The days are long, but the years are short." It's never made sense to me until now. It won't be long until we're celebrating Cyril's first birthday, then second, then third, and so on. I look at my nieces and nephews and I remember them all as infants, how can they be 2, 3, 4, 9 and 14 years old already!








I don't want to get to 90 and think, wow I haven't lived my life at all I've just been a passenger on this journey. I want to be the driver. I don't want to sit and watch Cyril play while I fold the laundry or frantically pick up the house, I want to engage him in play and take him places that will encourage his imagination.  The last thing I want to do is look back on my life and wish I spent it playing with my baby rather than worrying about cleaning the house. It's only Josh, Hobson, Cyril and I that live here and to be perfectly honest I'm pretty sure they could care less what the house looks like.

And just for fun here are a few throwback photos from nearly 10 years ago: