She wakes up, seeing her little on moving slightly but not enough to awaken. She grabs her phone, reluctantly opening Instagram and wondering when she is actually going to take a break. She has been pretty good at it in the past, but being postpartum during quarantine has her feeling a comfortable kind of loneliness, that is usually quelled by a scroll every couple of hours.
She lay on her back feeling some of her tense lower back muscles slightly relax, but the pain is still there, tight and dull. She turns on her stomach and feels a sense of relief. She turns her neck to the right, still being attentive to any new sounds her new baby makes, which he does, so she turns towards him, pulling him close. Every day she has woken up to his tiny face has been beautiful, she relaxes a just little more when he puckers his little lips and she feels his breath on her skin.
She thinks of texting her husband to say good morning, but instead she puts herself first to find a little 5 minute meditation, from an app she uses daily on her phone. Even though she is a new Mom, she doesn’t want to lose herself, so she finds a moment here and there to come back to her self.
After her meditation, her baby wakes up. His eyes opening and closing the way newborns do, showing the clear sky blue eyes he inherited from his father. She hopes he isn’t cranky this morning, but he’s quite unpredictable. Hoping he returns back to sleep so she can run to brush her teeth, she offers him a suck of her nipple, which he sucks briefly before he burps and spits up a small amount of digested milk. He is definitely up for the morning. She picks him up against her full breasts and smells the damp curdled milk on his cheek. He soon needs a bath. She squeezes him and he lets out a fuss. To her dismay, he isn’t quite into cuddling just yet. She squeezes his mushy diaper and gets up to change his clothes and put water to boil for her morning tea. Time to get to work.
Shades of Llew 