Sooo. It goes a little something like this. You spend years and years longing for a baby, and then you finally have one. And despite the fact that you've had all that time to think about it, you discover that nothing can really prepare you for life with a newborn. The first few months whip by in a blur; you barely have time to clean your teeth, let alone shave your legs. And then it slowly begins to dawn on you that it's been a really, really long time since you were intimate with your husband. You make a bit of an effort to initiate things in that regard, but you're tense because you're worried that the baby's going to wake up at any minute, you're still healing after a c-section, and it just hurts. And so you think to yourself that you'll try again in a few weeks' time, but somehow the right moment never quite arises. And the longer you leave it, the more of a big deal it starts to seem. You make excuses - you're tired, you want to finish your book, you fancy a soak in the bath. You begin to notice yourself tensing up every time your husband touches you, in case that innocent cuddle turns into something more.
And it's really rather similar with blogging. The longer you leave it between posts, the more difficult it starts to seem to write anything, and so you're reduced to writing slightly odd posts in the second person. You feel similarly awkward about commenting; it's been so long since you did so that you now feel almost as if you're butting in on conversations to which you're no longer party.
Mr H took a lot of video footage during the first few months of Little Miss's life. I remember thinking at the time that he was like one of those foreign tourists in the Louvre, who are so preoccupied with videoing the Mona Lisa that they do not stop to look at the painting itself. I decided that I did not want to be like that - to be so busy trying to document my impressions of my daughter that I failed fully to live each moment with her. But now I find myself completely transfixed by that early video footage. As mothers, we spend so much time with our children that the changes in them are so gradual as to be nearly imperceptible. It is only when I look back over those videos of Little Miss that I can really grasp how much she has changed over this first year. How on earth did that tiny baby kicking about on a play mat turn into a little person who can empty an entire box of tissues out onto the floor in the time it takes me to pop upstairs to the loo, and who can devour a huge bowl of stew and mash for her tea?
In some ways, I do regret not having written more about the first year of her life. My memories of those first few heady months are already beginning to seem increasingly hazy. But I feel determined not to let any more time slip through my fingers, and so this is my first attempt to regain my blogging mojo.
