I tend to go quiet after I have a baby. I hide under the excuses – the sleepless nights and the constant nursing – but neither of those are what really keep me from posting, from writing. It’s the fact that my thoughts are so jumbled that I know if I write one thing today, it’ll change by the time I reread it tomorrow. It’s the fact that a new baby makes me question things, and when I don’t know what I want it makes me have writer’s block.

The first week is all sleepiness and cuddles, my mom being here to help with the boys and me never having to wash a dish or start a load of laundry. It’s binge-watching Gilmore Girls while I nurse around the clock and getting sucked into their world, not my world. Not reality.

But by the second week – Mirabelle gets that cold from her always-coughing brother and now the couch isn’t so comfortable anymore but I sleep there anyway, to keep her upright so she can breathe. I want to sleep with my husband, though, and wake up before he does on his birthday so I can make him a birthday breakfast – but the night was too long, and when he gets up, it’s all I can do to wish him happy birthday, one eye still closed.

I’m feeling great, and also sick of not doing things for myself so I go grocery shopping and I’m feeling proud until I come home and see my bleeding got worse, which means I need to slow back down and I see my independence go back into hiding.

I post those adorable photos of my kids from the newborn photographer, but keep the ones with me in them to myself because, while I’m glad I took them, the roundness of my cheeks doesn’t feel like “me.” So I’m over here not eating sweets because I can’t exercise yet and it’s all I have control over in regards to my weight. I’d never talk down on this body that did what it just did, but again it doesn’t feel like me and I’ve got to get back to me if I’m to survive this new transition.

Always she is easier than Rhenner was as a newborn. Always I am grateful for that. But still I have Rhenner, and still I have Axton on top of having her and some days I can handle that and some days it’s heavy. Some days it’s claustrophobic. Some days I yell too much and am not the mommy they deserve.

….Normally I stay quiet. I keep it to myself until I sort it out in my head and can give you coherent answers and thoughts and say, that was rough but I made it through. Normally I stay quiet, not because I want to but because I slip into that hole. This time, I’m trying to fight it. This time I’m thinking I won’t stay quiet. Maybe this time I’ll talk myself right out of the darkness.

Incredible birth photos by Raegan Christensen.