I’ve been looking back on photos this week when the boys were tiny babies! This photo is of our youngest little sweetheart boy-Joshua, at just 2 days old! Looking back I could almost smell that delicious newborn baby smell hehe and I was struck by the complete beauty of those moments.
I remember lots of lovely well wishers saying ‘take in every moment, as it goes so fast’. I totally know what they meant, as tiny moments are the stuff that life is made up of, but at the same time often the reality (for me anyway) of having tiny babies is that the moments, as utterly beautiful as they were, were also mixed in with many other feelings as well...exhaustion/pain/overwhelm etc!
Pregnancy for me was not a ‘glowing’ affair, I vomited throughout both pregnancies, and had an incessant intense nausea which lasted throughout and only left upon their birth.
So by the time my sweet boys arrived I was already absolutely exhausted and weak. So the idea of treasuring every moment when they were little could feel like a pressure and give me a sense of guilt….when I was doing my best just to be looking after these precious darlings .. I’d have thoughts of 'I don’t think I’m treasuring the moment enough and taking it all in!’.
Sometimes in the moment, the reality of what I could take in was not the joy and the beauty, but a sense of being overwhelmed and of exhaustion were sometimes the feelings that won in those moments.
Sometimes it’s only in looking back that I get to 'take in' the true extent of the gorgeousness and beauty. And that is ok…it’s more than ok! Some things can only be truly taken in and treasured after the time. It doesn’t mean we have missed the moment! That we didn’t take it in enough! We were making them! Some moments can only be truly seen and understood and treasured, long after they have happened… and that can be beautiful itself.
So this is one of the reasons that I love to describe what me and James do as ‘treasuring’. Taking these ordinary but precious times with our little ones and treasuring their memories in a beautiful way. To help us to see the beauty in the moment, perhaps long past when they have gone. The moments that continue to shape who we are, and fill our lives with beauty!
And of course you don’t need hand or footprint art to treasure the moment! It can be through a photo or a video or a diary entry or a heart memory. Whatever it is that helps us to look back on our lives and see the beauty. Beauty not dulled by time but often blossoming because of it!
So whenever you are feeling the pressure of needing to 'take everything in' I hope you will remember that you are doing just so so well and that you are making the moments, precious one! And that these moments have an infinite amount of beauty, that you will keep taking in and understanding more and more with the passing of time.
Sending so much love from my heart to yours,
Mimi xxx