Reflection: The Second Month

Until I had my daughter, I had never felt more connected to a place before. Our home became everything. I relied on our home for comfort, for quietness, for love. During the second month of motherhood, I looked at our home differently, carefully, and mindfully. I began exploring the idea of 'home' within my self and for my daughter, reflecting on the homes I had lived in as a child and how my mother made every effort to make them comfortable and special. Bringing home Finely changed everything about our home. How we talked to each other, how we walked around the house, where we ate meals, and even how we slept. We wanted to create a warm and comforting environment for our daughter, for ourselves.

I have always been interested in creating spaces, especially spaces that leave the person feeling held, comforted and safe. As a child I would spend hours rearranging and decorating my bedroom, this practice has continued into adulthood. It comes from watching my mother. She was always rearranging the furniture, organizing, cleaning, and it wasn't a chore. She genuinely loved the process of making our house our home. And she encouraged me to love and experiment in my own space, allowing me to paint on my bedroom door, choose wild and eccentric paint colors for the walls, and would even take me to auctions to bid on boxes of tchotchkes to decorate with. So during this second month of motherhood, I began to realize how her love for her home directly related to her love for her family.

The second month felt more settled, we were getting the hang of parenthood. We understood life had changed, and that the sleepless nights were not going to last forever. Our days were fuller and complex, now more than ever. As we began to get into the flow of the day to day with a newborn, I noticed a shift in how I viewed our home. I recognized that this place would be the first place our baby would remember. Everything in our house became more vivid, more important; each object carrying a story that I would eventually share with my daughter. I began taking photos of our home as a way to remember what it looked like during her first few months. These photos are now visual reminders that this place loves us too.

One of the most important realizations I had during that second month was that during my pregnancy I was a vessel carrying my daughter, and after pregnancy, my home was a vessel carrying me. I plan to write more about each individual room in our home as the months go by, because this little bit of information about my love for our space just scratches the surface.