What week

10

How big is baby

14.5lbs

What’s something new this week

Poet just seems to be growing before our eyes, every morning she wakes up and gives the biggest stretch and then it’s 2 hours of coos and giggles. She is definitely responding to different people and can recognise Mark and I. She loves holding onto our fingers and standing herself up on the bed with her chunky thighs. We all cheer and say “staannding!!!!” She gets all proud of herself and smiles before flopping back down again.

Most challenging moment

I think I got a mild case of mastitis on the RV trip because I had a 5 hour break from breastfeeding Poet one morning when we went White Water Rafting. For the next 40 hours or so, my breasts were really sore and achey like that typical mastitis feeling, which also presented with a fever and headache. Luckily, Poet wanted to nurse a lot that day and with Forest still nursing once before bed it cleared itself up, but I felt ROUGH. It was also hard lying in the back being bumped around in the RV. The car seats, plus my mum and Izy took up the room in the seats in the back of the RV, so I felt like I was inside a tumble dryer back there! Doing an RV trip means all hands on deck, so it was really challenging to pull myself out of the physical place I was in to get everyone sorted, but I soldiered through.

Favourite moments

So many! The whole trip was incredible. We especially loved Montana and driving through Yellowstone National Park. We saw so many beautiful bison, many of which had their calves. They were quite bold and wandered over the road in front of us, the kids loved this so much, they were right by our RV window. The hot springs at Yellowstone were incredible too. White water rafting was epic and absolutely physically challenging but really invigorating! My favourite part of the trip. however, was all the quality time we spent together under the small roof.

Mama time

I had so much time to write on the project I’m working on, we had a pretty intense deadline so it meant non stop writing. Once I had sent all of the work in, I actually got to listen to some of my favorite true crime pods in the back of the RV and have some good chats with mum.

My body

Is finally feeling regulated again. I was eating so terribly on the road, and now that I’ve been back two days in LA I feel so much better. Nothing a few green juices and a couple of kombuchas can’t fix (oh how L.A. of me) :).

What am I eating

Vegan sushi (yummmm). I’ve been lucky enough to enjoy some of the best rolls on this trip. Sushi was one thing that I always missed when I gave up meat, but so many of the sushi chefs these days are making fantastic vegan sushi rolls. I really don’t miss it anymore. We walked around the different cities a lot discovering new little vegan joints and we ate at so many cool joints, meeting awesome likeminded people.

What’s working

Conflict resolution seems to be working well! With the new dynamic of having four kids, things feel a lot busier which means us parents have less time for ourselves and each other. We are navigating a ton of different situations as we try to regulate each other as well as show up for the kids. Earlier in our relationship, we had a pattern where Mark would get triggered by something and he would then distance himself, I’d in turn get mad at him for distancing which naturally only aggravated things more. Now if he gets triggered, I’m trying to be more patient. I meet him with love and compassion first before becoming reactionary. He’s also been working on lowering his stress levels so that he isn’t triggered as much. Both of us have been working on making these shifts and although the shifts were important to spend time looking at before we had Poet, it’s even more imperative to do this work on ourselves now because we have another child. We really need our communication and conflict resolution to be as harmonious and healthy as possible, and I’ve been noticing how well we have been working through any hiccups that arise. Go team go!

Checking In

This trip has been really memorable for us, because of the time to be with each other and because these last few weeks will be the calm before the storm. Work begins, and I’ll be transported back to Elizabethan era for A Discovery of Witches! No more lazy days at home with the kids or impromptu road trips. It’ll be all about delving into the ADOW world, so this RV trip has been a really nice way to celebrate family and be together without being pulled in another direction. I plan to have the kids with me at work as much as possible, but I will be so focused on breathing life into this story that to ensure I am available to the kids in the way I intend to be means A LOT less mama time and much more in the juggle trenches. The work begins in all ways so I’m cherishing these moments together, uncomplicated, unplanned and completely present with them.

Week 10 Post Partum Vlog by Teresa Palmer