the blank page

cw: pregnancy/parenthood/nursing

I’m staring at a blank Scrivener document for the first time since 2023. You might be wondering how is that possible?

screenshot of my other monitor as I type this post when I’m definitely supposed to be typing in this document instead 🫣

I turned in book 2 last month, yes, but I already had (several) drafts of that before I even got my book deal. I wrote ~20k new words during development edits for NOW THAT WE DON’T TALK, but some iteration of that book has existed since 2021/2022. When I queried the second time around this summer, I did so with the project I’m hoping will be book 3, but even that was a revised first 50 pages of something that already existed. I finished the shitty first draft of that book in December 2023, and four days later, I found out I was pregnant.

I can’t tell if it’s kismet or some sick coincidence that I’m starting to draft this new project, the first thing I’ve written from scratch since before I got pregnant, on the same week that my child stopped nursing. The first time in over two years that my body is, once again, fully my own.

I had been in the process of weaning my child, with the goal of being finished breastfeeding by the time she was 18 months. We were down to one short feed when she first woke up in the morning, and then one day she just decided, as she’s done with other feeds, her pacifier, etc, that she was over it. Even though it wasn’t that far off from the timeline I’d planned, it was still somehow a shock. I’d already been experiencing the slow burn hormonal crash-out that comes with weaning because I had been doing it gradually (mostly because my OCD assured me that if I didn’t, I would get mastitis and die), and now we are cruising through hormonal disasterland, all while trying to make two fictional people I don’t know yet fall in love.

When I was pregnant, and people asked if I planned to breastfeed, I always said it was something I aspired to do. But I had seen the turmoil, pressure, and disservice of trying to do so when it wasn’t working for whatever reason, and I didn’t want that for myself or my baby. If it didn’t work, it didn’t work, and that was going to be OK. After I had the baby, and once I met with a lactation consultant who helped us figure it out, I said I would aim for six months of nursing. But when that time came around, we’d been sleep training, and it was already such a habit, I figured I’d go a little longer. I’m a stay at home mom, and it became something easy to do on our schedule. Even as she dropped naps, and dropped feeds, I adjusted our routine accordingly. Then it was wanting to wait out sickness season. And now, here we are.

I didn’t know this was going to be our last nursing session. I thought we had another week of this bonding time before it was over. I thought I’d have the opportunity to say goodbye to this experience that had been so challenging and taxing (both physically and emotionally), but also so simple and fulfilling. But isn’t that so much of what parenthood is? There are so many tiny moments that are deeply significant, but we won’t know until after the fact. And we’re a one and done family, so every milestone is the last time in our household, period. I am so happy I never have to breastfeed again, but I’m also going to miss her little face smiling up at me, or attempting to stroke my hair while she nursed, or knowing that I had this secret weapon of comfort for her.

So now I’m crying again. Apologies, I’ve been crying all week. The hormonal fuckery of all of this is truly brutal. But I’m on a deadline, so on we must push.

I’ve been terrified about drafting something new from scratch since it’s been so long. My brain is different, both figuratively and literally,¹ and I didn’t know how this was all going to work for me. But here I am, trying something new, and maybe in retrospect, this too will be one of those tiny moments that ends up being important.

Enough procrastinating. Let’s go fill up this blank page.

More soon!

xo R

1. Hey, did you know that when you get pregnant, you lose a bunch of gray matter in your brain, and it takes two years to get that back?!