In today’s blog post we meet South African mom blogger, Tamlin, who blogs at With Child and I.
- What do you normally get up to on an average day? (Give us a brief description about yourself)
I’m a single mother to a four month old and a Media Manager for a safari lodge and an elephant orphanage. I spend most of the day thinking about babies and elephants. This is what gets me out of bed in the morning. Before choosing to have a child by myself last year, it was mostly just elephants, so it’s good to have balance nowadays. Having a baby has made me waste less time. I edit videos of elephants while my son sleeps and I write about my son while the elephants sleep. Working from home in Cape Town gives me the chance to be there for all the changes, the first smiles, the babbling, leaking nappies and spraying boobs in between meetings. I love every second. After the work day, baby and I go to the forest to walk the dogs, or to the beach to watch the surfers in the waves, or we craft – at least, I craft, and baby cries in the pram. My favourite part of the evening is our baths together and curling up side by side at night.
2. How do you feel about motherhood – what are your struggles and joys?
The first month was a struggle, from the hospital to the broken sleep and fear over every little thing. But it has gotten easier and easier. I still have fears, but I carry pepper spray around. For some reason, this has calmed almost all my worries. I’ve had a lot of support from my parents, as well as midwives and friends, and as through pregnancy, I’ve found writing about it down in my blog really helpful as a way to find humour in things, to stand outside the moments and look at them objectively, and to foster the deep love I have for my little one. It gives me time to myself too, which I think is why I’ve developed a new crafting habit out of nowhere. The joys are many. Baby’s laughs and smiles in the morning, being able to soothe and provide for him through breastfeeding, being able to keep doing something I love for work, discovering my son’s new talents each week, being part of a world I didn’t understand before having a child.
3. Tell us about your kid(s)
My son’s name is Forrester. He was born at 4.5 kilograms, which gives me immense pride, and he has a big port wine stain on the back of his leg which calmed all my fears of him being swapped in the hospital by mistake. He has my chin, my nose, and his eyes are slowly turning from their grey blue into my muddy green. He is so loved, by me, by his grandparents, by strangers on the street. We’ve bed-shared since day one, in fact we chest-shared for the first month, because it was winter and we slept with a heater on most nights. I wanted to make sure he was warm and breathing at all times. But also, I couldn’t fathom being apart from him. I can’t believe how small he was in those days and while I love that he’s a sturdy and very long almost 8 kilogram boy now, I’m already nostalgic for those teeny tiny days. I’m immensely grateful to Dr Nomathamsanqa (Tamtam) Matebese at Cape Fertility in Cape Town, and that such a system exists to enable single mothers by choice to go the solo motherhood route. If money was no object, I would have several more babies. Forrester is still very bald, but only because all his energy is going into growing a head that is off-the-charts big right now.
4. How did you start blogging?
I wanted to scrapbook the journey of pregnancy but I was so pedantic over the design that I kept doing and redoing the stupid thing.* So I started writing, which is what I do for work, for fun, what I’ve always done. Being in media, it’s natural for me to want to share my words. It encourages me to write knowing that one or two people might read it, even if one of those two people is Forrester when he’s older. I started the blog, writing to him, telling him what was happening each step of the way. I’m so glad that I did, because I could never try to write it all down now. So much would have slipped from my memory. I wrote because it made me feel close to the baby growing inside me and without a partner, I guess it gave me a sort of shoulder to lean on. It is harder to keep the blog going since baby came. I remember how hard it was to write the blog about his delivery. I was exhausted, words were failing me, and I had a fragile newborn to look after. But I kept at it and I’ve continued since. I’m strangely quite a private person. I’ve started social media accounts to accompany this blog several times but I keep deleting them because of privacy concerns. Somehow though, sharing my words (and a few photos) felt right.
* In the end I found a way to scrapbook that suited me. I collected photos throughout the journey, pasted them in the book, and wrote heartfelt captions beside each one, giving context to the moments and creating a simple visual time capsule for Forrester, to accompany the blog.
5. Share with us a valuable blogging tip you’ve learnt. (or more)
I found writing to my son let me tap into a more intimate part of my thoughts and feelings, and added a depth to the words. I could express the love and anxiety and excitement, because I was looking into his eyes, in my mind. You could write to yourself, your partner, your unborn child, a different person in each blog. My focus was on getting the memories down, how they felt, what I saw, the words I heard, the details you might forget. I chose to go more micro than macro, which is something I remind myself to do in each blog – part of the “show, don’t tell” approach to writing. I pulled myself back from sharing more negative thoughts or details, because I felt that overall I wanted to bring joy and love to people reading it, and to Forrester when he reads it one day. I didn’t want to complain or bemoan anything or one. I wanted this to be my happy space. It’s still truthful and it has kept me in a positive frame of mind.
6. If you make money from your blog, give us a breakdown on how you do it. Give us some of your methods on how to get started on this, or any tips or advice.
I don’t make money through the blog. I might look into this one day. But what I’d like more than that is to turn it into a book. There are some bloggers I really love and admire, such as The Everywhereist, who have turned their blogs into books, featuring existing, fleshed-out or new content. I love the intimacy of a blog and really well-written ones can feel like the best kind of poetry, with lines that hit you and make you feel as though there is someone out there who understands you. I would say the first step to anything is to get started. To not obsess over the name of your blog or the design. Just start writing.
Blog Link https://withchildandi.wordpress.com/
Instagram Link: my personal account: https://instagram.com/tamwigwam
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Watch the interview with Tamlin here:
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