It’s nuanced. But it’s beautiful.

As Arlo is turning one I’ve been getting rather reflective - looking back at all we’ve been through and all we’ve achieved.🙏💪💛

One thing I have the utmost respect for is that life is beautifully nuanced. It’s possible to feel sadness and have regrets (maybe even feel angry or frustrated) whilst also feeling incredibly happy, lucky and knowing that you wouldn’t change a thing!

Does that even make sense?

I definitely have things I wish had gone differently with my pregnancy and my maternity leave. And yet I still wouldn’t change any of it cause this is our journey and this is just how it was meant to be. 💕

It’s making us who we are and it’s taught us so much. It’s been a perfect, crazy storm. ⛈🌈

It’s all brought Arlo to us and that could have come at any price/cost/sacrifice and it would never have been too much. 💙

There’s definitely some things I feel sad about and they shouldn’t be forgotten:

- Like the fact that I missed having my husband with me at maternity appointments.

- I am sad that hardly anybody saw me pregnant.

- I wish there were more photos of me out and about showing off my bump.

- I’m sad I don’t have more photos of me with Arlo as a newborn and in those early months.

- I’m sad that Arlo’s CF diagnosis distracted from some of those first few months of baby bliss.

- I wish I’d been able to take Arlo out and about - to lunch dates, to coffee mornings, to swimming pools, to baby classes, to baby groups. (But I was too scared of the germs - and the pandemic.)

- I wish more of our family and friends had been able to spend time with Arlo in the first year of his life…

The list goes on!

But then there’s too many things to count that make us so happy and lucky. 🍀 Arlo, of course, being the main source of all our happiness and luck.🤩

This is the story we will tell as lockdown parents. And I still wouldn’t change how it all panned out in the end. 💛

Let’s see where the next year takes us 🙏

#lifeofacfparent #mybabyisturningone #cheerstothat