i have been quiet…
reasons for this are various:
– i feel that my role in the gemely is evolving very slowly, shifting as well, and do not feel as close a part of the gemely as the others plus i am working a lot outside and on projects (see below) and thus did not spend much time with kiko. both of that lead to the impression that i „don’t have news which are blog-worthy“,
– i do a lot of work on the computer and writing for a blog does not have that much priority – i prefer to read a book when i have some spare time,
– i needed to sort out my role in this new system.
all of this lead to me not having an impulse to write something.
now i just went through what has been posted in the last days and weeks, including comments, and i like the dynamics that this blog is developing. people really read it, follow the movements of this group and seem to get something out of it. and i also realize that although i did not write here, thoughts came (and come), more questions came (and come – will that ever stop!?) and also clarification came (and comes), because we continue(d) to talk.
it is a bit more than a month ago (or two?) we spoke about my role in the gemely. before this conversation, i tried to observe how the others develop a roadmap for day-to-day life – and i tried to see my part in it.
observations from the daily routine:
a) all 4 parents are at home a lot, as they all mainly work from home. they eat most meals together and generally spend a lot of time together since the baby was born.
b) there is a lot of attention for the child, all the time.
c) there is a lot of readiness to take kiko whenever s_he seems to want someone or -thing.
d) there also seemed to be insecurity about „what is okay to do / wish / say /… and what isn’t?“.
thoughts and questions which have been provoked:
a) i have got a part-time job which i have to commute to, which leads to me being away from home about half of the week (on average a bit more, as commuting takes a while). during the other part of the week i work as a permaculture trainer plus i have loads of meetings around the many things i am interested and engaged in. a lot of this does not happen where we live but has to do with more travelling. how does this fit in with being part of a co-parent system? especially as i need to do most of this work to earn my living – who will do this for me when i take care of the baby?
b) i am starting to wonder whether a child can be over-exposed to attention (well, that sounds worse than it was and is! đ ), whether we will have any space for other issues than child-related ones and also what is it actually that i myself feel how much attention kiko needs? whew.
c) sorry, but does it really take another person to raise this baby!? like, what exactly could i contribute (apart from the obvious like doing the dishes and heating stoves)?
d) sometimes it felt to me like everybody wanted to take kiko and i was wary of being yet another person to want to take care of the baby. there is one thing that i really do not like in life and that is rivalry. i checked in on this with yuriko quite soon and it became clear that this was less an observation than a fear, so i managed to drop this thought.
so when we met, we discussed these points. not that i had written them down like that but i think we touched on more or less all of them.
results of this conversation are:
a) we still should talk about sharing money. not just time and responsibility… plus we agreed that we do not all have to do 1/4 or 1/5 of the work and time.
b) the answers from the others concerning this point went from „i believe that a child cannot get enough love, by as many people as possible!“ to „i think that more than 10 people would definitely be too much, but kiko can definitely deal with you as the 5th person!“. right. i think i will observe this a bit more… and i also think we did not finish this one and i would like to speak about this more sometime soon.
c) the others disagreed and told me that i can easily become part of the system and that there is enough work to do!
what we came up with in the end is that my position is more that of a relief person. that is what fits me best right now: we meet once a week to talk about who can take care of the child when and if there is need or when i have spare time, i jump in. does such a small contribution really make me a co-parent??? i don’t know and i also don’t really care as i don’t do this because of the title but because i want to live in a society where it goes without saying that big people take responsibility for little people, no matter if they gave birth to them or not.
btw this clarification of my role led to me learning quite quickly to…
– change nappies
– let kiko pee into a bowl when there is no nappy on the bum but pee to come
– kink the baby sling and how to get the little one in and out of it…
i also spend my first night with yuriko and kiko, but that is a different story… (unfortunately, it is part of the title – so i guess this will be a sequel so that the title gets it’s full meaning!)