Now, this is probably well into the land of too-much-information, but today is the first day I’ve had a period since I found I was pregnant with the witchling. It’s been twenty months in total, eleven of those since her birth; slightly less than the average onset of menstruation if you’re breastfeeding, apparently, but considerably longer than many. It’s funny – I expected to feel many things about this, and most of them related to the general tedium of periods. I mean, nothing which involves cramping, tiredness and general irritability can be entirely welcome. But I didn’t clock that I’d feel sad. And I do. Not in a terminal, woe-is-me-now-hire-a-herd-of-mourners way, but more in that until now, I had felt as if the witchling and I were still a little unit, floating around in our little world of milk-related goodness, and completely in harmony, and now here I am, off on my own again as the witchling’s need for milk gently diminishes over time.

It is, of course, quite right and natural that this need diminishes; she feeds about five or six times in a day, and we both love it, but after her initially exclusive diet of breastmilk, she is finding more and more to explore in the world of food, something which is delighting to both Quercus and I. I enjoy feeding her – the feeling of relaxation, of breathing out, which comes over me when we sit down together to feed is just incredible. Likewise, though, I love eating with her – watching her pick and choose between pieces of broccoli, or a baked bean, or some toast, with gusto and curiousity is both intensely rewarding and deeply entertaining, the latter particularly when she holds some foodstuff aloft, beaming out from underneath it as she waves it triumphantly above her head. I particularly like the earnestness with which she undertakes drinking – current favourites include pear juice, camomile tea and warm water. So, rationally, I am aware that this return to menstruation is all part of the natural cycle of life, and, as Quercus put it, it’s a part of what created the witchling in the first place. But I already miss the times when she was so tiny, when we moved as one, when we were so very linked as to be almost indistinguishable, and I ask quietly how it is that this tiny person is suddenly a curious, lively, independent-seeming child? How time flies when you’re having fun, eh?