Six weeks and one day.

Since the nephews arrived, life has blurred and time has warped. I couldn't really tell you what's been happening without thinking hard about it. I just know that my child is growing into a tiny giant and it all feels really full on. Today I sighed as I realized she's grown out of her newborn clothes and we put her in a pretty little dress for the first time.

Sis'Meza is here. The nephews' mother, my husband's sister. She's started the process of making umqombothi, a traditional beer brewed for the ancestors. The ceremony happening in our home this weekend is one to initiate me back into social life. To let family members greet me as a mother, and meet our baby for the first time. It's the second time that umqombothi is being brewed in our home. The first that I'm not part of. Tonight the air is hushful - full. It's the air of ancestral ritual that I've come to know so well.

I'm in anticipation around the coming days. Though only a handful of family members, it will be the most people I've been socially exposed to since giving birth and the most amount of people our child has met, ever. Yesterday I watched her with her cousins. Endless kisses and hugs engulfed her and she soaked up chatter and buzz. When evening came she bawled, overstimulated and struggling to settle or sleep. Mr Dzedze scooped her from my arms, wrapped her in the baby pink sling and hummed her into a peaceful state. He could see my nervous system wasn't up for it and became the safe place she needed.

Today I committed to going gentle. Keeping our nervous systems settled. We lazied through the morning and bathed in the early afternoon. She snuggled into us and kicked happy in the water. I later sat in the garden with her to my heart. She slept under a white blanket my Mama gifted her and birds played in the mulberry tree above. Looked up at my house, my mind dreamed patterns all over the walls. I listened to podcasts and audio books and thought of my own ones that I'm yet to birth. Inspiration flows, drive does not. I spend immeasurable moments staring into thin air. Inspired, moved and excited for all I'm called to create. A fire inside me burns - my artist is alive. And she's dormant too. Dreaming. I wonder when she might wake, and where.

I wonder if she'll wake quietly, like my baby. Wide eyed in wonder, without need for fanfare or fuss. Or whether she'll be booming and bright-shining. I wonder what the lights inside of me will look like when they are in the world.

Our baby rests by the traditional beer with her aunt. My husband is pulling himself out of a flu, to ready himself for another day of shooting tomorrow. I feel scared of everything that's coming. The people. My expression. Life itself. Right now, I don't feel ready at all. I want to gobble up my baby and put her back in my tummy and summon all the clocks in the land to hit pause. I want to slow life down so I can savour it more. Deeper breath, longer gaze, enough time to share it all with loved ones.

I think that's what's most harrowing internally. Loved ones. I feel further than ever from the UK. From my family and childhood friends there. I wish my baby could be held by them, cocooned in all the care I was raised with. That they could coo over her as she sleeps, and smile at how she has the cutest eyebrows, and eyelashes, and cheeks, and lips, and nose, and chin and on and on and on, the way her aunty has been tonight. I'm homesick.