I’ve been in a big renegotiation about my relationship to work. I took this December off from classes and clients because I didn’t really get a maternity leave when my daughter was born. I worked all days and all hours throughout my entire pregnancy.

o far, parenthood hasn’t been the hard chore so much of the internet (and people I know) implied. Every day is a joy of discovery. Granted, I have amazing help, but not always. It’s often just little Cricket and I trying to find a way eat breakfast before 11, composing work emails while breastfeeding, and circling the neighborhood wearing an ergo.

My daughter is one month old today. I am still landing in the steady belief that she’s really here, she’s really my daughter, and I get to keep her. Becoming a mother has been a lifelong dream of mine. I walked into it with no illusions. I knew it would be hard. I knew I’d need a lot of support. I knew I wouldn’t sleep much. But there really are no words to prepare you for what happens to your heart when your make a whole human, and they look up at you and smile in the early dawn light.

I wanted to be held by a man. Someone who loved me so much that he wanted to create life with me. I wanted to share the moment of that positive pregnancy test with him, in joy and disbelief. I wanted him to bring me hot cocoa and soup and marvel and my shapeshifting. It was a fantasy, but not entirely unrealistic, after all, couples experience this all the time.

We women of the bee work in cycles of six.  Six-sided, six threads, six sisters, six revolutions.  Six years.  On this day, six year ago, I found out I was pregnant.  It’s a old story really, one that’s been told before, in different words by different women, but it’s also my story with the bees, and therefore, it has a place here. I found out I was pregnant because of a dream. Not my own; that of a friend.