Heather is the writer behind the food blog Heather’s Dish and the coordinator of the beauty blog Faces of Beauty. She avidly writes about her love of food and life and encourages women to see their true beauty. When she’s not out hiking or skiing you can find Heather in her kitchen, whipping up a delicious meal, eating at a favorite restaurant with her husband, or out grabbing coffee with her girlfriends. Heather and her husband brought their son Weston into the world on March 8, 2012.
I have lived a fairly low-key life: I grew up in a small college town in Texas, excelled in sports and was a straight-A student. In high school, the craziest thing I did was get a bellybutton ring against my parents’ wishes and in college I got my eyeliner tattooed on by a woman who couldn’t speak English. After getting married my husband and I picked up and moved to Colorado from Texas without jobs and with practically no money in our bank accounts – maybe one would consider that slightly crazy, but at the time it felt right.
I could go on for ages trying to justify the off-kilter things in my life and try to convince you that, yes, I am a wild-child. But that’s not what this is about. Because nothing I have done until now has been as crazy as this: becoming a mom.
Yes, I said it. Getting married was easy and fun and provided immediate adult companionship and love and has been, by far, the best thing I’ve done in my life. Then about two years ago my husband and I decided that it was time to start adding offspring to our little family of two humans and two fur-babies, and our lives have never been the same.
We got pregnant once and miscarried, the saddest thing that has ever happened to me. And when we got pregnant again after that I couldn’t help but wonder if I was nuts for trying again because to love so much again felt impossible. Thankfully that pregnancy made it to term and we now have a precious little bundle of joy in our lives. And this is where the craziness comes in.
Long gone are the days of happy hours, long hikes after work, and sleep. No more weekend afternoon naps lasting over 1 hour, clean clothes, or picking up and traveling on a whim. Nope, our life as we knew it, the comfortable and happy life of a married couple, was gone.
But in lieu of sleep and adult conversations we now have this: hearts full of absolute love, snuggles with a Johnson’s Baby Shampoo-scented infant, and the life-changing sight of a baby’s smile. We have laughter and stories and legacies to pass on. And as a woman, I have a duty to love and completely respect my body; if not for me then for my little baby boy to have a mother who exudes love and compassion to all people, including herself.
photo for sale here.