New Year, New Baby

Preparing for Baby #2 and a New Year at our Danish Homestead

As I leave another year behind me, and turn towards a new one filled with dreams and ambitions, I find myself coming to a halt. Big plans and splendid turn-of-events is not what I have in store for the year of 2025.

Instead I am preparing for the birth of our second baby this winter.

That means that I am mostly preparing for inactivity, long days in bed and on the couch with a newborn at my breasts. We are making nourishing meals and baking pastries ahead in order to have to do as little as possible other than taking care of our 2 year old and her soon-to-be newborn baby brother.

So far, we have the following prepared for us in our freezer:

• 2 dishes of curry

• two bags of buns

• four loaves of ryebread

• cinnamon rolls

• and one bag of delicious chocolate cookies.

Our renovations of the home will have to come to a halt. We will have enough on our hands, without having any major renovations going on in the house. If we find the time, we will paint the upper floor, which right now is an empty attic. One day we will turn all that empty space into our childrens bedroom and an office for Herluf, so we do not have to share our small bedroom between the four of us and Herlufs work set-up.

But not this day. Not this year. Maybe the next.

You see, we are somewhat tied up this year. We will have enough on our hands with two children for sure, but we are also in a period of saving money to actually buy our house, instead of essentially renting it (read more here). Since we rely on only one income, saving up means there are no money for renovations.

For this year, we will have to make due with what we got.

Now, that does not mean we do not have any projects going on. I am a dreamer afterall, and quite the problem solver who nourishes on restrictions. Therefore I have found some simple, yet giving spring projects like finishing our chicken coop and vegetable garden so that we may welcome chickens in the spring and hopefully a healthy harvest in the summer and autumn. This in turn, will also provide us with fresh produce, eggs and vegetables for much of the summer, so hopefully there is also some money to be saved there.

We already have a small hen house, kindly gifted to us last summer, and we bought the fence to fence in both the vegetable garden in order to keep deer out, and the chicken coop in. Everything else, the poles, the plant boxes and the compost we have available for free, either here on our homestead or in the local recycling site.

We will be home all four of us for some time this spring, as Herluf will be on paternity leave for 11 weeks. So far, we have planned that he will go to a daily activity with our eldest, be it visiting the library, or going for a swim in the indoors pool.

All the while, I will be home, nursing and tending to the little one, that will require almost all of my attention. I dream of filling the bedroom window stills with spring seeds that I can watch grow, day by day, as I hold our little one for hours and hours on end.

What little time and attention I have left, I hope to give my eldest when she is home with me, as she have been since her own birth, until this summer when she turns three and starts in kindergarten.

When her father starts work again, she will begin a new journey in her life. Away from me, but with other children her own age that she can play and ruffle with. Truth is, I am quite nervous for this transition in her life, but maybe I am the most nervous for me.

I love to dream about the future and have plans, but somethings in this transitional year is still hidden to me, and I find that quite nerve-racking. How will I have time for both a newborn and my first born? How can I possibly continue my writing practice that I have worked so hard in the previous year when I also have to transition into a mother of two?

Last time, when I became a mother for the first time, I gave up on writing. I felt so unsatisfied with never having time to write that I thought it best to just give up the whole silly thing. Of course I did not succeed in this. Writing has a way of coming back to me every time I try to shove it away.

But I don’t want to do that this time. I want to continue writing through taking care of a newborn, through having to say goodbye to the three years alone at home with my eldest. But can I? At this point I simply do not know.

I will have to trust that the new year will tell me when the time is right.

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What to expect from me in the new year?

As you might have noticed I am turning down the frequency of my newsletter this winter as I and my family are settling into this new life as a family of 4. So instead of weekly stories there will be bi-weekly stories, and one of those will be a new chapter of Home by the Beech Trees - Our First Year at Baggebo Homestead.

I hope to return to my weekly writings in the springtime, but till then I hope you will have patience with me as I will try, too, to have patience with myself ❤️

Much love, Anne.

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January’s video