Hi there! I am Marilize, mom of 5, 6 and under. Passionate about learning to live a healthy, simple, and intentional lifestyle. I love experimenting with sourdough (or should I say addicted to it?), and would love if you want to follow along on me and my families journey!
I would like to dedicate this website to my dear children. I am compiling research and information on subjects that I wish them to learn and know when they reach young adulthood, and I pray that it would bless them and help them on their journeys to become the person they should be.
I will also dedicate each post to a specific child and write in a letter format, talking to that child as if I am talking to an adult, even though they are just little children while I am writing these posts.
We never know how long we have left to live, I would like to save and pass on as much knowledge and wisdom as is possible to my children. This site is it. Hopefully it will bless others too.
Where my journey started
I was born in 1994 and grew up as youngest of five children, with four older brothers.
Yea, they teased me.. a lot!
As a young girl I always loved being in the kitchen, baking or cooking, it doesn’t matter what. I had a lot of brilliant ideas and baked or cooked it, then my family was my ‘tasters’. I know of at least one time that my mother told me about that she gave my brothers ‘the look’ to not pull a face or say something nasty, just so my dream would not get squashed. I am extremely thankful for that!
Years gone by and dreams came and gone, all the while building my ultimate passion which was in some way or another becoming a good wife to a Bible believing husband and having a lot of babies! Tending to my home, cooking healthy food and loving my husband and children.
Little did I realise how much work went into such a beautiful dream!
How my dream became reality
I became much older then I expected I would before I met my handsome husband, but it was as close to love at first sight as you could get. We got married within 6 months and my ultimate dream began! Building a life with the one I loved!
2 months later we found out that I was pregnant with our first baby and our excitement was through the roof! Then exactly at 12 weeks I started having cramping, and then bleeding. I went on to have a miscarriage. It was a very hard experience to go through, but God carried us and strengthened us.
Our special baby
After 3 months of recovering emotionally, God blessed us with another pregnancy and this time it went till the due date, plus 2 weeks! Yes, my baby wanted to be a big boy and only came 2 weeks after his due date weighing a solid 4.2kg! Born at home with a midwife attending. It was a long and difficult delivery, but without too much complications. After the birth the midwife did her general check-up on the baby and discovered that he had a complete soft palate cleft and that we would have to transfer to a hospital. My dream of breastfeeding my baby shattered and I took on the challenge of exclusively pumping for my baby. I could only get to 7 months after getting mastitis multiple times, having a huge oversupply and cracked and bleeding nipples every day. Over the course of 17 months our baby boy had to go through 5 operations some cleft related some not, the first operation at 7 months.
Hallo Baby girl!
During this time I went trough another misscarriage at 8 weeks and got pregnant again and gave birth when our first born was only 18 months. This time to a baby girl. This was just when covid started and we were very isolated. I had a very difficult breastfeeding start and struggled to find someone to help me. I had to give our baby girl supplementation because she was loosing weight, but breastfeeding was so important to me that I pushed through and teied everyting to succeed, which we did after 4 weeks of really struggling. That maybe sounds short, but man, if your baby does not get enough milk and screams most of the time, even minutes are long!!