6 months

It was 6 months ago that I gave birth to my beautiful daughter.  I knew that when I started on this journey that it would be a foray into the big scary unknown.  Little did I know just what a wondrous journey that this would be.  Every day before I open my eyes, I wake to her soft little body nestled into mine.  I feel her snuffly breath on my cheek and when I open my eyes there she is with her one hand flung over her face and her head resting on the other.  It is a lovely thing to wake each morning to a miracle.

Time has a different meaning now.  Before, there was always something more to do, something that needed to get done instantly.  There are still those moments but there is little now that really has that sense of urgency that means I can’t stop and blow raspberries or sing a song or give a kiss.  Sometimes we will find ourselves in a sea of half completed tasks, her in my arms and me in the chair chanting a song in her ear and rocking her.  In those moments we are somewhere else, adrift in a pocket of stasis where there is nothing else to hear or say or see or do.  Together we just sit and let the world turn by itself.

Her smile can melt my heart. Her furrowed brow when she concentrates at whatever task she is doing or action that she is analyzing makes me impatient for the day that I can share in what she is thinking and doing.  Such a tiny little thing and already her personality can overtake a room.  I watch and laugh as my parents vie for her attention, something that I can never remember them doing for me or my siblings and yet it seems right for them to do so now.  I hear the longing in her other grandparents’ voices as they make do with irregular visits via Skype and promise myself that ‘we will get better at phoning every week.’  I watch her eyebrow raise and her head perk up when she hears her dad’s voice when he comes home at night.  I join in her sense of satisfaction when she has managed to rip that paper just right or make that sound or finally reach her object of choice.  Tears come to my eyes when I hear her whimper in her sleep and see the shadows flicker over her face.

Every night I go to sleep with her at my breast, Ryan’s warm body beside mine and Sabine’s snoring furry self at my feet and thank God for the miracle of my life.