When I was five or six, I would stay up at night, bawling and terrified that something would happen to someone in my family.  I would pray and pray and pray to God to look after each of them and hope upon hope that when I woke the next morning, each of us would still be there.  I would beg to God that if something terrible should happen (cancer, a burglary, nuclear holocaust...things children should be afraid of), it should happen to me.  At the time, I remember thinking that was some kind of courage.  Now that I have you, I realize it wasn't courage at all but cowardice.  It is easier to be the one leaving than to be the one left behind.  Now that I have seen your face and held you in my arms I understand vulnerability.  I have been vulnerable my whole life, but now that there's you, my chest is bare and naked and exposed and utterly destructible.  It is only easy for me to sleep at night if I don't think about these things.  If I assume that when I awake everyone I love is fixed permanently in their place.

Having a child--more than any other time in my life--has brought me face to face with my mortality. It wasn't so long ago that I was being rocked to sleep in my mother's arms.  And now I am rocking my own, beautiful child.  My first thirty years have flown and I am sure that yours will, too.  And then I will find myself in the place of my mother, watching as my own child raises her own.  I have come to the realization time and time again but the moments we have here are so fleeting and so quick to pass.  And inevitably, we must leave this world just as we have come.  And there are no guarantees that each of us gets to be a grandparent or a parent at all.

How terrifying.  Being a mother exposes you and skins you raw.  I have anxiety fairly consistently now.  Anxiety about life and death and sleep and schedules and feeding and weight gain and baby acne and bottle types and anxiety about my anxiety.  Part of it is the raging hormones from delivery. But part of it, I think, is a new reality.  A reality that no matter how calm or confident or great my day is going, I will always be half where I am and half wherever you are.  I will never be calm or content simply within myself.  Half my heart, my soul, and my mind will always be searching and praying desperately that you are okay.  It has only been three weeks, but already I am inalterably changed.

The sleep deprivation is better now that we're able to give you a bottle from time to time. Tim has been taking the night shift so that I can get four hours in a row which helps extraordinarily.  Part of my anxiety, I think, comes from not getting my requisite nine or ten hours.

But there are moments of extraordinary intimacy in those sleep deprived moments.  In the night, when you and I alone are awake and you snuggle into my chest and coo in the way I have become accustomed I think this must be a piece of heaven.  You are so, so small.  And you fit perfectly in the crook of my arm or tucked tightly into my chest. I had no idea in those long ten months that it was you I was waiting for.  But now that I have met you, each well-placed kick, bout of hiccups, and quiet morning moment makes sense.  You were in there all along, simply waiting.

We are three weeks into this journey.  You are growing so fast.  And time, despite my best protests (and occasional pleas to hurry up), marches steadily onward.  You will never, ever be three weeks old again.  So despite the stress and anxiety placed on top of sleep deprivation, I try to cherish each moment.  To love you. To hold you as often as I can.  Because soon, my love, it will be you writing to your first baby and I will be watching you experiment with this motherhood game.  But for now, a snuggle. And perhaps a diaper change.

Today I left you and I took the dogs and I walked.  And somehow over the course of the sleepless, endless nights, the leaves have turned yellow and fall is on its way.  You are two weeks old tomorrow and the change of season snuck by both of us without notice.  It is a nice time of year to be born, I think.  You came in the full heat of the summer and your arrival prompted the transition into hues of gold and red and yellow.  And now, whenever fall arrives, I will think of this time with you.  You are so small and so dependent and have brought so much joy.

Now that the massive waves of hormonal surges have passed, I can think more logically and rationally.  I'm not certain this is a good thing, however.  In the midst of my plummeting hormones and utter exhaustion I think I may have been closer to truth than I am in my more rested, more sane mind.  It is only on the edge of madness that I am my most honest, I think.  Otherwise, I am using coping mechanisms and fronts to hide the rawness of emotion.  The emotion that holy shit you came and you changed everything and it is so, so good but so, so terrifying.

People tried to prepare me for this in so many ways.  They told me things would be forever different. They offered interpretations of the extreme toll being a new mom takes on the body.  The most honest folks talked about the vulnerability and the fear.  But being arrogant as I am, assuming that somehow I would fare better, I didn't particularly listen.  So now, when I awake with you at two am and I am as strung out as I have ever been, I smile a bit at my arrogance and my assumption that somehow it was easier than folks warned.

You arrived at a temperamental time of year.  Right now, there is thunder and a tremendous pouring rain.  Just yesterday it was 90 degrees.  I cannot wait until you are big enough and the temperature is stable enough to take you out for runs and walks; I cannot wait to drag you up mountains and across country to see what there is to see.  There is simply so much to see and life is so short.  I cannot wait for you to see it all, every last inch.

I am still trying to come to terms with loving you.