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.