What is it about other people's babies?
My friend Nat got to take her sweet little daughter home on Friday after about a month in the NICU. Rita you see, decided to make her mother's blood pressure very high, and INSIST on making an appearance a month or so early.
Rita is tiny, sweet and utterly beautiful. (She is, really. She's just kinda pissed off in that picture. Come to think of it, her mom looks like that at work a lot.)
When Nat came online to tell me she was FINALLY home on Friday, I nearly burst into tears. I felt like my heart was going to burst, and I tried to find a way to convey how thrilled for them I was over messenger.
That's not easy to do.
When I met Rita for the first time in her incubator, I started to cry-as I write this I'm crying, and I don't quite know why. She's not my child, hell, I cried to get RID of mine. If someone had of asked, I would have gladly given them away those first few weeks.
But there is something incredibly breathtaking about watching two people want a child, and get it, and love her so fiercely from day one. Watching Rita's Daddy as she slowly wraps him further around her finger without trying, watching the solemn look of peace that decends Nat's face in pictures as she looks at her daughter HER DAUGHTER! it's this indescribable feeling.
Friends having babies is just that much cooler. WHO KNEW! And it's not spite, me knowing she won't ever sleep the same way, and that she'll worry about the stupidest things (ok, she does that one already but still....) It's knowing how big her heart will become, how fascinating this creature will be to her, how her husband, who is adopted, will look at Rita and finally see someone who looks like him. How fragile and yet how strong they will become.
There is something absolutely joyous about knowing 2 people so deserving of this tiny pleasure, and watching them become enraptured by it. There's this melancoly in me as I think of my first, and how I let so many moments slip away, how I thought it was so much harder and scarier than it really is. You will never, EVER be a new mom ever again, and there is such sweetness in all those discoveries.
I really want to tell them that there will come a day FAR too soon that you will miss that sleepy feeding baby in your arms at 3am. As much as I love sleep, I loved those night feedings even more, singing my versions of what a lullaby should be, inhaling the absoluteness of the moment. That this will be the one time that you truly feel you can protect them from anything.
I find it all so incredible, like a roller coaster or a good movie, because I know what lies ahead for them, and how delicious is all is.
Drink it up my friends. Such beauty is few and fleeting in this world.
Welcome Home.
Part of me can imagine feeling that way after that stage of infancy is over.
The other part of me would be screaming in elation over the act that normal sleep patterns could finally resume.
Oh, who am I kidding? I won't know any of this for sure until I actually HAVE kids!
Posted by
Anonymous |
11:54 p.m.
By the way, "act" should have read "fact." DUH!
Posted by
Anonymous |
11:55 p.m.
Oh believe me, the sleep issue is HUGE.
But with two, it takes longer. They go to bed at 7pm, and are up at 6ish. Or rather, Rosalyn wakes up, irritates Vivian awake, who then proceeds to scream ME awake.
Sometimes Vivian doesn't get to sleep until 8ish, and only with my help. So if I'm lucky, I get an hour or two for me before I have to go to sleep if I want a full 8 hours. I'm one of those people who NEEDS sleep, and I hate sacrificing MY time.
I was sitting here playing the Sims last night thinking how 5 years ago, I used to stay up all night playing it, and I'd get up whenever I wanted.
Now I can't even imagine that. Not one bit.
I so can't wait until they're 15.
Posted by
thordora |
10:35 a.m.
Ok, well congratulations, you successfully made me cry. (And no, it's not just postpartum hormones!)
Posted by
Anonymous |
10:08 p.m.
Beautiful xx
Posted by
Anonymous |
6:10 p.m.