Becoming a mom

It’s been two weeks since I became a mom, and never have two weeks felt so long and so fast at the same time.

I knew then that our lives would change. We had planned for, dreamed of, and prepared for this baby. But knowing and experiencing are at times as distant to each other as night and day.

I write this dazed from getting mere fragments of sleep, and I’m shrugging off a heavy throbbing sensation that seems to be in permanent residence around my temple.

Life has altered like a universe undone: my husband and I feel like we’re planets orbiting around a new sun. The center of our lives is this 6-lb bundle: bright-eyed, the smell of pure joy, exquisitely tiny and raring to grow.

Everyone has said that this time in our lives is painfully short. In two weeks, Bo has been showing developments that tell us each moment will become more fleeting than the one before.

Before time pushes these precious bits of his fresh life into memory, I pause to take stock of a still-inexplicable blessing–much larger and deeper than we had ever hoped for.

What do I never want to forget? I write here to our two-week old son. Perhaps for him to read someday.

I never want to forget the way I can scoop you up in one arm and then you look at me with a look that can powerfully blur all else.

You cry and I whisper “My love” to your ear, then just like that, you stop crying. (Oh Bo, I never knew I had such magic!)

I love how I can still hold both your hands in one of mine, and how your feet, flat like your Daddy’s, make me laugh.

I can spend the whole day (and night) burying my nose on your head, smelling the pure newness of you.

I’ve become almost delusional from exhaustion and sleeplessness, and yet I choose to stay up staring at you as you sleep, stubbornly neglecting my chance to recover with a nap. Looking at you asleep with your small chest rising and falling as you breathe brings me peace. (And I crazily double-check if you’re breathing well in bed.)

I love your gassy smile, and how you bravely try to turn your head at the sound of your Daddy’s voice. You clasp my finger with your tiny but strong hand, and I wish you know how that melts me each time.

It’s hard to understand as I look at you now: did I really grow you inside me in all those 40 weeks of waiting? I can still feel your gentle kicks and playful flutters in my belly.  We were filled with wonderings about you in all those months, those times felt so long. It was only a few weeks ago when Daddy was still singing to you as Baby Scoobs.

Now, you’re Bo. Real, incessantly hungry, and flashing us those smiles. I always knew that your Daddy and I have something amazing going on. But life brought us a never-before kind of joy when you came into our lives and made us Mom and Dad.

It’s incredible that our love for each other has brought us you: simply the most beautiful and wonderful thing we’ve ever done in our lives. You look at us like we’re your world. Bo, you are ours.

Even now, before you’ve mounted a skateboard, dribbled your first basketball, or attended your first school dance, I struggle with how I will have to curb my overprotective instinct as you grow. I wonder how I can ever send you off to a playdate (and gulp, to college!) without being an uncontrollable embarrassing mess. The reality of a crazy mother has become me. All my fears, real and imagined, magnify themselves in my sleep-deprived brain. I think ahead about raising you, and I fill up with hopes and dreams and prayers that make me almost want to burst.

You are still so small. But wow, how you’ve changed us! We watch the evening news with more gravity as we want a kinder and better world for you. We want to take you on countless adventures and be in awe of everything through your eyes. We work to be better people to model the values we hope to see in you.

Thank you for coming into our lives. Love is no longer what it simply was: it has become absolute, unbridled, endless. Because of you.