Three months ago at this time I was laying in a stiff hospital bed holding you in my arms, elatedly exhausted. I am as saturated in your wonder today as I was our very first night together. Tonight we are in our own bed, and you are sleeping, contently swaddled, between your dad and me.
I love our family bed. I love that life feels complete on this king-size mattress.
Last night I was up with a spell of insomnia, and I laid here in the bed, my eyes moving from you to your dad, watching you both sleep. My boys. And when you stirred, I watched as your dad sleepily and reflexively leaned over to you and gently kissed your head. Both of you were again soundly sleeping in seconds. In this bed, I thought, is my entire life.
I love that the three of us go to bed together and wake up together. I have never loved waking with you more than I do right now, for you are a beautifully happy baby when you wake up in the morning. When I unzip your swaddle, you extend your body in the longest, most delicious stretch, and when you open and focus your eyes, you smile. It is a smile of innocent happiness, and it grips me. We greet you, kiss you, snuggle you, and you are just this blue-eyed, soft-cheeked, broadly smiling creature. It's glorious.
My favorite thing right now? Your voice. I remember the first time you coughed as a teeny newborn. We gasped and fawned over that little cough. You were just a few days old, and it sounded like this great, adorable foreshadowing of how your voice would sound. And now, we hear more of your voice in your babbling and cooing.
Oh, the cooing.
You and I shared a nap this afternoon, and when you woke we stared at each other, trading smiles. And you cooed at me, so deliberately. You pursed your lips at me, and from them came the most gently inflected ooooh-oooohhh from the back of your throat. I swelled inside. I spoke to you, and you cooed back again. I swooned.
There will come a day when you leave our bed for your own, I know. But, for now, it is our sacred space, where you, your dad and I share sleep. Where we extinguish our day, where we start the next anew. You are the first and last thing we see each day. You are our perfect bookend.
My sweet, sweet son.
I am engulfed in a love so profound, so radiating, so bottomless.
I am nothing if not achingly grateful for you, for these last three months, for our days to come.
Your Mama
No comments:
Post a Comment