Disbelief

I can't believe she's mine.  Eleven days into parenthood and I spend much of my time just staring.  I'm in awe that Tony and I made this little girl.  I keep feeling like her mother is going to knock and the door and collect her.  Then I realize I am the mother and she is my daughter.  And I am swallowed by every emotion in the book.  I have never felt so varied and intense an emotional response to any single event.  And I feel so blessed.  

Not that we are without challenges.  They say that something like 80% of women experience a bout of the "baby blues" in the first two weeks postpartum. It can be rough times, those first few weeks.  I didn't go into motherhood blind.  I've been around a lot of little ones in my life.  I've experienced the fussiness and lack of sleep on a small scale.  I knew that the first weeks would be hard.  And they have been.  We have had to (and continue to) troubleshoot both sleeping and feeding issues.  Despite all I knew, there is something completely different about your baby crying.  When I can't console her, it's a personal failure.  In the middle of the night when she refuses to be put down, when she cries unconsolably, I want to cry, too.  In fact, I have a time or two.  

But then, eventually, she turns peaceful again.  And I look at her beautiful little face and tiny little features.  And I think she is perfect and wonderful and, most importantly, our own little miracle.  And I want to cry all over again.  Tears of a completely different nature. I can't believe she's mine.

-- Mya