Friday, August 5, 2016

I'm sitting here on the night of my sons three week mark wearing tear stained pajamas that I've officially been in for over 24 hours. My hair is in a nest on the top of my head, and I have no makeup on. Across from me, sits my husband of almost five years rocking our three week old son. A year ago few months ago, a few weeks ago, I didn't know that this would be the happiest I would ever be in my entire life.

Today may be a little different than most days for me. Typically, I get up, get dressed for the day and function as a mildly sleep deprived new mum. Today though, my sweet baby boy cried for an hour straight. Extremely unlike him, but it happened as I was waking up. I laid down on my already made bed with this perfect little boy on my chest like a tree frog and there, he finally fell asleep. Too afraid to move, I scrolled through Facebook and texted my mother until hours passed and my phone battery was fading.

My mother showed up. Her, my mother in law and I sat at the dining room table of my new home and chatted. Don't ask me what about, because I spent most of that time staring out the window while they spoke. I did hear my mother console me, saying things like she understood how it hurts a mother when they can't make their baby stop screaming. In that moment I teared up a little. Sometime after that, I stood up, grabbed my keys and said I was going to get us all a coffee.

It wasn't until I was half way to Starbucks did I realize that I had no makeup on and the same clothes I went to bed in the night before. I called my husband at work to fill him in on the details of the morning, but instead shared a monologue on his voicemail about nothing in particular and how I had no idea how it got so late in the day. Standing in the endless line at Starbucks in a location convenient for locals and beach going tourists I became acutely aware of my appearance. Perhaps because of the 20 something year olds in line in front of me. Seeming to have not one care in the world, totally rocking the bikinis and sheer cover ups and while we were sporting the same hair style, theirs was clearly intentional and mine was simply left over. I wondered if people could tell I was a new mum, if they knew that under all these stretchy clothes was the body of a 30 something year old that had just been through the craziest whirlwind of an almost year leaving me with a tiny human to keep alive and (what feels like) a giant empty space in my tummy.

I wondered if the mother with two small children that held the door for me with a sympathetic look knew what my morning consisted of. If perhaps there was some sort of mother spidey sense that she picked up on.

That night, we sat in front of the TV watching a sitcom that required little to no thinking and my tree frog son was yet again asleep on my chest. As I stroked his back tears fell down my cheeks, and on to his (not so little) head and I found my mind wondering to the future. A not so distant future of a day that he would be too big to fit perfectly on my chest while he slept; a day that he wouldn't want to snuggle up on me for hours. Sure, I know he's supposed to grow and develop and he won't remember these days, but I will. I will forever remember the feeling of this 10 pound, 13 ounce three week old resting on me and how I've never felt so complete. Funny how that happens, isn't it? He'll go on with his life without missing that and I'll look at his sweet face and wish I could go back to these moments.

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