I wrote this two years ago when Ella Grace was just teeny tiny and accidentally reread it this morning thanks to FB! I'm sharing this here if this is your season right now, if you're in the thick of the mothering and the caring and the nursing and the sleepless worrying in awe amazing crazy nights.
It really does go by so fast so fast. I blinked, and Ella Grace has just turned three.
Hold on tight mamas, soak it all in.
You got this! <3
I still check to see if she's breathing. Late at night or while she's napping in the car or her crib or on our bed when she falls asleep and the room is too quiet and I miss her. Ironic isn't it? That I would miss her while treasuring this precious me time?
I keep trying to write her a birthday letter, of all the things I want her to know and how so very proud I am of her. How she has molded and shaped and changed so many parts of me and how I am braver, stronger, more vulnerable and completely humbled by her. How this was just a dream a long time ago and how reality has far exceeded anything I ever imagined of what life with our teeny tiny lovebug would be like.
Oh sweet Ella Bella, I keep trying to write but words fail me. Mama's heart fails me because it gets in the way and all I can think of is it's moving so so fast and I am so in love with our now.
So for now, I just soak it all in again and again. Unblinking. Arrested. Present. Mama wants to remember it all.
The way you cock your head to the side and smile the sweetest smile, the way you throw back your head in laughter, the way you run in for a hug, mamamamamamama.
The way you just learned how to spin and you think you're the coolest person ever, this silly surprised in awe look you make. The way you think you're making a thumbs up sign for good but really you're just pointing and waving with your index finger so it looks more like you're scolding everyone or the way your brain has suddenly exploded w all these words and how you understand so so many things and you are like a little bossy determined ridiculously cute tiny girl running around.
Because soon too soon, you will be in a new chapter, you'll grow even taller, and get even bigger and I will miss these moments of when you were so tiny and so precious and I would wish I could go back and take one more picture, nurse you again, cuddle cuddle cuddle the way you like to or strap in mama's little roo into this safe pocket of you and me.
Tonight I gave you your last ever breastmilk bath. I stopped pumping when we went on holiday to Phuket so so many months ago, less to carry I told myself at that time, a little mama break in our beautiful resort not realizing that I would just continue to nurse you exclusively when we came home and just like that, a new chapter.
These are just the leftovers that I had frozen before. I used to obsessively store for a rainy day when you were a teeny tiny, worry and worry but you're a big girl now, you eat and love and devour your big girl meals that I worry less that you will starve to death if anything happens to mama and you have no milk. Morbid isn't it?
But I've since learned that that's what mamas do. They plan and they worry and they plan some more. They try to think five hundred and seventy four steps ahead with a plan b and c and d and e. I think mama brain isn't because your brain cells have died in the growing bump and the birthing and the caring, I think mama brain is because my brain is so so busy constantly running to remember all these little details of you - the last time you ate, when you need to be diapered, that red patch that might be nothing or might be something, your play dates this week, if I have enough groceries to make you a nutritious meal, if I packed your diaper bag w your current favorite toy, if I've restocked and washed and sanitized your room, and the list goes on and on and on as it takes over the finite space in my head for thinking and is the low background hum and song to all my thoughts.
It is why I lose my sentence in the middle of a conversation, because one half of my concentration is trying to figure out where you are and if you can hurt yourself and the other part is planning planning always planning and the last part is where was I again?
I watch you sleeping, measuring that your chest rises and falls, as a part of my heart lives and breathes out of my body, laughing to myself and the world because of course I took a picture of you and your tiny little dramatic hands over your face as if to say ohmygodmamapleasestaaaaahhhppppppp.
I love you kid. To the moon and back and so much more.
You, you are and forever will be one of daddy and mama's so very favorite love songs.
Xx
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