Week 7, Day 4

How about a happy post to contrast the grumpy post?

I was working in SP's room this afternoon when I came across a framed pic of that little cutie the day she was born - probably only seconds after she emerged into the world.

She was very swollen, pink and squinty-eyed. Just precious. In a way only a mother can love...that sort.

But I remember holding her shortly after the picture was taken, and curling those tiny fingers around my grown-up finger and completely forgetting all that I'd gone through for the past 48 hours. How the pain and the needles and the C-section were entirely a memory as I held the product of my past 9 months' efforts. Just beautiful...and remarkable.

I remember looking at her and knowing that every little cell in her body was created by me. That every single piece of her was something my body had put together into an extraordinary pattern. The only part of her that wasn't wholly me is (quite significantly) her DNA. But it was my body that assimilated that DNA into something so miraculous. I did that...no one else. And even 5 months later, still all that made her up was something I'd given to her through nursing. There's nothing foreign in her. I'm not foreign, because I AM her, still (well, of course not anymore but as an infant). Until she took something else into her body, she and I are of the same "stuff". I love that.

I think only another mother can truly appreciate what I'm saying here.

So, as I complain and moan about feeling icky, irritable and bloated (already), I just look at that picture and remember that shortly, I'll be holding a perfect little body of my own making - it's so worth it. I just can't wait.