4 months and 6 days. That is how long I've been a Mom. The first two weeks and then the next two weeks were the hardest weeks of my life. I was fairly certain I’d made a mistake – I wasn’t cut out to be a mom. The thing I thought I wanted was so unfamiliar and so tough and so demanding that thoughts of sending her to Grandma and Grandpa’s for a few years flooded my brain. I was unsure of every move I made. I slept in increments of minutes not hours (standard practice, I know). I cannot be certain of how many showers I took those first weeks but let’s just say it wasn’t a lot (again, fairly standard). I cried many days, some for hours and some for only minutes but I cried almost every day. For those crazy, stressful, mind-numbing weeks, I clung to the one piece of hope I had: “It will get better”. My best friend, who lives states away, would text or email me that sentence every few days – when she was diagnosed with reflux, when the first medicines didn’t do anything, when I got mastitis, when I got the second round of mastitis, when we had to stop breastfeeding, when the formula didn’t agree, when the 2nd and 3rd formula’s didn’t work. I clung to that little piece of hope.
And now…it is beyond anything I could ever imagine. I didn’t get that burst of baby love when they plopped her on my chest after she was born. It took me a while to feel that deep emotional connection but I think I’ve made up for that. She fills my heart with a joy I wasn’t prepared for or believed was possible. And I can’t imagine life without her. I’m sure it sounds cliche and sappy (I would have said the same thing 4 months and 6 days ago!) but it’s cliche for a reason.
Our lives were so thoroughly enriched when Ella came into our world. She is our little nugget of wonderful. I've been told it gets even better than this...but I can't imagine how.
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