I remember the weeks leading up to the delivery of our child. I was pretty sure I was going to be bawling my eyes out when she came out, the emotional climax of quite a journey. As it turns out, there was a lot going on at the moment her birth, and it wound up being more a whirlwind. The surreality of it all didn't really give me the opportunity to have that cathartic moment, lost in tears of joy.
It did, however, come a little more than 24 hours later. While my wife's breast milk was still coming in, we decided along with the nurses we'd supplement the little one's feeding with a some formula. That gave me my first opportunity to feed our little wonder. She opened her mouth, started sucking on the bottle and our eyes locked. Well, I completely lost it. Tears galore. There was just something so intimate about the fact I was literally providing our child- this little girl who had been inside my wife not hours ago. Whom I had not met before yesterday, but somehow knew my whole life. And although she probably didn't know what or who she was looking at, her gaze catching mine made it all the more special and momentous.
Now that the process has been repeated and repeated, and will be repeated and repeated, again and again- it's easy to lose that feeling of connectedness. There's nothing like feeding your child, but it's that aha moment where everything in world makes sense and nothing else matters that can be missing. But the other night, both of us fighting to stay awake- me to feed her, she to eat- she reached up and grabbed my finger and just held on for the rest of her feeding. While there weren't tears, I was certainly taken back to that night in the hospital. Her little fingers grasping mine, is all it takes to change what can come to feel like a chore at times into something I'd rather do above all else. And as we start her on solid foods- a whole new ballgame- moments like those are going to come fewer and farther between before I know it. I've got to hold onto to those gazes, and those little fingers for as long I can.
2 comments:
woah! lots of amazing-ness going on -- cool that even though this is familiar, you're not taking it for granted! this must be what they talk about when they talk about how parenting changes you.
It's a daily struggle, fighting through the exhaustion. But she makes it so hard to feel anything but love... of course, ask me at 3am when all I want to do is sleep!!
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