A letter to my baby

My darling baby,

I am rocking you as you sleep soundly. You are five weeks old, but still have your new baby smell and it is possibly the most intoxicating thing to me in the world right now. The past two nights you have shared our bed, belly down, in between mom and dad. You could get lost in the sheets; you are so tiny and that bed an ocean. You have been sick with a cold, and I can't bear to make you sleep alone and on your back when I know how you dislike it so. I like to rub your back, smell the back of your head, pull your blanket up. You are still helpless in a very big world, and I feel the weight of my responsibility to you: to love you and to teach you and to show the world to you and you to the world. I waited for you. I knew it was time for you to come, and it was a long nine months of waiting for you to grow and stretch to just the perfect size. But you finally arrived, and we all felt a little closer to heaven when we met you. Our souls must have met before. I can't remember it, but now I get to spend some time (years) relearning yours and nurturing it. On the day you were born you were a stranger to me, but I knew you. I pored over your wrinkly elbows and long fingers and blonde eyelashes and elfin nose just to know you again. Today we rock in this chair together and we are physically as close as can be. You know my voice now and my face too. You have looked me in the eyes and smiled, knowing it is me. Swoon! You have the best smiles- we are all delighted by them. 

Watching you experience your first sickness, your first real hardship other than being born, is so painful. I can't stand to see you suffer, but I remembered that you are His first, and that He has power over the details of our lives. It is not mine to control. And though there is pain, there is peace in knowing that. 

I keep all my silent prayers in my heart, of gratitude and of pleas for my little baby. They run through my mind in the middle of the night as I lie in bed. The night plays tricks on me that way, and all my worries converge... And I remember that God was the one who made you. He just handed over the reigns to me for a while, and asked me to do my best. I am lucky.  So I say one more prayer. I love you, Finn Aleksis, so fiercely. 

Love, 

Mom