My beautiful first born, my daughter:
My heart, my world, my tenacious and beautiful soul of a daughter. I know it's cliche, but I love you more than you will ever understand. Sometimes I can't let myself feel how much I love you because it overwhelms me. Our journey has been a short one, but you have changed my life in ways I never knew a life could be changed. 14 months ago you made me a mother. I couldn't put into words for 14 months how your existence has redefined my life. Your existence has literally given me the definition of what love, life, and change mean.
When I was pregnant with you, I knew logically with your birth would come new life with many sleepless nights, lots of love, dirty diapers, and smelling your new baby smell. I knew that we would be parents, I would give birth to you, we would leave the hospital and begin our journey as a family of three. I knew your fur siblings would be jealous, I knew you would need to feed every 2-3 hours, I knew you would sleep most of the time tightly swaddled with your daddy's expert-level swaddle technique. What I didn't know was the MEANING and FEELING of being a mother. Not only because I had no experience with being a mother, but because for thirty years I built a definition of who I thought I was slowly, unintentionally, and subconsciously. Life experiences can shape visions of yourself that you think are real until one day something shifts and the bricks of your life come tumbling down. This can be good or bad. Slow, or fast. 32 hours of labor and there you were. 6lbs 6oz of life shifting bricks in my arms.
I know now 14 months after your birth when the bricks of my old life finally tumbled. When we were in a rhythm and you would coo and smile up at me as I fed you, when you were around 2 months old. This is when I knew what being a mother was. It wasn't an aha moment. It was a feeling, indescribable until it happens to you. Yes, of course I loved you from the moment you were born but there is a special moment when you feel you are a MOTHER.
It seems silly to me now how my pre-mother mind thought our lives would resume as they once were. Once you were here I had to be with you, to savor you, to love you. I needed to figure out what this new life changing event meant for both of us. Now looking back 12 months after realizing I was a MOTHER, it meant I had to redefine the bricks that made up my pre-mother life. I had to redefine change. I had to redefine love. I had to redefine life. Let me tell you, doing this 30 years into life isn't easy. I don't want to sugarcoat it. The immense confusion and pain that came with the tumbling of bricks from my pre mother life crushed my soul, for a while.
But this new chapter was what I needed, and you needed. I love you my beautiful daughter, and I always will.
Love,
mama
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