You Gotta Take The Bitter With The Sweet

As when Little One's conception date neared, as her first birthday approaches I am once again feeling reflective.

Earlier this week, one evening as I fed Little One her bedtime bottle (it works, don't judge), I realized that that one particular moment was never going to happen again. And it's hit me hard, this realization that pretty soon she'd be walking then running and not looking back even as I cheer her on.

And, you know, I'm excited for that to happen. But at the same time, I'm not ready for her to no longer be my baby in the true sense of the word, even though she'll always be my baby in my heart. Even now I already miss and have started to forget how she was at birth, and every month since then adds more to both remember and forget.

That's the bitter. That I can't turn back time and really appreciate those first months instead of treating them as a fight for survival. Somehow, the times of easy snuggles and special moments got lost in the combined haze of sleep deprivation and the crash course in learning how to do this whole Mom thing.

The sweet is that it doesn't stop, that every day she changes and grows and reflects that I just might be doing something right despite every day continuing to bring new lessons for me as well. I am so excited to find out who she's going to be, what she's going to do, the many facets of this (little) person who arrived after so much frustration and hope.

At some point in my teens my mother told me that if anything ever happened to me she didn't know what she would do. I didn't fully understand what she meant until Little One arrived. It wasn't the guilt trip to keep me on the straight and narrow that I thought it was (though I'm sure that was a nice side benefit), but a pure expression of the deep deep love that comes from being a parent to a long awaited child. I just hope that I can express it better to Little One when the appropriate time comes than my mother did to me!