Last year at this time (as I write this it is 8:53 pm on December 16) I was in labor. I remember getting the induction date from my doctor and thinking that I was one step closer to knowing my baby’s birthday. I figured it would most likely be the 17th. At 5:53 am a new life came into the world, changing mine forever. Jacob Connor came into the world with a whimper and then was alarmingly quiet. He held his daddy’s hand. He looked at me with his grey eyes staring out of a perfectly calm face. I had no idea who he was, but I loved him.

Later that night, after eating our “celebration dinner” and watching the nurse bathe and swaddle him, he was placed next to my hospital bed in a clear incubator. The same calm, alert face stared at me through the plastic. He was wrapped in the striped hospital blanket in pink and blue that all babies are enveloped in from the first. So impersonal, so lonely and generic. I couldn’t leave him lying there. I knew he couldn’t see me and I wondered if his sense of calm had to do with the fact that he was absolutely overwhelmed and frightened by this new world, the new sensations: temperature fluctuations, noises, smells. I thought he must feel lonely lying in that hard plastic bed, listening to the gentle hum on activity outside the hospital door instead of my heartbeat. I got out of bed and picked him up. I was scared to fall asleep and smother him, so I decided to stay awake. I looked at his face, and he looked at mine and I wondered if he recognized my voice or my heartbeat. I could not picture this day. What he would look like, who he would be.

My little Jacob has spent a year on this planet. He is smart, curious, funny, and happy. I have never seen such a happy child. He loves me fiercely, but is brave and friendly with everyone. Sometimes, on rare occasions, he is tired and he only wants me, and I am surprised. I am flattered. I forget at times that he is my little boy and not some darling roommate. When I remember this, when I remember how important I am to him, to this confident darling, I am overwhelmed, flattered, frightened, awed. I renew my silent pledge to do the best I can by him. He brings unimaginable joy to my life.

I love words. I pride myself on them. Not just knowing them, but the ability to find the right ones. I have made a living on it. But when I see him shift in his sleep, or when he grabs my face with both hands and holds his tiny face mine, so close I can feel him breathing, or when he looks at me while playing as if for approval, or claps his hands and exclaims “wow!”, crinkling the bridge of his small nose in joy, words fail me. My mind goes blank. It fills with a warmth that is indescribable. “Love” is not even close. And just when I think I love him as much as my heart is capable of loving, he does something so amazing and my heart expands to be filled with more indescribable warmth and love.

The Grinch’s small heart grew three sizes that day.
I’m no Grinch, but Dr. Seuss knows the possibility of heart expansion.

As always, it is an honor to guide this soul through the beginning of his life, one I’m not sure i deserve but for which i will constantly strive.

How do I feel in this moment? Bewildered, elated, relieved, anxious, excited. I can’t believe it’s been an entire year since he joined us here. I am so happy to have successfully protected and nourished him through the infant stage, for the end of the fear of SIDS and other worries. I am anxious for what lies ahead for him, and yet so excited. I love watching his personality develop. He amazes me every day. If I had an ounce of the enthusiasm for life that he has I would be constantly elated (and most likely really annoying). I have so much I want to show him, and he has so much to teach me. I look forward to the future and yet I can’t fight this desire to freeze time and preserve little things: the sound of his voice, his smell, feel of his fuzzy head and soft hands, his squishy thighs and adorably kicking feet, his dimpled smile and few, pearly teeth.

How did I get here, and what have I done to deserve this? I have been showered by grace. –Lyrics by Tyrone Wells

It seems as though you wait forever for your baby to be born. Your life stretches out ahead of you, marked with occasional doctor appointments during which you peek on your child by way of a Doppler, and sometimes with an ultrasound wand. The tiniest things: the thud of a heartbeat playing through the speaker on the Doppler, or the side profile of a perfect little nose, string you along for weeks on end. Suddenly your baby is born and your brain is overloaded with sensory experiences of him. You’ve gone so long on so little and now your senses are working overtime, as is your brain, feverishly trying to experience him and simultaneously remember everything. Your life is packed onto a rocket and launched into space at light speed. You see Earth from the window, hazy, unimportant now. Every commonplace thought has a new dimension. You incorporate your concerns, thoughts, and love for this child into every event, every decision. You are experiencing the already-3D world in another dimension and it leaves your head spinning. Thoughts stack, one on another. The universe expands and contracts. You see the bigger picture and then your focus shifts to a detail so small that you are left reeling.

It is now 9:36. I should not attempt to put the unspeakable into words. Words, which I love, language, which has meant so much to me, rendered so inadequate in a time like this. So I will allow myself to drift off to sleep, knowing that a sweet, pure little soul emanates goodness from down the hall, and that when he wakes he will look forward to seeing my face, my messy hair, my crooked glasses. That, to him, I am beautiful, and he wouldn’t change a thing. As I try not to think about the enormity of that, the awesome, life-altering craziness of that, so that my brain doesn’t spin ceaselessly tonight and keep me from sleep, I will try to place my thoughts elsewhere, focusing, as I have learned to do, on gratefulness, thankfulness, humbled appreciation and awe.