I Feel Fine

Beginning a blog has been like writing a song or starting a novel. You put it off because you’re trying to think of the perfect way to begin. So I’m just beginning at the beginning. Isabelle’s birth has been a new beginning. Beginning of a new life, beginning of being a mom and having a husband who’s a dad, beginning of the dance between work and home, beginning of slowing down. For all of these things I am grateful.

I’ve already been asked several times what it is like to be a mom. Here are some of the things that have surprised me most.

1. Feeling attached. I just want to hold her all the time and have her close. I don’t seem to care that I’m not “doing” anything or “getting anything done”.
2. I feel like she is the cutest baby in the whole world, and can’t get enough of looking at her and kissing her.
3. I have this enormous tank of patience – for dirty diapers, fussy feedings, flooding her clothes (and my bed!). It’s like an endless tank of love and I’m not sure what the source is.
4. Feeling bonded to my husband. I keep thinking to myself, “Does he know how much I adore him?” I have been so proud of him and so impressed by all the things he has done for Isabelle and I in the last week.

One of my favorite moments of labour was the long nap that Ben and I took after the epidural. The sun shone brightly into our hospital room, which is rare for Michigan, and we dozed to strains of James Taylor and Van Morrison. I keep listening to those two discs over and over, basking in the sunshine of our daughter.

“And I feel fine anytime she's around me now,
she's around me now almost about all the time.
And if I'm well you can tell she's been with me now.
She's been with me now quite a long, long time and I feel fine.”