9 months out
My baby turned 9 months on Saturday July 14, 2018. She was also exactly 39 weeks old that day too. In 4 days she will have been out as long as she was in.
I'm still processing this, because it feels like I was just finding out I was pregnant, just going to our 20 week sonogram, just going to weekly NSTs and being told she wasn't budging, just going in for a scheduled induction, just looking at her long, blue, wet body and surprised, tiny, perfect face during her first breath in this world.
It feels like I was just holding a tiny new person in my arms, taking my first-ever picture of my daughter wrapped in a small hospital blanket and pink hat, I was just trying to figure out how to feed her, how to help her sleep, how to help me sleep, how to feel sane, and during it all feeling like I was dreaming because I was mother to an incredible, lively, animated, curious, perfect, sweet daughter.
I was just watching her smile at me for her first times, babble at everything, nurse well and hold onto me like her life depended on it, grasp her stuffed animal friends and beloved binky, lift her head for minutes at a time, roll around, slide herself across the floor, giggle, eat solid foods, hold her own bottle.
I was just barely watching her work on sitting up, standing against things and put her binky in her mouth without a problem. I was just watching her identify those who love her most dearly, or as she caught every person's eye she saw to smile and say hello. I was just watching as she would grab my face to give me a hug and kiss, then do the same to M.
Now I watch her practice standing, I watch her kick herself in her floaty on the water, sleep till early morning, eat, then sleep some more, pull plugs out of the wall, find bugs on the ground, comprehend the word NO, laugh at her own incomprehensible jokes, reach for dogs, recognize everyone who FaceTimes, say "mama" and "dada" and "Ada" even if she doesn't know she can name the whole family.
I watch her learn and grow and change and adapt and process and feel and laugh and understand and LIVE. It's gorgeous and heartbreaking at the same time, because it often feels that time is cruel and just picks up the pace daily. But it's amazing to sit in those moments as they happen, to not let them pass without monumenting them as something worth remembering. Being a mother for me right now is being the person who was there when it all was happening. It's seeing the nitty gritty as Ada the mighty grows up. It's being the witness of the most beautiful thing known to man: the growth and living of a human being.
She is the sweetest human bean I could have ever asked for, and I feel that watching her grow is part of important history for this world, that I'm the historian for a life already so full and pure and real and raw and lived. Ada embraces it all, and her 9 months out have already changed the world from what it was. I can and can't wait for the next 9 to change the foundation of this world even more.
Thanks for being you in these 9 months, my Ada. These were by far my favorite of the two.
I'm still processing this, because it feels like I was just finding out I was pregnant, just going to our 20 week sonogram, just going to weekly NSTs and being told she wasn't budging, just going in for a scheduled induction, just looking at her long, blue, wet body and surprised, tiny, perfect face during her first breath in this world.
It feels like I was just holding a tiny new person in my arms, taking my first-ever picture of my daughter wrapped in a small hospital blanket and pink hat, I was just trying to figure out how to feed her, how to help her sleep, how to help me sleep, how to feel sane, and during it all feeling like I was dreaming because I was mother to an incredible, lively, animated, curious, perfect, sweet daughter.
I was just watching her smile at me for her first times, babble at everything, nurse well and hold onto me like her life depended on it, grasp her stuffed animal friends and beloved binky, lift her head for minutes at a time, roll around, slide herself across the floor, giggle, eat solid foods, hold her own bottle.
I was just barely watching her work on sitting up, standing against things and put her binky in her mouth without a problem. I was just watching her identify those who love her most dearly, or as she caught every person's eye she saw to smile and say hello. I was just watching as she would grab my face to give me a hug and kiss, then do the same to M.
Now I watch her practice standing, I watch her kick herself in her floaty on the water, sleep till early morning, eat, then sleep some more, pull plugs out of the wall, find bugs on the ground, comprehend the word NO, laugh at her own incomprehensible jokes, reach for dogs, recognize everyone who FaceTimes, say "mama" and "dada" and "Ada" even if she doesn't know she can name the whole family.
I watch her learn and grow and change and adapt and process and feel and laugh and understand and LIVE. It's gorgeous and heartbreaking at the same time, because it often feels that time is cruel and just picks up the pace daily. But it's amazing to sit in those moments as they happen, to not let them pass without monumenting them as something worth remembering. Being a mother for me right now is being the person who was there when it all was happening. It's seeing the nitty gritty as Ada the mighty grows up. It's being the witness of the most beautiful thing known to man: the growth and living of a human being.
She is the sweetest human bean I could have ever asked for, and I feel that watching her grow is part of important history for this world, that I'm the historian for a life already so full and pure and real and raw and lived. Ada embraces it all, and her 9 months out have already changed the world from what it was. I can and can't wait for the next 9 to change the foundation of this world even more.
Thanks for being you in these 9 months, my Ada. These were by far my favorite of the two.
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