those days felt so long and hard but early on Eugene and I had promised to remind each other everyday to enjoy and try to embrace everything. and I'm so glad we did. it's hard to describe, but even though he has changed and grown so much since this stage, and even though at the time, I felt like my brain only functioned at 12% and I rarely knew what day it was or if/when I had last brushed my teeth- I still distinctly remember so many things about these early days: his newborn smell, and what his skin felt like, what his poo smelled like (lol!) and how he would scrunch his face and had so many wrinkles because he was so skinny! we were waiting for his eyebrows to come in and then he started to lose his hair (and had a receding hairline like grandpa!) and his skin was so flaky we had to filter every photo so that it didn't look like he was recovering from a bad sunburn. I loved the way his mouth would open when he was in a milk coma, sleeping on my chest. he loved being swaddled but always managed to stick an arm out. he had hiccups all. the. time and I freaked out every night and googled to find out what the physiology was behind why he had hiccups (nerd alert..) and if it was harmful or potentially dangerous in any way. i googled so many things. I remember sleeping with one eye open those first few months when he slept next to us in a cosleeper and I would react to any and every move. I remember those nights he would wake up for a feed and stay up for 2-3 hours and I would be rocking him in the dark praying and asking the baby to go back to sleep. I remember when he would take 40-60 minutes to eat and when he would nurse for, almost 16 hours straight during growth spurts. he was so new and foreign to me. motherhood was the one thing I felt absolutely unprepared for. I had no idea what I was doing or how we were gonna keep doing what needed to be done. I remember the first time we bathed him and the first time I had to put him in a footed onesie on him (why are there so many buttons!!) and I was sooooo nervous. it felt so hard and I felt so frustrated - I wondered if it would ever get easier.
by God's grace,
it did.
fast forward 8 months and here we are. i am so thankful to be able to say that I've been growing into my role as a mom. i can bathe him in the big shower bathtub while he is crawling and splashing around. we have braces 4+ hour rides together in traffic on the 91 (although he may have eaten 200 puffs that day). I sleep without the baby monitor on and the door closed. I can (somewhat) calmly watch him gag on foods as he learns how to maneuver different foods in his mouth. I go out and do things and see people. we have found our new normal, baby and I. God's grace has brought us here. now, when things get tough and I feel helpless and wonder how I'm going to do the next hard thing, I am learning to take it as it comes and to not let the hard stuff rob my joy. motherhood is truly a learn-as-you-go type of thing. no amount of reading or training can ever prepare you. there are lots of things about the future that make me feel anxious. there are so many unknowns in this world and we are so limited in and of ourselves to know how to face it. but I'm finding new strength everyday to cling to Christ and to trust in Him to help me.
His grace has brought us this far.
let's keep going.
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