Unexpected

I didn't think I would miss my husband so much. I spend a lot of my time cuddling someone else now and that's as it should be and I love every minute of those amazing baby cuddles but I really still need cuddles of my own and I miss it. I'm really hoping that once the two weeks of non stop Grandma time comes to an end we'll get some time to - I don't know, reconnect is the wrong word, but I miss just hanging out with Mr. E. My doctor said I was supposed to come in six weeks after giving birth for a check up and to discuss birth control options - I think I can just tell her we have a co sleeper and be done with that conversation.

I didn't know that I wouldn't be a baby talker. But I am so not. To the point where it kind of gets on my nerves when other people do it. Eli and I do have little chats - all the time, but not in ga ga goo goo speak.

I didn't think 5 pounds six ounces would be so very very tiny. Eli doesn't fit in any regular clothes. He doesn't even fit in preemie clothes. And when I see him out of his clothes I am struck every time but how tiny, and yet how perfect, this miniature child of mine is. He makes all the other babies I see look like great hulking beasts (but not YOURS, of course).

I didn't realize I would care so little about having my entire life taken over by this tiny creature. I have to feed him every three hours, sometimes more depending on how well he ate the time before, and even though it gets a little old because it takes him so long to eat each time, I really don't even care. We spend most of our time just hanging out and sleeping and eating and it's really my favorite time I've ever spent with anyone. If I had known how much fun it would be to be a mom, if I had known how little I would care that I can't go to the movies now or that I don't have any time to myself or I can't pee alone - I wouldn't have waited so long. I wouldn't have worried so much.

I never realized I would feel so lucky. I have moments where I look over at my husband whos been just incredible every moment of when I was pregnant and every moment since Eli's birth and I look at my tiny perfect son and I have moments like when our pediatrician said to me in her thick Indian accent "Oh, he has a BEAUTIFUL heart" and I just feel so lucky in those moments it feels almost dangerous, how wonderful and happy I am. I don't know that I deserve it.

I never expected to get over myself so quickly. Before I had Eli, I was really wrapped up, waaay too wrapped up, in everyone else, in what everyone else was doing, when they were having kids, what they thought of me, if they would have better baby furniture, if my sister in law would buy a pottery barn crib I couldn't afford, if someone else would take the names I wanted to use, if I would have an emotional breakdown when someone else had a girl before I did. And then once I had him I simply stopped caring about all that. It sounds weird but I just don't care anymore. It's not that I don't wish everyone else love and happiness and babies and puppies and rainbows, I do. It's just that it's irrelevant to my happiness. I've got mine. I hope they get theirs, but whether they do or don't doesn't add or subtract from my own.

I never expected that this tiny creature would make me feel so connected to everyone else that came before. It's more than just the stories of all the people who came before, of the grandfather who gave him his middle name or the great grandmother who raised nine kids on her own after her no good husband Beuxregard left her. It's glancing down at Eli's face and seeing my mom for an instant, it's my brother's chin in miniature, it's glimpses of Mr. E in a curl of hair or in Eli's long perfect fingers you know he didn't get from me, it's seeing my own nose right there on his tiny baby face and remembering my own mother teasing me about my pouty lower lip and seeing it all over again in my son.

The one thing I did expect, the one thing I was counting on? That indescribable new baby smell. It's there, and it's better than I ever expected.