Stolen moments

So the short version of my emotions at the moment and in the last couple of weeks is shock and awe.

I'll be honest, I wasn't totally convinced that this pregnancy would go well at all. Ever. Not until there was a howling baby in the room did I really buy it.

Yesterday the spouse was reporting that I hold Little Monster a lot more than I did the kid. It is probably true, in large part because I spent all my time with the kid nursing her and then letting her sleep on me or bouncing her just so in the dreary colic dance for a few hours a night. There was no recreational time with the kid where she was just relaxing or snoozing quietly enough you could just sit there.

I bet some of it is general amazement too. I am amazed that after all the heartache and waiting and everything, there is a real baby. A real, happy, warm, snuggly baby. A baby who the kid keeps wanting to hold like she's the best prize ever.

Some of it is playing the "what if this is the very last baby ever?" game too. We've talked about adopting from foster care, but we want to maintain birth order if we can help it, and we don't expect we'd get to adopt a baby. We've talked about another biological kid and it's a daunting and scary process too, plus the added cost of testing to see if we can narrow down what all this repeat pregnancy loss business is about (and any meds to go with it).

I often feel like I've wandered into someone else's life where things have gone smoothly and there was no heartache and waiting and fretting to get to this moment. I often feel like I'm caught in that moment of total shock and awe that things have gone well. Here is the miracle, demanding to be fed or changed or gotten out of an over-warm pink outfit (because for some reason, girls need fluffy outfits and gender-neutral babies need plain cotton outfits and Little Monster is a plain cotton girl).

Right now it's snowing the most lovely giant flakes of snow. It looks like it's raining cotton balls. It's downright miraculous to get such lovely snow. Maybe tomorrow will be a snow day. My little miracle baby is napping upstairs. The novelty of saying and writing "my girls"hasn't worn off and I don't think it will any time soon. Every time it smacks me in the gut, that it's real and not some dream of life that might be someday. It is now.

This is the new world, where there are plural children living in this house, needing laundry washed, needing cuddling and attention, being cute. My girls. Whoa.