[six weeks, and still too small for his newborn clothes]

As most of you know, Max was born fairly early and without much warning. I’m not sure if it was the speed or the drugs, but the only word to describe it was surreal. I felt so mentally unprepared for having a baby on that particular day, almost a whole month before I’d planned, that I felt a little removed from the situation - it was five hours of okay, well, I guess this is what we’re doing today! Happy Monday, honey! I called about the visiting teaching appointments I would miss and about the apple pie and mashed potatoes I would no longer be contributing to Thanksgiving dinner. When your body doesn’t bother to tell you that you’re in labor, it’s hard to believe that it’s true. Trevor went and bought sheets for Max and socks for me, but that was just fake, right? And then he was born, and it still felt unreal. You do what you have to do to get through something so sudden, and you don’t have time to stop and think about it until later.

That “later” came for me when I was being wheeled to my room, and they stopped the stretcher next to the nursery so I could see him. A nurse was holding him near the window while she cleaned him, but I was really tired at that point and not quite sure why we were stopping; Trevor had to point him out to me. But as soon as my eyes found him, well, we connected and I loved him. I was amazed that he was ours. There he was, naked and crying and almost clean. It felt like he was crying out for me, but he was also determined to save himself! And then, for just a couple of seconds, I saw him - the real him, his whole self who had been waiting to come to us for so long. All of who he is suddenly seemed apparent to me in that one moment. There are no specific words to define it, but that was when I cried. I instinctively reached out my hand to touch him, forgetting that he was behind glass. And then they wheeled me away, and I missed him. But I knew him.

He has stayed very true to that person that I saw. I hope I can always help him to be his best him, because I loved who I saw. He is so important. I’m so proud of all the things he has learned in one year! It was only 366 days, one after the other, from then until now. I was with him on all of those days, but every day there was something new. Those tiny new things add up, and somehow we’ve ended up here - with a not-so-tiny family member we can truly call our friend. We really really like him!

I feel like my experience that day at the hospital was a small-scale version of what his whole life has been: mostly a surreal blur, where I do what needs to be done and then fall exhausted into bed… But then there’s those times where it is all clear, and I remember that I’m here. He’s here. I’m his mother. Trevor is his father and we’re a family. It seems distant, but we lived those days of no sleep, we lived those days of having to carry him everywhere and we lived watching him learn to eat, laugh and walk. He’s not a baby anymore. I’m so thankful that we gave him a body, and I’m so thankful that he loves to be in it. He loves his little life. It’s full of big responsibilities for such a little guy - like vroom vrooming with his cars, babbling mamama all day long, running to find me when we play hide and seek, wrestling with his Daddy, trying to hold still while I change his diaper, and trying to eat rocks.

Such is the life of my Max. I hope it will continue to expand in joys for him.

[eleven months and handsome as can be]