Post Partum: One Marvelous and Mystifying month later...

so tomorrow it's been one month since Piper was born.
And I feel such a blur of emotions I don't know where to start.
I have cried more tears of joy and nostalgia, fear and longing, regret and self doubt, beauty and pain this month than perhaps ever in my life.

Today was the day of Piper's first bath.

you can see for a moment she is not crying, and I swear even made a face almost like a smile till her head got accidentally bonked on the edge of the tub and caused her to cry almost inconsolably till the end of the bath.

and I say almost inconsolable because there was a minute there where she almost stopped crying...I was leaning down and talking to her, reassuring her, telling her it wasn't so bad...and it's almost like she understood, not my words but my tone...and after, when it was all done and I held her to my chest and told her it was over,and she finally calmed down my heart swelled with LOVE.

people have told me the love you have for your child will scare you. but I was not prepared to be so overtaken with the thought that there is no one more important, more beautiful, nothing I wouldn't do for this precious little creature.
Afterwords I went back inside and put on the record Songs in the Key of Life by Stevie Wonder, which my parents tell me they bought on the way back from the hospital after my birth, and danced around the living room with a now content and relaxed Piper, crying my eyes out with love and joy and sentiment to the song "Isn't She Lovely", the song my parent's had bought the record for. and it was beautiful to hold her, dancing around the living room, marveling at my tiny marvelous creature and the succession and persistence of life itself.
and I wept tears of joy.

x
jess