This morning, you slept on my chest after nursing in bed with me. You looked exactly as you looked as a newborn. How many more of these early-morning nursing sessions do we have left? I start work next week, and I won't have the same the leisure to snuggle you in bed as we both wake up. We'll have to carve out other spaces for us to have this time. I will miss it.
Darkness keeps me from taking a photo of you sleeping at night, so I'm having to store it up in my memory. Each night, I steal into your room before I go to bed, and I stand next to your crib and watch you sleep. You sleep on your side, bundled into your baby sleeping bag, a tiny bit of soft pink security blanket clutched in your arms. Your head is such a small peanut in a great big crib.
There are times my heart constricts, like when you wake before your 4 am feeding, and I lie in bed listening to you cry in your crib, trying to put yourself back to sleep. I am never sure if I'm doing the right thing. Tonight I fed you at 4:15, but you were not ready for the feeding to end, and woke up shortly after I put you back in your crib. I should have let you work it out, but you cried and cried, and I just couldn't take it anymore. I picked you up and held you as you whimpered; I hope you could understand that I love you more than life. You calmed when I let you nurse, and went back to sleep easily after that.
You will only be this tiny once, and already I feel this time slipping away from me. I never want to forget the way your arms monkey around my neck when I hold you. Or how last week you discovered you could blow raspberries into my shoulder. Or how, when I sing to you before your naps, you watch me with huge, still eyes. The way you light up when your daddy walks into the room. The soft sweetness of your baby feet. Your silk-fine hair.
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