My baby and an anniversary.

I have been a mom for two months and seven days. Or, if you want to include my pregnancy, that's an additional eight and a half months. Or, if you want to include my dreams, that's my whole entire life.

I am 25 years old.

I am pretty sure I have given birth to the most beautiful baby there has ever been on Earth. Every other mother will disagree with me, because their baby or babies are the most beautiful babies on Earth. None of us are wrong.

I wanted to write a blog about my pregnancy and then motherhood but I know some people, particularly ones who don’t have kids, think pregnancy and motherhood talk are boring. Sometimes that can be right but I have found that once you become pregnant and give birth, your baby is all you think about so of course your baby is all you talk about. Even when you’re not trying- there’s the infamous Pregnancy Brain and I’ve come to realize that it doesn’t really go away. Well, it hasn’t for me yet. There’re also all of the people who only want to ask you questions about your pregnancy, your plans for parenthood, your life as a parent, so naturally you end up still only talking about those things. That’s ok. I just would like to talk about more, mostly as a personal exercise to be sure that I am still capable of that.

I’ll get to it later.

Liam is an amazing baby. When I think about how he was curled up all cozy in my body for so long and then one day, suddenly, he was in my arms. Well it wasn’t actually very suddenly. I was in labor for seventeen hours, I pushed for an hour, and a vacuum extraction happened in the end because his cord was wrapped twice around his neck so he really needed to come out. I couldn’t push anymore, anyway. But that whole process- the sperm and the egg, the joining, the growing, the birth, more growing, watching him change- it’s amazing. He’s amazing.

He’s just started smiling at us and giggling. He smiles more than he giggles; it’ll come. He is warm and cuddly and he makes funny faces. This kid has no idea the affect he has on us, especially when one of us is holding him and he keeps an arm around our neck in a tiny hug, or when he runs his fingertips over our skin when he is sleepy. He is soft. I get peed on and spit up on and sometimes even poop-juiced on, and I don’t care. I think it’s funny, actually. He is brave and strong. I think you have to be, to be a baby. You have to face each day in this big, weird world when really you probably just want to curl back up in your mom’s uterus where no one can bother you. All of that close talking has got to get old. He is curious and observant and obviously a genius. It sounds cliché, but loving your baby is a love above any other love, more than I ever imagined before. And believe me, I’ve done a lot of imagining.

Gabe is my husband and Liam’s dad. Today is actually our anniversary. Our wedding was on a beautiful, sunny, seventy-five degree day in central Maine last year. We’ve spent our first anniversary sleeping in, taking Liam for his two-month check up, grocery shopping, and getting some internet time in while Liam sleeps. It’s too hot out (we live in Texas, not Maine, unfortunately, but hopefully not for much longer) and we don’t have the extra money to do much else. We’ve been together for four and a half years. We met online. (Don’t hate; we were far too young and hopeful for a dating service so it wasn't like that.) I got pregnant just over a month after our wedding. We didn’t plan it but we didn’t not plan it. We both teared up when the two pink lines showed up on that little plastic tester. We sit here a year later with a beautiful son snoozing peacefully in his bouncy seat (his favorite napping place aside from our arms) and some nice quiet time. I hope Gabe and I get to make out at some point. You know, to celebrate.

So yeah, I talk about my son a lot and I talk about my husband. It's what happens. Maybe sometimes I'll talk about something else.