The First Year of Motherhood - I Will Hold the Ladder.

It’s 2:00 AM, my alarm clock whimpers and stretches her fingers to the outside of her swaddle, grasping for my smell and calling for milk. I whimper too as my tired body lifts itself from the 45 minutes spans of anxious sleep once again to pull her fidgety body into mine. She must already know the early bird gets the worm, as she pecks and pecks with her sticky lips at my chest trying to find her meal in the in-between of morning and night. Even in the dark I try to see her facial expressions, and her tiny fingers on my neck caress and comfort me through my own tears.

It's 4:00 am and the monitor glows next to my bedside, as my body lays awake ready to feed the baby who no longer needs milk at this time. It’s been 7 months since those first few weeks, and my body is in the habit of being awake at this hour. My mind can’t seem to sleep, demanding that we can’t get rest until the baby is fed. But she is full from dinner, asleep like I should be. Sometimes when I’m up at this time, I catch myself scrolling through pictures of her when she was smaller. When she wakes in the morning, I am still tired from my body’s before-dawn trip back in time, but the smell of her soft hair when I lift her into my arms from her playpen gives me a renewed purpose. I look forward to the new things she will do this day; at this point it seems every hour comes with a new trick. When I lift her, her legs poke out a little more than I remember yesterday, and I begin to wonder when she became bigger than my cradling arms, saddened at my forgetfulness of her body that seemed so easy to hold before.

It's 5:00 in the evening and there is a song on repeat, called “dadadadada.” Those are the only lyrics and they are sung to the stomping of determined feet and toys crashing against one another in messy and beautiful harmony by the ten month old artist. I’m her biggest fan and I beg for an encore of this song, wondering how I got so lucky getting a ticket this close to the stage. Wondering how I got so lucky to hear her song of learning, of growing, of pure infant bliss. A song I never get tired of. A song I know I will be unable to remember when she is capable of singing real songs with real words. I try to soak in the way her lips move, the light in her eyes as she searches mine for reassurance and shared enthusiasm in her performance.

All moments this first year were so precious, but I can’t seem to remember most of them and as years go on, I know they will only become more foggy. Even now I can’t remember the look in her new-to-life gray eyes as I tried so hard to memorize. My memory had no power against the exhaustion in my body that sometimes (maybe most times in those early days) trickled over in tears during those nighttime feedings. Sore and weary, yet clutching with all the strength I had at the sight, smell, and sound of her tininess. I can’t remember the time before she was walking except for when I watch old videos, searching them for a familiar feeling of my small baby. I knew that she would grow soon, I knew that the days were passing by quickly despite their incredible disguise of moving slow, so I tried more than anything to remember it all. But it’s only in this moment that I’ve realized maybe these things aren’t for me to remember. Maybe every facial expression and new movement and each baby nonsense noise is simply a rung on a ladder that I’m just here to hold. That the most important job isn’t remembering each day, but being there each day. Assisting the next step, cheering her on as she goes. As much as I want her life to be gift to me, and as much as it is, I am primarily here for her. From those hourly feedings through the night, to singing cooing noises back to her, to helping her with those first rocky steps; Remembering the yesterdays that I can but mainly being present for her today, so that tomorrow she will be stronger and capable of going further on her own. As time goes on my job will shift and change and I will feel I know her less as she becomes her own, and that is okay. I will guide her to know she can do hard things and is capable of growing so when I’m not there she will have the strength and wisdom to continue to climb. For all my days I am cheering her on from the bottom, running my fingers over the splintery wooden rungs of the places she started. The places I was blessed enough to be there for.