Sunday, June 29, 2008

Time flies when you're being held hostage

Punk turned six months old this last week.
Hardly seems possible that only six months ago, she was a blobbish lump in my belly, causing me to beg for mercy and meds from perfect strangers on the street.
Now she's here, and it's as though we've never not had this little child.
We've always been held hostage by her infantile demands for food, clean swaddling, and attention. We've been without sleep long enough that the days and nights are a muddle of spit up, feedings, and longing gazes at my husband still sleeping in the bed.
I step away from the pillows. Barely. Otherwise I might smother him.
It seems as though I've always known her smile, or how her chubby baby thighs dimple just so, or how she smells and sounds.
She is the child I was meant to have.
I just didn't know it.
I've discovered that when we're pregnant, we have all of these dreams and illusions about what our baby will look like, be like, and be.
And when they arrive, all of that fades away, because we've always known that they would just be them, and isn't that perfect? (Delirium helps with these thoughts. So do the post delivery pain meds. Trust me.)
Punk is just what she was supposed to be, all 25 inches of infant terrorist that she is. And she has me wrapped around her fat little baby finger.
She knows it.
I'm so screwed.

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