things that surprised me as a first-time mom.

:
how constant it is
how little control i had
how small and intricate she was
how her crying tore me in half

everytime i feel babyjune kick, i think about how she is big and strong and healthy enough now to live on the outside-of-me, and might even be doing that in the next 24hours or couple days or week or maybe 2 weeks.

to say things are different when the baby is born is not worth saying but something does change other than the many obvious things--the baby changes from the hope-of-a-baby, the imagining-of-a-baby, the sweet babyname and babynursery and clothes folded and laundered and waiting, to a real live in-your-arms baby.

an in-your-arms baby is different.

i've been getting ready, reading books, talking with people, watching videos, but i have a feeling that having this baby will be exactly like when i had zu, in some ways--its not the head-knowledge that's going to do it, its the body-knowledge, the mothering-reflex that i was born with, all that is what is really going to do it in the end.

preparing is good.
but you've either been someone who has stayed up in a hospital all night, tremblingtired and in wonder and so afraid, holding the tiny slip-of-life that was carried in your own body for nine months,
or you just haven't (yet).

i have. and i know that no matter how the very specific things go--the way she comes to us, the way i feed her, the photographs and visitors--i can do that one most important thing, be her mother.