The Best Things In Life are Free

Ever since I joined the mom club, I’ve always been fascinated by people who claim their favorite age is newborn. To me, parenting a newborn is the most challenging age I’ve lived through. Why? Because newborns are the neediest form of human being you will ever encounter. And satisfying their needs is incredibly difficult, sometimes impossible. Take for example, breastfeeding. If you are a mom you know that newborns need to eat every two hours. And if you plan on breastfeeding then you can expect a feeding to take anywhere from 40 minutes to an hour. This leaves you approximately a one hour break before you need to feed again. And this cycle doesn’t just stop when its bedtime. Newborns don’t care if its 2 am or 4 am. They just need you to feed them. And change their poopy diaper before the ammonia from their urine burns their skin and makes them bleed (yes this happened to us!)(and I wasn’t being negligent either! the diaper rash was so lightly colored, I thought it was just her normal coloring until next thing you know it was bleeding!). Also, you don’t really get much back from newborns. They really aren’t capable of much other than crying, eating, spitting up, defecating, and cat napping.

As you can see, the challenges of newborn parenting are still vivid in my mind. It was a fairly traumatizing period to say the least. In the past, whenever I would see a pregnant woman who looked like she was about to pop with her first child I would chuckle and say to her “your world is about to be turned upside down!” If I saw a couple taking home their first child from the hospital on TV, I would say to myself “I don’t envy you guys! I’d hate to go through that stage again!” But my feelings towards newborns are starting to change.

It all started a couple days ago as I was going through Heidi’s old clothes looking for some hand me down’s for my best friend’s baby due in a couple weeks. As I peeked through all those outfits a wave of nostalgia washed over me.  Each little outfit flooded me with memories of the newborn Heidi wearing it. There are so many feelings from that time period that I had forgotten about and still can’t quite describe even now. The anticipation of the unknown in pregnancy, the love so strong it hurts when you finally get to hold them, the miracle of holding a being that you created with man you’ve loved since you were a child. The realization that your life is more beautiful than you ever thought it would be.

As I think about all of this, my heart swells once again with appreciation. I’m so grateful to have been allowed the privilege of being Heidi’s mother and Austin’s wife. God is too good to me, even if he does make caring for newborns one of the most difficult jobs on the planet.  And if he allows me to have another one, I will savor it for the gift that it is – and this time, I will bear the difficult parts with a smile on my face.

My song for Heidi: 

(yes i know this is a love song from a guy to a girl, but the words so describe how new parents feel)

Love this picture, because it was taken at 4 am. You know you love your baby when you just have to get your camera out and take a picture at 4 am.