Tuesday, December 4, 2012

Falling in love

For some reason, what with her growing inside of me for so many months, I was kind of expecting the bonding process to be different with Cosi than it was with P or A.

Nope!

Not that I'm worried this time around :)

With Paxton, there was love.  Lots of love.  Lots of hope and anticipation.

But we didn't bond right off, or rather, *I* didn't bond with *him* right off.  His bonding to me is another story, though we were exceedingly lucky in that he certainly did bond with us despite the many challenges there.

I expected a lot of immediate love and this sudden surge of emotion and, well, no.  That didn't happen.  I'm not a huge emotion kind of girl.  I'm the sort of person who eases into things: routines, relationships, love.  It takes me awhile to wrap my head around a whole new exceedingly important person, a now permanent fixture within my life.  That's not to say that I'm indifferent at first, oh no.  I would have died to protect him, I rushed to him countless times when he made noise in the night before I even woke up, and I had the greatest joy playing with him, taking pictures, dressing him, caring for him, etc.

But it was nothing like the Mother's Love.  That love?  It blew me away.  The first few months I would care for him and love him and enjoy him, and then suddenly there was this month-long period of bonding that was so incredible and wonderful and heartbreaking and painful and joyous and explosive and, well...

It was like every day I'd look at him and be even more in love.  Every night I'd feel sad as I said goodnight and left him in his room, since I wanted to be near him, holding him, feeling him, smelling him, just basking in his glorious presence.  It literally felt like my heart was exploding with love, to the point where it physically hurt sometimes to love him so much.  It reminded me of the grinch at the end of Suess's famous tale, with his heart growing and growing and growing.  It was like my heart could not possibly contain all my love for him, and so it physically had to increase in size.  Whereas before this period I had a whole world outside of him, suddenly my existence and his became inseparable in my mind.  He became a part of me then.

The same thing happened with Ambrose.  Oh, I loved him, my word did I love him!  I cared for him and smiled at him and would give anything to keep him safe and make him happy.

But a few months in once that bonding period hit... it was the same thing all over again.  Weepy when he wasn't with me, joyous to the point of pain when he was.  Every day thinking I couldn't possibly love anyone more, and the next day finding that I loved him even more still.  And then, his existence was a part of me again.  While we had been happily living as a family of four suddenly we were A Family of Four.  It was on a whole new plane.

So here I sit with my sweet, squishy, third child in my arms.  I love her.  My word, do I love her.  But thing is, I'm still adjusting.  I'm still having to remember to say "kids" instead of "boys," still learning to use the word "daughter" and "girl" and "she" and "her."  I'm still learning to make her name part of my daily vocabulary, still having to remember that I have three kids and not two.  Oh, I'm not forgetting her anywhere or delaying in meeting her needs, it's just that while her presence is exceedingly important it is not deeply, deeply ingrained in my psyche such as to be a part of my existence.

I guess in a way I'm just sitting around waiting.  Waiting for that painful and wonderful bonding period to happen again, knowing that odds are it will be the same this third time around.  And while I wait, I enjoy her and love her.  I kiss her pudgy cheeks and stroke her soft warm head.  I gaze into her beautiful blue eyes and feel my heart break when I hear her cry from the back seat, just wanting her mommy to pick her up.  She's knows me and I know her and we're falling in love with each other, becoming an even more vital part of each other's existence, just as it happened with my older two children. 

And it's beautiful.