Don't Blink
It’s the moments like this one, early in the morning before you’ve woken up. When your eyes are still shut but fluttering, your lips quiver and twitch as you smile through your dreams, and your matted, sweaty hair clings to your neck.
These are the moments that I wish I could dwell in forever.
The sun isn’t up yet, but there is so much to do. With coffee in hand and an early morning scowl, I’m going to pack your lunch, sign your take-home folder and start breakfast. In less than two hours you’ll be awake and blissfully unaware of how much time I’ve already spent today preparing our morning.
It’ll pass by far too quickly, like every weekday does. Soon you’ll be stumbling out of bed and down the hall, rubbing the sand from your eyes. We’ll share breakfast and some laughs before you pull on your snow pants and get on the bus, off to another day at school where you’ll learn and grow… without me. We’ll part ways until you come home, where you’ll find me waiting and counting down the minutes until you’ve returned.
I wish I could do it all again.
I so badly want to go back in time to the moment they placed you in my arms and we met. If I had a time machine, I’d be there in a heartbeat so that I could relive it again. I’d travel back 7 years and repeat every memory and forgotten moment. Every tear, sleepless night, diaper change, cluster feed, and bubble bath- I would immerse myself in it all over again. Just to get as much time with you as I possibly could!
But I don’t have a time machine. Nothing close to it. As the sun begins to rise and the world awakens, my daydreams can’t delay the reality that, here and now, you are growing so quickly and are on your own schedule. I can’t spend all day in bed singing silly lullabies I wrote just for you or decide to delay my responsibilities so we can explore the snow. You have places to be, things to learn, and friends to make.
There’s a whole world out there that is ready for you to wake up and change it. I am merely the guide that’s damn lucky to be along for the ride.
I don’t know where the time has gone or how to get it back so we can have that time together again. The best I can do is savor every second I have as it presents itself and hope, pray, that if you had a time machine you would want to do it all again with me.
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