In the first moments, your new little one seems more like an alien than a bundle of joy, but after a bath for baby and a few deep breaths for the new parents, your little angel looks their part. Their little red face is all scrunched up, and the sounds that voice from their puckered little mouth are the most precious notes you could ever hope for. You ache any time the nurses take them for tests, and you deny offers from well meaning friends and family who offer to hold them while you get some sleep. All you want to do is be with your new baby, and you'll forego food, water and sleep to do just that! The Rarest Moments of All
To all those soon-to-be moms who are expecting their first child, savor these weeks, days, hours and minutes before your newborn baby arrives. You see, these times will be very rare after your precious baby enters your life.
It is a wonderful and joyous event when a baby enters your life, and it is a time that will be the most cherished of all occasions in your life. And it also is an eye-opening, life-altering event. Life as you know it now will never be the same.
Although you will never regret having a child, you will remember those times when you had only you to look after and when you had, what seemed like, an endless amount of time.
Often times I look back at those days. Oh, those times when I could sleep in if I wanted to and/or sleep through the entire night, have a nap in the afternoon on a lazy weekend, go out when I chose to, completed work duties in 1/4 if not less of the time I do now, and the list goes on.
Since my first baby was born over three years ago, I haven’t had a full night’s sleep and don’t even remember what it was like. You see, when my daughter was nine months old, I received news that I was pregnant with my second. Now, with two children, sleep depravity is something I have grown very accustomed to.
A trip to the store, which used to take 10 minutes, is now a drawn out event when you have two toddlers in tow. And I can’t remember the last time I went out for an evening. Naps? What are they? Haven’t had one of those in well over three years. Time for myself? What is that? In order to have time to myself, I often rise in the wee hours of the morning before my children wake. For a couple of hours, the time is mine and the silence is golden.
Yes, I sometimes long for the times of the past. However, those times in the past are not as precious to me as the role I have now of being a Mother and it was never as joyful as the times I have had and do have with my wonderful children.
Lucky and fortunate is how I think of myself for having the joyful and blessed experience of raising two children. They have filled my life with so much happiness and the love I feel for them is a love I have never felt.
You will have moments when you want to scream and run away from it all. You will miss those times in the past where you didn’t have anyone depending on you. And you will sometimes feel frustrated and want to cry. These moments will pass quickly because just as you are thinking of what you had in the past, you receive a beautiful smile, a hug or hear those first “I love you’s” from your children.
I guarantee you that no moment in time will ever be as precious as that moment in the here and now with your new baby or your children.
