One month

I had been meaning to write you a monthly letter, Anna, and it is telling that you are now exactly five weeks old and I am just now sitting down to do this. Not necessarily an auspicious beginning to what I hope will continue in the passing months, but oh well.
So yes! You are five weeks old at this exact moment. Enough time has passed that the details of your birth are less vivid (painful?), but it has not been so long that I do not remember the overwhelming sense of the impossible that overcame me when the pushing and groaning were over and I saw you for the first time.
How in the world did we create a human being? How in the world are you truly ours? These are questions your dad and I ponder in the quiet moments between diaper changes. In other words, even as we quickly become accustomed to the daily rituals of caring for a newborn, we still have moments when the incredulity of this miracle is overwhelming.
As I write, you are in your Pack n' Play about four feet away from me. Four feet that seems like a ridiculous distance when your cries wake me up at night. Even though it is after three in the morning, you are wide awake and I can see you peering my direction through the mesh of the crib. You have decided that daytime is for sleeping and night time is for playing, so I have spent the better part of the night convincing myself that you are sated enough with milk to go back to bed only to have to get up minutes later when you decide that you are either still hungry or maybe just bored.
Just now, your pacifier fell out of your mouth and you let out a cry. I finally picked you up and moved you to my place in bed beside your dad, where you are within an arm's reach and you can maybe be lulled to sleep by your dad's snores (ha ha). This use of a pacifier is evidence of how the reality of parenting is such that one must choose which ideals are worth the inconvenience, and which are worth sacrificing just to get through the day. (Hmm, that makes me think of the upcoming election...) I was sure I wouldn't use a pacifier to, well, pacify you, but I've discovered that it is sometimes a lot easier to provide a pacifier than to BE a pacifier. As my dear friend Hannah said, "You can't ruin your baby in one night." This has been a comfort on the several nights we've relied on a pacifier and on the bleary-eyed moments when I decide to put off a nappy change.
Some things I don't want to forget: the way we can hear your "voice" when you sneeze; the wrinkled forehead/puckered lip combination that appears for a few seconds after each feeding; your "piston" legs; the squeaks and grunts you let out in your sleep. I can't even count the number of strangers who have given the same unsolicited advice: "Savor this time because it will be gone in the blink of an eye." You will never be this tiny again! And as much as we look forward to a more, hmm, interactive version of you, part of me is already mourning the fact that you seem to be morphing and growing before our eyes. Maybe those are just the post-natal hormones that are still raging but it is hard not to be sentimental when we see other babies and realize that in a month or two, you will be completely different. This thought helps keep me sane and loving when your desperate cries (which seem so pathetic and quiet in the daytime) wake me up for the umpteenth time in the middle of the night. As hard as it is for me to believe, these days will soon be gone.
So tonight, at least, I'll willingly see this lack of sleep as a small price to pay for more opportunities to savor you, just as you are, my teeny tiny little girl.

We love you, Anna.
Your mom