Squeak.
The sound of newborn life.
I want to bottle it up. Plaster it into my memory. Etch it onto my heart.
The soft skin. The cheeks that fit into my hand. The puckered lips with the little blister from working so hard for mama’s milk.
The hiccups. High-pitched and constant after every single feeding. They shake your eight-pound body but seem to bother you not.
The hair on your head that curls with sweat as you lie against my body. Our hearts beating together as they have since you were 22 days in the womb.
Squeak.
We go to bed at night and I pray for a stretch of sleep. Maybe three hours? Four by the grace of God?
You wake me up as you softly moan for milk at the 3 am hour. I clutch your warm body next to mine in the darkness and give you life, even as you give me life.
The mornings are slow and full of spit-up and cuddles. I finally plod into the kitchen for a bagel at 10 am. Milk stains visible on my shirt, bags under my eyes, fading veins on my legs from the weight of carrying you. But I see them not.
Because I don’t have time to look in the mirror. I haven’t worn make-up in weeks. Instead, I stare into your eyes and the way you look back at me makes me feel more beautiful than mascara or lipstick ever could.
Squeak.
Someday you’ll probably be taller than me, but right now you fit into the crook of my arm. Your body drapes perfectly over my bosom. You love the gentle pat of my hand on your back.
You cross your hands, and sometimes your ankles, as you nurse. It looks comically infantile and geriatric at the same time. Like you could be a baby or an old man. The circle of life.
Your womb knees, as we lovingly call them, fold into the shape they held for so many months. A reminder of where you lived before we welcomed you into our home of bassinets and burp cloths and bottles.
But as I change your diaper, you kick and kick again. Those little legs unfurl with the promise of life ahead. The walking, running, leaping life of a little girl. The legs that will carry you into womanhood. The future will hold joys and trials, but for now, you care not. You drift off to sleep in my arms yet again.
Squeak.
I want to freeze every sound, every touch as if my brain could serve as an eternal scrapbook of these newborn days.
But I know I am forgetting already, even as I remember.
*Photos by Happily Hirst Photography
