My good friend Alison had her baby on Friday night. I was quite involved with this pregnancy. I watched her from the beginning weeks when she could hardly keep her head up, to her deliriously happy last few months when she organized, cleaned and prepared for the birth of her son.
Alison has two daughters. The oldest, Camryn, is best friends with my daughter, Leah. I can't count the number of hours they've logged together playing elaborate imagination games, and making horrific messes that they absulutely have no energy to clean.
So when Camryn's baby brother was born, it was almost like it was Leah's brother being born. We went to the hospital on Saturday and Sunday to visit baby Chance. Leah held him with reverence and awe, doing the absolute best job possible so we'd let her hold him again.
Her face was serious but calm as she held the day-old baby. She was thrilled that he sucked the pacifier she got in his mouth and that he calmed right down after. She marveled at his peach-fuzzed head, and that classic newborn smell that makes people go weak at the knees. She was in baby nirvana.
Although it brought back beautiful memories of my own childbirth experiences, I was so glad that I am through with that exhilerating, exhausting phase of my life. That I could breathe in baby Chance's intoxicating newborn smell, and then let him go back to his mom. That Leah can enjoy being around a newborn without me having to actually birth one. Thanks, Alison for giving my daughter an experience I can't.
Alison, you are an amazing, conscientious, beautiful mother. You are a devoted and loyal friend. You looked so royal and regal in in your forest green bathrobe, enthroned in your hospital bed, basking in the miracle of birth. You were absolutely made to have babies.
Congratulations on the birth of a perfect son.
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