Sassi Beti,
today marks six months to the day you met the rest of the world. We were already acquainted for a while. The kicks, the jabs, the stretching, the probing prodding little alien I housed inside my body for nine months. Six months ago we gave a face to that miracle. You and I. This will forever be our day. Yours, mine and Baba’s. Our lives changed. Changed into the magical new reality of parenthood for us, a new world for you. Too bright, too loud, too happening sometimes. It’s alright. Several decades and counting, we still find it overwhelming and often so.
My body may never be the same again. Though I love my belly pooch for you to rest on or tuck your legs under, I love my truck-boobs for they nourish you, I love my thunder thighs to rock you on, I love my eighteen-wheeler biceps that carry you around when you just want to sleep in my arms and not the bed.
These past six months have been wondrous and wonder-filled, every passing day. Every smile, every coo, each time you run that hand-pump of yours or voice your delight in your exorcist voice has been ecstatic at the very least. I am still in awe of the miracle of creation, can never forget the day I saw the blipping tadpole on the screen and didn’t feel a thing or when I saw you for the first time in the operation theatre and said “This is it? Where’s the rest of my kid? This is too tiny”. Dr. Z had to get you weighed again and reassure “Hareem she’s 3kg, she’s fine!” Or when in the middle of the night a week later, you rested your face in your tiny hands atop my chest and slept facing me and I melted into the first pangs of motherhood.
May you continue to give the muppets of Sesame Street a run for their money with that toothless mouth-wide-open smile of yours and grow into the intuitive, understanding, old soul, emotive little person you are revealing yourself to be. May you help make this world a better place.
