Connections

As some of you will know from my facebook status today, Robert has now begun PROPER smiles! He looked at me today, and gave me THREE big beaming smiles! I've come down from the high of it though, as he is now sobbing away downstairs. He's not feeding very well tonight and I'm getting a bit frustrated with the poor latching, the sicking up, and the screeching for more, followed by more poor latching, sicking up and screeching. So the steriliser is on the go, and a bottle of expressed milk warming for J to give him that.

I just needed a bit of a break from him so I'm soooo glad that Jonathan's here and able to take him off my hands for half an hour or so.

Well, thinking back to earlier (which went okay really), seeing him smile at me like that like he was so happy to be with me just made my heart melt. It made me wonder how I could ever be mad at him! I'm sure when he's older he'll learn to exploit that, flash me a smile and get out of trouble!

But it also made me think back to when he was born. After such a long ordeal, and then finding he wasn't breathing and might not make it, I became numb to him I think. I remember looking at him and seeing a baby. Not my baby, just "a" baby. He was laying there on the floor getting air pumped into his body and it was like he was just a doll or something. It was like I felt no emotion at all. I remember sitting next to him in the ambulance, looking over at him, thinking "this is my baby, so why don't I feel anything?" I don't know when exactly he began to feel like my baby. Probably not until I got to hold him properly for the first time after he was born, which was when he was a day old. It was such a weird feeling, giving birth to this baby I'd bonded with for 9 months, feeling so connected to him for all that time, and then as soon as he was born, it was like him being apart from me for the first time severed that connection briefly.

Now though... now I can hardly keep from crying tears of joy when I look down at his sleepy face. Kissing his soft cheeks as he sleeps and holding him as close to me as I can, I definitely feel the same connection we had as when I was carrying him. And today... when he smiled at me, I realised that this little boy, the boy I helped make, the boy I grew inside me... this little boy has stolen my heart. And I don't think I'll ever get it back!