4 am

It's morning although daylight has not broken the horizon and raised her head to wake up the world. I hear the snuffles and rootles of your rising, my ears completely in tune to your every movement no matter how silent, and they pull back the veil of sleep from my eyes. I awake from my dreams to this new one - you need me. I marvel at how beautiful that is, how loved and blessed I am by your dependance, and how it is also so exhausting in its completeness.

I pick you up and you cling on to me with a sigh and a whine that both acknowledges you will be cared for but also urges to be filled at the same time. We're still learning each other - learning trust and love. Your soft cries echo through the stillness of the house, the white noise whispers, and my voice breaks through the sounds to tell you "I'm here", "I got you", and "It's alright". It's just you and me awake in the blurry 4am hour, and I think "you and me against the world" and sing the little tune of that song in my head as I fix your bottle.

You glug your bottle steadily, the "gah" "gah" "gah" as you drink it in perfect rhythm is the perfect lullaby - soothing my soul that you are so healthy, so perfect, and that I am capable of caring for you. You snuggle into my chest when you are done, Eskimo kissing my shoulder until your body relaxes completely into my arms - satisfied. I hold you and rock you softly as you hold my heart, each beat of it fueled by the tiny breathes you take. Your tiny fingers grip the neck of my shirt as if to say "don't let go mommy - just hold me".

And so I do. I hold you longer than I have to, praying that you can feel the richness and wholeness of my love for you radiating from my arms that surround you. I hold you with the ache of knowing that there are only so many 4 o'clock mornings left - that one morning you'll sleep in until you're up and running around with your sisters - that one morning you'll wake and get yourself off to school and grumble a teenage half goodbye before heading out the door - that one morning you'll arise in your own bed in your own home and I'll have to call to hear your voice with the sunrise.

I hold you knowing how fast you will grow, how the years will fly, and how in a hurry you will be to grow up. These minutes have already turned into hours and the magic of 4am is gone - the sun has broken the darkness that kept us in this perfect solitude, and the alarm has rung and broken the stillness of the house - it's bustling and begging us to run through the day - taunting with it's to-do lists, should-dos, have-tos, and want-tos. And I wish I could just hold you in this sweet moment forever because you will never be this small again - one million neuron connections every second - you're made new everyday.

And when I glance down at your sweet face as I finally lay you down - your lashes that stretch to the sky resting against your cheeks - I catch a glimpse of who you will be buried just beneath the surface of your plump delicate skin. And a tear runs down my cheek from exhaustion, from the joy, from the overwhelming love, from the complicated grief that is found in your growing, and from every facet of motherhood not entirely understood but undoubtably found in the quiescence of 4am.