When you know your days are numbered

I am acutely aware that we have passed over the halfway mark of Ramona nursing as her primary nutrition source. I know that in a few short months I will have reduced her night feedings to one and then none. I will get more sleep but I will miss this secret, quiet, snuggle time. She nuzzles up and finds my breast without even opening her eyes. She sighs contentedly as she falls asleep full, comforted, happy. I feel an ultimate exchange of love and the remnants of our former closeness. It reminds me that she is of my body and the journey we shared to get her here and the weeks that followed where there was barely a separation between us.

She is growing so quickly, like a runaway train down a mountain. Time has never moved so quickly. I have never wanted to pause and just savor all of the sweetness and the struggle so badly. I love her so much it hurts. It is painful to know that if I do a good job, every day she takes a step away from me. If I support her and nurture and love her well she becomes stronger, more confidant and more independent with every passing day. Worst of all, she may never understand the true depth of my love for her. There is a secret love. It is secret only because it is not visible to the untrained eye. The training requires 9 months of stretching skin and aching bones followed by hours of labor and months of jagged sleep soaked in a potent cocktail of exhaustion, love, self doubt and utter amazement. There is no pedestrian path to this love. You must go all in to achieve it. It is difficult and wonderful all at once, and once you get there you realize that in exchange for the bliss you must break a tiny bit of your own heart every day to keep someone else thriving. I know my days are numbered so as she snores milky, drunk snores I will touch her face and smell her head and try my hardest to burn this feeling into my brain knowing how precious and fleeting it is. A perfect rainbow or the last perfect day of fall.