Somehow, my baby is one.
I’d be lying if I said this year flew by. The first six months seemed to go so sloooooowly. I was scared, and clueless, and hormonal, and exhausted. But somehow, Leo helped me find my groove and figure out how to be a mom. The last six months feel like they went by in a blink of an eye, and I can’t believe I’m here, starring at this little boy who is almost walking, talking up a storm, and looks at me and says, “Mama.” How lucky am I to call him mine?
The other day while Leo was trying to take some wobbly steps, he tripped and I managed to catch Leo’s chest in my left palm before he hit the ground. For one split second, I felt his heartbeat and it took my breath away. I was immediately thrown back to the time Alex and I had seen his little heartbeat for the first time in the doctor’s office the year before. We went in–scared, excited, and hopeful–and when the technician said the three little words that we had been praying for, “There’s a heartbeat,” we both teared up.
Fast forward a few weeks later and we found ourselves in a Manhattan emergency room, not knowing if that same little heart was still beating. Terrified, we held our breath waiting to see the little flicker on the screen…and at least one of us sobbed when we saw it there. Since then, neither of us have taken for granted how blessed we are that that little heart has kept on beating.
It seems so crazy that the little flicker on the ultrasound machine and the woosh-woosh-woosh sound we heard on the doppler more than a year ago belong to the same little heart that beats now inside this wobbly little boy. And it will someday be the heart that gets broken, and stolen–and it might even be the same heart a little child will hear or feel as they lay their head on their daddy’s chest 30 years from now.
