These Magic Moments

If you’ve ever counted down the days and weeks and months until a birth, then you know that it’s all kinds of science and magic math. I didn’t figure it out until I was pregnant with Scarlet, but you learn the lingo. You figure out, if you can, the date of your last menstrual period (LMP, if you will) and you count 40 weeks from THAT, and not from when you actually got pregnant. And if you’re enterprising like I am, you sign up to get those weekly emails that tell you what you may or may not be feeling, how big your baby is in comparison to a fruit or vegetable or toy, or breadbox, and how much time you might have left. So, Tuesdays it was for Rider. That was the day of my LMP, and that was the due date day as well. Since he was born at 40 weeks exactly, due to my strategic induction timing, Tuesdays really were the most magical days, weren’t they?

Maybe it took forever, and maybe it flew by. To be honest, I just don’t remember. So many strange headspaces and bodily changes have taken place since then. The world has grown crazier, or more sane, maybe, and the baby just kept/keeps growing. Forget fruits anymore. Since I met him, he’s been everything I imagined he’d be when I could only feel him shuffling around in there, but he’s also this entirely new and fascinating person. So like his siblings, and so unlike them, but the way they are like each other, and unlike one another. There does seem to be a patented Bowman model of human, though, of sleeping well (eventually), not having strict preferences for who holds them, being able to eat everything, and like it, and for having shagadelic hair. It’s like a science project we’ve conducted three times now. Mixing A with B..

I thought my heart would break for this day, to be a year past the miracle of new life, but in fact, the miracle only grows. The miracles grow. And it feels like it’s been years since I first held him, too afraid to even look at his face, just happy we were both ok. And I trusted that he’d be cute, because, well, that’s part of the patented Bowman model science project. The beginning was extremely difficult, and there’s a gift in having a one-year-old so full of life, drool, and sharp-nailed hugs. I have loved him for so, so long, and I look forward to every morning, and getting to see his gorgeous face. So I thought I’d compile 12 photos, with my favorite photo of every month. Of these wonderful and difficult and insanely inspiring 12 months. Growing him on the outside is slower than growing him on the inside, and gives you long pauses to stop, and just be there.