My Love is Deeper than the Darkness of My Soul
I am overcome. More so today than usual.
She is beautiful and I am obsessed with her.
I can admit this now, but seven-ish months ago, when I was convinced we were pregnant with Boy #2, I sincerely wondered how I would possibly be able to love Boy #2 equally, when Boy #1 was already perfection? And when we discovered my ineptness at gender-prediction, I was relieved because They say loving sons and daughters is different. Ah, I thought. I could handle different. No one, not even my children, would be able to question the depths of my love, because it would be different, even as that lingering fear echoed, but it might not be equal.
I’m sure the pregnancy hormones didn’t help the introspect, but for nine months the thought haunted me: what if I truly didn’t love my second-born quite as much? After all, the love I have for Bug has been cultivated for six years. It has been ever-building and evolving, steeped in years of memory and challenges and growth. It was the first time a piece of me broke off, and the only way I could feel whole again was to stay as close to it as possible. What if the second time around just wasn’t as cataclysmic?
Needless to say, all that worrying was for naught. (But isn’t that always the case?)
There is such profoundness in the simple act of holding her against my chest, and feeling her press her tiny cheek deeper into my skin, her little arms reflexively curling around as much of me as she can manage, a drowsy hug from my newborn.
It balances me, the absolute dependence Bean has on me, and the growing independence Bug is insisting on from me, though both are equally heartbreaking. Why God chose me to help usher these two beautiful children toward the man and woman He designed them to be is righteously absurd, but hell if I won’t try, and love every second of it.
Meet the Buttrams 
Loved this post. My favorite line, “her little arms reflexively curling around as much of me as she can manage.”