My New Mother Terror and A Seattle In-home Newborn Session
memories from those first weeks
The light is always on.
Rolling over, I push my cheek to your open mouth. I wait to feel your breath.
When that gentle exhale of milky air reaches my face
I savor a moment of relief.
The moment is a mere firefly of hope. It sparks and alights the night, it fades just as quickly.
Don’t fall asleep while you are holding the baby. Don’t fall asleep while feeding the baby. Don’t fall asleep while vigilantly and obsessively reliving each moment of the baby’s bath and that mouthful of bathwater.
Don’t ever fall asleep again and leave this being vulnerable and exposed. Keep the light on.
This fear is at once unsustainable and impossible to quit.
I will rest my palm on your chest to feel it rise thousands of times. I will
toss and turn thinking of our decaying earth and our careless ways.
I will envision billions of invisible organisms always breeding and creeping and threatening to destroy
the delicate shield I have been forging
Since the first prenatal vitamin I swallowed.
Rolling, coughing, cars, strangers, sharp edges, marbles, coins, a grape.
Death a possibility in the most mundane.
Death imagined in the most extreme.
And so, the light stays on.
These black and white newborn photos are from a recent session of mine. Jordie seemed incredibly confident, wrapping up the first week of raising three daughters! I loved this family and their home. Thanks, Jordan!
