So you’ve been heavily sedated for over two weeks now, inoculated by the deepest love and the strongest bond known to man.

And now you’re waking up.

Slowly but surely, you’re coming out of that euphoria-induced trance of peach fuzz and heaven-scented baby scalp and the innocent little squeaks of a newborn. Little by little, you’re coming out of that intoxication of soft buttery skin and odorless poop and sleepy eyes trying to focus on yours, and little by little you begin to feel again. And you feel tired. Exhausted, actually.

Welcome to Motherhood! They say.

And so you wipe the sleep from your eyes as you come, slowly but surely, out of that elation, that bliss which makes you unconscious to the night sweats and the sore nipples, and you realize all of a sudden what you have done.

You have made a tiny pawn of yourself and now you gotta keep that tiny pawn alive.

And so, you wake up.

You wake up from the fog of people coming to help and to hold your floppy little bundle. From friends giving gifts and bringing flowers and sending their congratulations, to dishes in the sink and bits of grilled cheese scattered everywhere.

Slowly but surely you crawl out of that hormone-induced coma to a life-wrecking, less-than-glamorous reality in which a little human has thoroughly and completely rearranged everything.

Your schedule. Your time. The way you do things. How often you leave the house. What you wear when you DO leave. EVERYTHING. Even your body, the very sacred temple that so lovingly created this magnificent being, gets an overhaul.

Innocent little squeaks turn into full-blown crying fits and the odorless poop is beginning to smell like, well…poop. Those sleepy eyes and that floppy body are becoming yours and the euphoria is turning into dilerious exhaustion.

And yet you wake up.

You wake up and you look down at your odd-shaped body and wonder how in the world you’re ever gonna fit into those skinny jeans you bought last year, *just* before you got pregnant. You wonder why you ever allowed this to happen and how single mothers do it, and if your life is ever going to be normal again.

It won’t be. But welcome to motherhood!

You smile at the cute little demanding person you’ve brought into the world and question how you can possibly be everything that he needs.

Don’t worry!

For about the time you wake up to all the chaos and fragility, he smiles, so innocent and peaceful and you have hope again. Hope for the world and your size 6 figure, and then he looks up at you.

He opens his sleepy eyes and for a moment you close yours. You close your eyes to the world and the crud and the bag of returns that never got taken back. It’s now past the thirty-day expiration. You squeeze them tight shut to a pile of baby clothes that never got sorted and the moldy bread in the pantry from three weeks ago.

You close your eyes to the torrent of mud and rain that washed in with your toddler’s shoes and you choose to unsee the unbeautiful for just another glorious whiff of that fuzzy forehead.

He looks up at you while he squeezes the contents of his stomach and tender intestines into that brand new, freshly changed diaper and you smile and swear you’ll never do this again.

“Oh but it was worth it!” You sigh.

You sigh and you smile and you pray through the tears that God will give you grace and that you won’t accidently kill this tiny helpless human. Your body aches as you pray for sleep and that somehow the milk in the fridge will refill itself by tomorrow morning.

Yep. Welcome to motherhood, my darling!

Welcome to this grand and beautiful and one glorious life you get to wake up to, dear achy one.

I pray you have all the strength you need for these blurry ‘first days’, that time goes by not-too-fast or too slowly and that those hormones drop you gently so you can stay in euphoria a little while longer.

Amen.