Our daughter was born in the first days of a New England spring, which is to say it was 30 degrees outside, snowing, and not a crocus or daffodil was in sight. The doctor said she would be a winter baby but she held on for two additional weeks, probably hoping we’d carry her home from the hospital in just a onesie, the warm sun reaching deep into her soul. But, just like adults experiencing the first winter in a new place, Elizabeth didn’t know that Mother Nature had no regard for the calendar. Instead, on March 27, a week after the calendar said it was spring, snow flurries were gently falling from the sky as we joyfully held our baby girl for the first time.
That winter was a particularly long, cold, and snowy one. Waiting for the baby was like waiting for a spring that would seemingly never arrive. The dark days of winter stretched endlessly as I listened to everyone tell me that my life would soon make a complete and total transformation. I would go from a professional, successful 25-year-old manager at a non-profit to a young (too young, some said), stay-at-home mother, with no experience taking care of someone who would depend on me for her every need. Was I really going to stay home? Did we have enough money? Enough space in our apartment? I had no answers.
As the plows worked to clear the streets, we worked to prepare ourselves as best we could. We took classes: childbirth, breastfeeding, infant/child CPR. We visited friends who had just had babies. We asked questions. We savored nights out alone, as everyone had told us they would soon become rare. But it seemed that no matter how busy I tried to be, the waiting and the anticipation was overwhelming. Would mid-March never arrive?
The due date came and went and the doctor’s appointments became weekly and then daily. We threw up our hands in defeat; an induction was scheduled. Elizabeth stubbornly arrived, probably wishing she could wait until April, if not May. Driving home from the hospital, snow was still piled along the street. The elation I felt in the hospital was starting to be replaced by fear. I was overwhelmed, tired, and afraid of doing this all on my own. It was supposed to be spring. Why did it feel like winter again?
Night and day were mashed into one sleepless blur until the calendar showed it was time for her first check- up. This time, the temperature in the car said 42 and there was a trickle of water flowing from beneath the snow piles. A few more weeks passed and after an Easter dinner at my aunt’s house, the sky was still bright at 6 p.m. as we drove home with a window cracked. Now that the baby could sleep in 5 hour stretches, I had the energy to take daily walks. On Mother’s Day, we walked through town without our jackets and stopped for an ice cream cone. The warm air on my bare arms felt like freedom.
Spring will come, even if it doesn’t match the day on the calendar. The first day your baby smiled is like the random day in February that it hits 50 degrees and your heart warms from the joy of it all. The first morning she let you sleep until 7 a.m. is like looking out the window and seeing that the green patches in your yard now outnumber the white ones. And the first time she grasped your finger, looked into your eyes, and cooed is the day you walked barefoot through the back yard.
There are moments of spring in every day. You just have to find them. Time passes, babies grow, and eventually, every winter turns to spring.
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