When you are pregnant, people always tell you about the moments that you will remember the most. The moments that will make your heart burst with more love than you ever thought possible. But no one can really prepare you for those moments when they come. Over the past two years, these are some of my favorite heart-explosion moments:
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An hour after Audrey was born Seeing my daughter for the first time.
I spent over nine months dreaming of not only what my child would look like, but what the gender would be. My husband and I chose not to find out the gender. It was easy until the last month of being pregnant. By that point I had already waited for so long, and I knew I could hold out a bit longer. The entire pregnancy, I thought I was having a boy and my husband thought we were having a girl, so when my husband told me that we’d had a girl all I could do was cry tears of joy. Holding her in my arms, kissing her face, smelling her; I cannot begin to tell you how incredibly awesome that moment is.
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Hearing her giggle.
Audrey was laying in her Rock N’ Play and I was standing over her. I made her cooing noise and she let out this giggle that just exploded from her gut. And of course that made me start to giggle because this big sound just came from my three month old. It is a video that I watch on my phone more often than not, and it gives me hope that it’s the simple things in life that will continue to make her smile and laugh.
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Watching her run and hug her teachers at daycare.
It’s hard having to drop your child off at daycare every day. So many things run through a parent’s head. Is the school safe? Are the teachers going to treat and love my child like their own? Will my child start the journey of being a kind and well rounded person? So when Audrey started running to her teachers to give them morning hugs, I knew we had hit the jackpot. When there is so much ugliness in the world, watching your unbiased child give his/her love so selflessly, you definitely have some dynamite going off in your heart.
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Audrey’s typical silly face Seeing the start of her personality.
Audrey’s personality comes out in all different ways, from her different laughs, to the way she will pronounce certain words, to the silly faces she will make and how she plays with her toys. She has a laugh for the things she finds super funny, all the way down to a ‘polite’ laugh (it wasn’t really that funny, but I have to be nice). The silly faces she makes crack me up every time. She even has a permanent silly face that she will make on command.
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Saying ‘I love you’ back.
I think this one is self-explanatory. I say ‘I love you’ and when she says it back, there is literally nothing else in the world that is better. The joy and love that I feel is indescribable and I make her repeat it like five times because I cannot get enough! I am still trying to capture this moment on video so I can watch it over and over again.
