A First

Cora and I had fun at the hospital today.

I got the green light to try feeding her with the bottle twice a day. That means we get to turn off her continuous feeds for an hour beforehand, which is big progress. Usually her doctors are very much against turning feeds off because the primary goal is always weight gain, but this time -- much to my delight -- they are indulging me in another goal.

Cora did great. She took about 15 ml each time (about half an ounce), which is great progress for someone who couldn't even remember how to latch onto the bottle as of two weeks ago. You can imagine how happy it made me to feed my daughter, burp her, and have her drift off to a full-bellied sleep in my arms afterward. Pretty heavenly indeed.

I appreciate those normal baby moments so very much.

A bit later this afternoon I put Cora on my shoulder so she could look at the ocean out the window, and I noticed something amazing. She was holding her head up! She's never done that before, and she's barely seemed interested in trying. But today for about a minute, she held it up. I craned my neck so I could see her doing it, instead of just feeling her doing it, and it was about the most precious thing I'd ever seen. She looked like she was trying so hard. She would look side to side with only her eyes, as though she had to concentrate to keep her head steady. Finally she got tired and rested her head on my shoulder, but the moment will stay with me. I know she is very close to mastering the art of head-holding because I kept working with her on it through the afternoon, and each time we tried she was able to hold it for longer.

Babies are always like that. They try something so tentatively and it feels like they'll never be able to do it. But then you blink and you can't remember them not doing it. For nearly six months I've wondered if Cora would ever be able to hold her head up. Such a simple thing of course, but something that contained so much to me.

And then later I put her face-forward on her boppy pillow, and for the first time she just sat there and looked me in the eyes like she'd done it her whole life.

Those are the things that kill me as a parent. All the firsts. A big one today. But also all the lasts.

Because even though on the down side, Cora has had so many delays on things like holding her head up and growing, on the up side, it's meant that I get to have my snuggly little newborn-like baby so much longer than I normally would. And so for every little step forward she makes, I will celebrate. But with each one I will also say goodbye to the phase before, as every mom has to, and as every mom knows, those moments hold all the happy and all the sad together in one.

No matter how hard I try, there are just so few words to really describe all the ways life can just burst your heart open. Today was just another day when that happened for me.