You’ve changed, man

Pebble, 3 weeks old

Since becoming a mum, I’ve changed. I’m still me, but I’m a different me.
Yeah, I’m still clumsy, I’m still anxious (even more than ever), I still love Gossip Girl, I still eat too much chocolate and not enough fruit. I still lose my keys, and lock myself out the house (once when the baby was inside. Alone. But that’s another story). Becoming a mum hasn’t made me better. It hasn’t made me more grown up or more serious (perhaps just the opposite!).
But, boy oh boy, becoming a mum has changed my heart.
Before I had Pebble I never imagined that I could feel a more powerful, overwhelming love than the love I have for my husband. It’s not that I love Pebble more than Paul, but this mother love is made of something else. It’s the love that makes you want to pick them up and cuddle them in the night, that makes you want to physically harm anyone who might harm your baby, that makes you want to do anything to make them smile. It’s a dangerous kind of love, especially when mixed with a dash of baby charm – at times they can get anything they want. It’s also a scary love, it makes you overcome with fear for their wellbeing, their safety, their happiness. Sometimes being a parent feels like such an easy thing to be doing, and other times it feels like it carries the weight of the world.
One thing I try to remember is that our children are not ours to keep. I can’t say it better than this poem, which I first read on Girls Gone Child.

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday

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I feel very lucky to have Pebble on own loan for a while.