“You are a good lady, mama. I love you so much right now.”

Valerie,

One day your heartbreakingly mysterious newborn baby will be a feisty, gorgeous, affectionate toddler who will:

• take regular, consistent naps at the same time every day, in his crib - not strapped to you in some form

• eat regular food! You won’t always be his sole source of nourishment

• form friendships and make wild, bizarre observations on the world around him

• give full-body hugs

• say things like “you are a good lady, mama. I love you so much right now.”

• throw epic tantrums, but you’ll have the mental acuity and patience (most days) to work through it with him.

And you, mama!

• you’ll sleep. It’ll never be like it was pre-baby but you’ll mostly feel decent.

• you’ll start to gently lift out of that all-consuming brain fog that made you question whether you’d ever be a useful, clever person again

• you’ll gain some weight back because you won’t be circling the neighborhood in endless laps trying to get your baby to conk out; oh - and you’ll have time to eat (see: regular naps)

• you won’t think he’d be better off with a different mother

• you won’t stop beneath a bougainvillea bloom because you don’t know what else to do, or how to move forward from that moment. You’ll stop because your kid wants to chat about the colors and the texture.

• you will spend less time sobbing and more time giggling/smiling/doing other contented things

• you will still worry, constantly and without reprieve. But it will feel manageable and surmountable.

• you’ll ache for that time you lost when you were so bone-chillingly depressed and anxious, but you’ll be grateful to not feel like that any more.

• you’ll stop thinking the idea of a second baby is terrible.