The pain.
The first look.
The exhaustion.
The first smile.
The relentlessness.
The revelation.
The brutality.
The beauty.
The mystery.
Ten months in, motherhood remains a mystery.
It’s a thousand mundane moments punctured with moments so full of wonder that they steal your breath away.
As much as I expected a lot of it; the tiredness, the love, the mum guilt. I could not have conceived of the way my emotions swing from exasperation to joy and back again within the space of five minutes; or how I can be desperate for space one minute to desperate for him to wake up so I get to give him a cuddle the next.
Rollercoaster doesn’t cut it.
But gratitude and grace do.
Gratitude for the baby I prayed for.
Grace for the difficult days when the baby screams and I don’t know why.
Gratitude for health, when I feared my son’s tiny lungs would forever struggle.
Grace for the long nights of teething, croup and colds.
Gratitude for the life I live, the God I serve and the family and friends who provide company, support and sanity after sleepless nights.
Gratitude for all that has passed – the beauty and the brutality. Grace for all that is to come.
Rachael Newham 
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