This is the hardest thing I’ve ever done.

On our ride back from Target yesterday–my first non-medical outing in, like,  forever–I asked The Husband why more people don’t talk honestly about how hard it is to bring a child into the world. And keep him here. The implication being that they are either our enemies or liars by omission. We came up with a list of reasons: some people don’t like to complain as much as we (I) do; others are better at handling sleeplessness; discussing it brings back painful memories; the people in the middle of it are just too tired to talk. Then there are those who consider it bad form to use anything other than glowing terms to describe the miracle of children.

I am not one of those people.

My newborn currently sits beside me in his swing, white noise blaring, as I type. He may fall asleep or start screaming–only time (in the form of a few seconds) will tell. TH and I sleep at night, in spurts, in the silvery light of a baby monitor and watch The Kid as his noises light the monitor’s audio section up from green to red. We place a fresh diaper underneath his newly wiped ass and observe the slow-motion avalanche of shit and geyser of piss that spew onto the clean white surface. I finally remove all the surgical band-aids from my C-section incision and see that my belly looks like Frankenstein’s monster. I feel helpless for a large portion of my day, and exhausted for all of it.

BUT.

My newborn currently sits beside me in his swing.

I went to bed at 9 pm on New Year’s Eve, but TH and TK and I were up when the ball dropped, TH sitting beside me and TK hanging off my Milk Dispensary Unit. TH leaned over and gave each of us a kiss at midnight. For TK’s 4 am feeding this morning, I flipped channels until I found a suitably bad movie to fall in and out of sleep to: What Happens in Vegas. I remembered the last time I saw this movie, and I was falling in and out of sleep then too: it was on a night flight to Italy with three of my girlfriends, and I was in the initial stages of an Ambien cocoon. In the dim lights of my child’s nursery, I took on a dangerous proposition: comparing the two viewings.

The nursery viewing won.

Sure, back in August of ’08 I was headed to a wine-soaked European locale with dear friends, and I made some lifetime memories there. Back then, TH was only a friend, though. Back then, I had a lot of fun, but I drank way too much and made some questionable choices and woke up with a lot of headaches and regrets. It was a blast, but there was a price to pay. Even though I was where I was supposed to be, I always felt a bit…adrift. Incomplete. Self-obsessed.

Now, there’s a price to pay too. I have to hand over sleep and self-centeredness and vanity at the register to be here. This place requires other-worldly patience and demands faith: faith in myself, faith in my marriage, faith in the potential of this human being to one day sleep through the night and smile back at me for reasons other than gas.

Never before have my human selfishness and a greater sacrifice collided so forcefully and exacted so much of my own comfort.

But the payoff…what now feels few and far between–those moments of utter peace and euphoria–will multiply upon themselves. This family unit that we are and are becoming holds a home for my heart and reminds me that there is a design on my life, that there is more–more, even, than booze cruises and Italian sunsets. I see the image of Elmo stare back at me underneath TK’s belly from that streaked diaper at 4 am, and through all the literal crap I feel a tsunami-sized surge of love. Love that transforms gastric explosions and nighttime cries and sleeplessness and scars. Love that makes all things beautiful, urine fountains included. Love that has a Source, and therefore no end. Love that, through bleary eyes and sacrifice, asks for everything and gives it in return.

(But seriously? You a-holes should have done a better job of warning me.)