Inspiration for “First Night”

The newborn phase is hard, and for me I found it to be one of the hardest. My mom was visiting from out of town when my daughter was about two months old.  My mom was attempting to put her down for one of her many contact naps. I could hear her cry and she wouldn’t settle so I went in and the second I held her to my chest she nestled in and fell right to sleep.

I decided to just lie down with her while my mom prepped dinner which is what I had been doing. Before my mom left the room she said something about how I am all that my daughter knows: my scent, the sound of my heartbeat, and my voice. I began to think about it, wrote about it on my phone, in the notes, thinking about how my heartbeat was the first thing she heard or even felt. It was a connection that I personally have never had with my mom since I was adopted. I really knew nothing about it until becoming a mother myself.

My book First Night comes completely from experiences I’ve had, including craving these little red sour candies while I was pregnant, and not being able to even be in the room with steamed broccoli. No matter how old our babies get, they will always be our babies and our hearts will always be their home.