🌽 🌽 🌽 One of the best things about being Noli Jo's mom is watching her discover, over and over, that she has a body. Actually, the first time it was horrifying, but ever since then it's been delightful. The days after her birth are a foggy jumble--physical and emotional exhilaration and exhaustion sutured together in a throbbing line across my lower abdomen, all of it stewed together with regular doses of narcotics. But I will never forget the afternoon during her first week outside of my body when I held her as she screamed. She had been doing this for hours, inconsolable and unable to sleep, as I panicked, simultaneously thinking that I could not do this, and that if I could not do this, surely we would both be dead soon. I pulled her away from my chest and looked at her face, crying and saying, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I don't know what to do."