Motherhood has swallowed me whole

I could not resist copying and posting these words that I read about motherhood. I wish they were my own but they are the same thoughts I think each day about my little Ella Rose....

Sometimes, I stare at her while she sleeps. I run my fingers along the edge of her face. The day starts and amidst the rush of the morning, there we are.
It’s just the two of us. She slumbers. I adore.
So many thoughts run through my brain in those moments. I try to still them, but they squeeze in and race about regardless. I try to breathe in and out and just soak up each minute, but instead I find my mind wandering.
I wonder at her beauty. I imagine her as the infant who was first placed on my chest, a warm and squirming picture of perfection. I ponder what she might look like later.
Then I think about, well, everything.
Her first steps and her first day of school. What she will like to do and who she will become. Will we shop for a wedding dress together? Will her partner love her well? Will she come to me one day, a smile on her lips, a baby in her belly?
I picture her graduations. Then I think about watching her run into the ocean for the first time. How it will be when she first tells me she loves me. And, conversely, how I will survive when she first tells me she wishes she had a different mother.
The thousands of diaper changes flash through my brain, followed by the thousands of times I will buckle her car-seat and say ALRIGHT, LET’S ROLL. The hundreds of lullabies sit aside the dozens of times I’ll roll my eyes and say FINE, ONE MORE STORY. BUT JUST ONE. And then read her two.
It all flies by in those moments and I find myself struggling to live in the moment and cherish her AS SHE IS, RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW. Because I love remembering the past and I wonder so much about the future. And as the morning marches on, as the birds chirp outside and the sun dangles higher in the sky, I lay kisses on her forehead and breathe in the sweet smell of the baby I so love and worry about this, about whether or not I am too immersed in the past and future to be the mother she needs in the present.
Then she stirs and snorts and flashes me a sleepy smile. The same smile she had when she was born and the same smile she will have when I take my last breath. And I thank the heavens above for that smile. It’s telling me that I’m doing just fine.