It's Mother's Day. Meet my frickin BABY!

Bianca Dawn Lupo enters the chat

It’s my first Mother’s Day. Meet my daughter, Bianca.

Lana Del Rey ahh onesie

My DAUGHTER!!! I get butterflies whenever I make the connection that those words = this human. These last few weeks I’ve been too rapt with love and urgency to really sit with the language of it all. When I try to write about her—and believe me, I try—my gut tells me I’m doing something I don’t actually want to do. Not yet.

Maybe one day I’ll tell you what it’s like to fail so spectacularly at pushing a baby out that you spring upright in your SWEAT-SOAKED, SHIT-STAINED hospital bed and, with your last dying breath, shout “C SECTION” at the evil gay Russian obstetrician (complimentary).

Or to keep a baby alive directly after having seven layers of your body sliced open (s/o my four remaining Oxys).

Or the false advertisement of 24-hour postpartum depression hotlines, being sent to voicemail mid-hormonal crash.

Indeed, we made it out the mud. Now I just don’t sleep but damn, I do not care. I do not care because nothing has ever felt more spiritually honest than starting a family with the love of my life.

Having a baby is, itself, like falling in love. You start thinking in romantic platitudes that don’t feel like platitudes because suddenly, you’re the first person to have these thoughts about anyone. The first person to ever love someone this much. For days, I would stare at Bianca and record my thoughts, which all sounded eerily like someone with a crush:

I’d find you in every lifetime.

You’re my soulmate.

So today feels like Valentine’s Day. But also like a long funeral for the nonessential, cosmetic parts of my personhood, cultivated in selfishness, that have reached the end of their shelf life. What exactly those parts are, I cannot yet say. I’m still finding my words here. I suspect I will be for a long time.

Bianca Dawn Lupo means the white wolf at sunrise. 

I just call her Mostrolina: little monster.

proof that the internet is still good and that where my words fail, a middle-aged mom with Canva has my back