Tiptoeing Into the Blogosphere

I am quietly joining the ranks tonight of Mothers Who Blog. I'm ambivalent about documenting this maternal journey in such a possibly public way. Most diaries belong in a bedside table drawer. And it's not like this is a unique concept -- there are legions of other women typing away, stealing time from sleep at this very moment, other moms with blood-tinged eyes, their shirtfronts stained with nipple ointment, compelled to tell a computer screen about this mundane and profound job of suddenly being the center of -- origin of -- someone else's universe.

My 3-1/2-month-old daughter sleeps in her bouncy seat under the white-noise heater fan in the bathroom, the only spot she'll slumber aside from beside or on top of me. I just weighed us before sl-o-w-ly rolling her out of my arms and into the springy, angled nest. 146.6 minus 132.4 is 14 pounds, 2 ounces, or exactly twice her birthweight. She has doubled in size in less than 16 weeks, all from a sole diet of my making. She has wrist creases and chunky gams and cheeks full of farm-fresh collagen, and not a bottle of Nestle product has passed her lips. This is astonishing to me, this growing of another being. Why this milestone -- not pregnancy, nor the desire to document her here-ness from day 1 -- has prompted me to begin a blog, I'm not sure, but here I go, where plenty of others have boldy (bloggily, blurrily) gone before...