And tonight, as I sat hunched in a hard chair under the buzzing fluorescent lights of the emergency room, I realized just how fragile I had become.
It wasn’t about me anymore. It was about her.
My daughter.
Her name is Sophia, and she is three weeks old. A brand-new person in this enormous, overwhelming world — a world I wasn’t sure I was ready to bring her into. But no matter how unprepared I felt, I loved her with a depth that frightened me.
And right now, that tiny girl was burning up in my arms.
Sophia had been inconsolable since the afternoon, her cries growing more desperate as the hours dragged by. By midnight, her skin felt like fire against my chest. I didn’t even bother changing out of the same stained pajama pants I’d been wearing since delivery; I just shoved my feet into sneakers and rushed to the hospital.
