My favorite scents

This morning I woke up to what has become one of my favorite scents.

I had heard about "the baby smell" before Elaina was born (this referring to the lovely, precious smell of her hair and her skin, and not the smell produced elsewhere, which is quite the opposite of lovely and precious), but I'd never noticed it on other babies. I think I assumed it was another old wives' tale, like the one about how lying with your feet in the air will effortlessly and magically cause a breech baby flip. I can personally attest that this will only result in shortness of breath, sleepy feet, and a c-section scheduled for the next week. Moving along....

I don't remember the first time I noticed the scent of Elaina's little head, but it didn't take long before I was hooked. I caught myself sniffing and snuggling and trying to hold the scent in my memory. I remember telling Josh perhaps returning to work wouldn't be quite so painful if I could just find a way to bottle it up; then, when I missed her during the day, I could just take it out and have a smell and somehow pull myself together for the next few hours. And if I had it to make it through work, well, then perhaps I'd capture a little more of it to carry me through as she grows, to hold her babyhood close when she's a little girl playing with her Barbies or a surly teenager trying to figure out her place in the world or a beautiful woman preparing to become a mother herself.

But there is no way to keep the smell of my baby's hair and fresh, clean skin. One day she won't have that wonderful scent; it will be gone and I'll never have it again. There is no way to keep her a baby. And when I'm not swooning in her scent, I realize that is not just how it must be, but how it should be as well.

Until then, though, I'm going to soak it in, like I did this morning.

This morning, when my sweet baby was still asleep and I crept into her room and picked her up out of her crib, still sleeping, and brought her onto our bed for an early morning snack. In those few minutes, when I was snuggled between my two favorite people on this entire earth, safe in my husband's arms on one side, and breathing in my baby on the other. Moments passed, and the alarm went off, and my day had to begin. But in the in between, the only thing that mattered was the thump of the heart behind me and the scent of the little light brown head in front of me.

In and out, in and out, in and out.

With any luck, tomorrow morning will greet me in the same way.