Four Fridays ago, Eva joined us in the outside world. Today I want to write about the good things. For sanity's sake, I've often written about the difficult times just to help myself get through them and so I haven't spent as much time talking about the good. I don't want to scare off any soon-to-be parents with nothing but horror stories.

First of all, there is nothing in the world as cute, endearing and awe-inspiring as your own offspring. I could (and do) spend hours doing nothing but running my hands over her strawberry-blond hair, tickling her toes, contemplating her perfect little ears, and gazing happily into her big blue eyes (when they're actually open).

Breastfeeding. In the first couple of weeks, I asked myself on an hourly basis if breastfeeding was really worth it. It is a huge commitment. In the beginning it's painful, it interferes with your sleep at a time when you really need to be recovering from the trauma of childbirth, and it's hard to get it right when the baby is new to it and you're new to it. Plus, there's the stress of wondering if the baby is getting enough to eat, especially before your mature milk comes in. Then the milk does come in and your breasts become engorged and you spend the next few days walking around with bags of frozen corn held to your throbbing boobs and doing damage control when milk starts squirting out of them at the sound of someone else's crying baby. And at times in the beginning I despaired because every time I held her, she rooted around and I felt like all I was to her was a milk cow.

But wait, I'm talking about how breastfeeding is a good thing? Turns out that after the first couple of weeks, Eva and I got the hang of it, it stopped being painful and feeding her has become the highlight of my day. There's no way to really describe the satisfaction of being able to give nourishment to my child with nothing but my body. And with each day that passes, she becomes more aware of her surroundings and of me and I can see that eating makes her happy. She's starting to realize when I pick her up and turn her belly towards mine, that she's going to get to eat and her eyes light up. She smiles and dives in, making happy sighs and grunts. It's an amazing feeling to not just be able to calm her down, but to be able to actually make her happy several times a day.

Today she paused in the middle of eating and pulled backwards just to gaze up at me and smile and I thought my heart would break from happiness.

Another good thing is that Eva really is a lovely baby during the day and she's very content in her car seat and stroller. In order to give her a chance to nap in the afternoon, we've been taking her out to various places almost every day. It's fantastic to be able to get out of the house and I've discovered how ridiculously proud I can feel when someone stops and coos over her. We've gone out nearly every day in the past couple of weeks and I realize that is something to be incredibly grateful for. I can't wait until it's warm enough to go for walks with her around the neighborhood.

Of course, there's also the fact that we're surrounded by friends and family who welcome her and love her. My family is incredibly supportive. My dad says that Eva is the best thing to happen to our family in a long time and as we look forward to two more rounds of chemotherapy for him, I'm glad that she can be a ray of light for my family.

In the past few days I've started to notice how much bigger she's getting and I've started to understand how parents could possibly be nostalgic for a baby's newborn stage. I'm seeing glimpses of the big chubby baby she will become and while I want to speed up time to a point where this will be easier, I also want to stop it and hold her tiny body in my arms forever.