The sweetest thing in the world

is holding a little baby, rocking it to sleep, and having it just relax against you and make those little sucking sounds and sleep peacefully. You just breathe in that little baby smell, and feel them curved around your body, and everything in the world is right and good.

I was thinking, as I held my friend's sleeping newborn baby and rocked him through sacrament meeting today (while she valiantly dealt with her three other screaming children), that it's one of the joys of motherhood to be able to hold your baby while it sleeps throughout its infancy. I used to lay on the couch with Taylor curled up on my chest almost every time she took a nap as an infant (she wouldn't sleep unless I was holding her). It was just the most wonderful feeling, and I made myself treasure it every time, knowing that it would come to an end someday. Sometimes I would really be thinking that I wanted to get up and get things done, but I forced myself to concentrate on how sweet and wonderful it was to be holding her.

I think that one miracle is that the pain of childbirth is soon forgotten, but the joy of that tender moment with your child lasts a very, very long time. Now when she's difficult, or struggling, or acting all prepubescent, I can recall those moments, and the love and tenderness I felt for her then. They come back to help me through hard times. I wouldn't give up one single naptime now for anything.

How any woman could choose to give up that opportunity in favor of a career or other activities is beyond me. Of course there are those that don't have a choice, and I believe that compensations are made there, but to choose to forego those magical moments is something I will never understand. I'm so grateful I had the opportunity to take advantage of them when Taylor was small.

And now that I've used a form of the word "sweet" in the titles of half of my latest posts, I commit to refrain from using it again for at least a week.