A love like this.

I have never known a love like this.  So strong, so fierce, so all encompassing, so blinding, so powerful.  As her little hands grip tighter and tighter around my neck, her hot, hot head nuzzling further into my neck and her perfect little body presses against mine, trying to become one with me yet again.

I have never felt needed like this. I have never been everything to someone, an answer to every question.  When she is sad I comfort, when she is hungry I feed, when she is cold I wrap her up in my arms.  I am needed with such urgency and so completely.

I have never understood contentment like this.  I have never felt so close to the generations and generations of women who came before me.  I have never understood how somebody else feels so intently until I felt this feeling myself.

I don't remember it lasting this long with the others, not in the same way anyway.  I felt it all with each one of them though - the raw, primal need for me, but with her it is still the same as it was when she was so new and tiny.  Not all the time, not everyday but enough.  Others can now feed her and satisfy her thirst.  She will go to you for a game or a cuddle.  She will hold her hands out to you to ask a question, look at you curiously with her big blue eyes.  But when she needs me, nobody else will do.  I am her mother, I am the one and now, as she lies feverish in my arms, her whole body warm to the touch, I know that it is me she needs, I know that even in her fitful slumber she is aware that I am the one holding her and she is more peaceful because of that.

Nothing ever prepared me for parenthood, for this love