When you're pregnant, you can think of nothing but having your own body to yourself again, yet after having given birth you realize that the biggest part of you is now somehow external, subject to all sorts of dangers and disappearance, so you spend the rest of your life trying to figure out how to keep it close enough for comfort. That's the strange thing about being a mother: until you have a baby, you don't even realize how much you were missing one.

until you have a baby, you don't even realize how much you were missing one

Every baby is born beautiful. It's what we project on them that makes them ugly.

When I was little, the great mystery to me was not how babies were made, but why?

I'm telling you, if aliens landed on earth today and took a good hard look at why babies get born, they'd conclude that most people had children by accident, or because they drink too much on a certain night, or because birth control isn't one hundred percent, or for a thousand other reasons that really aren't very flattering.

When you look into your baby’s eyes,” Lacy said softly, “you see everything you hope they can be…not everything you wish they won’t become.