LOVE is what we are born with.

The love I feel for Hugo, my 17 day old newborn son, did not come to me in the rush one learns to so famously expect. Of course, I was overwhelmed with gratitude and pure joy when my healthy boy was placed in my arms for the first time but the love, that all engulfing feeling, came over and into me slower, more progressively, as though each cell of my body filled with electricity or water, one at a time, starting from the centre and moving outwards.

The love I feel for him, I believe I caught from him, transferred from his small warm body into mine, through our chests and our skin. When his floppy sleeping body melts into mine, the rhythm of our breaths perfectly in tune; when, with his mouth gaping slightly open, I can smell his sweet milky breath; when his tiny hands uncurl slowly from tight fists and absentmindedly rest on my chest as he suckles energetically; when his arched body instantly relaxes at the touch of my large cupped hands.

Love is what we are born with and we share it through our bodies.