Pictures: I get to keep this one

Truly: with every birth I have ever attended, I have fallen in love with the baby. I started practicing as a doula when I was 23, so the first children I saw enter the world will start the first grade this Fall. I can still remember how each of them arrived.

Usually, after the birth is over, and everyone is tucked in bed and the baby is feeding, I slip out of the hospital room, walking backwards so I take one last mental snapshot of the little family that has just coalesced before my eyes. Then, except for the occasional post-partum visit, I don't see that perfect creature again.

Except! Oscar.

Because Oscar's parents are dear friends and coworkers as well as doula clients, I get to snuggle him and snap his picture and talk about his poop and laugh with his parents and watch his family grow. He birth was incredibly beautiful, but his tiny self is even more so.

While I always feel that the babies I see born are perfect, I must say that this one is particularly perfect.

And he gets perfect-er each time I see him.

Oscar's family is surrounded by a massive community of aunties and uncles and internet-cousins, all of whom utterly delight in his existence. His parents keep saying how lucky they feel to be enveloped in so much love and support. All of us keep saying how lucky we are to witness the creation of their family and the growth of their beautiful son.

Just by being, Oscar is a gift to the world. Just by loving him, we help him grow into the person that he truly is.

All he needs to do is be himself, and he makes people very, very happy. So may it always be.

Here's to Oscar, and to his parents, and to their community, and to the amazing way that true love multiplies. We are all the lucky ones.