At last we meet

This is the moment I'd waited for all my life. My earliest memory of wanting to be a mother is from kindergarten when we had to dress up for career day. What did I want to be when I grew up at the tender age of five -- that's right, a mommy. So off I went to school with my hair in a bun and a baby doll in my arms. Twenty-eight years later, I find myself with a real baby in my arms.
This picture doesn't look the way I'd planned it in my mind. In the hundreds of times I imagined what Andrew's birth would look like, this picture never occurred to me. But Andrew is here and nothing else seems to matter.
In this moment, I was overwhelmed with emotion. I want to remember this moment forever, to tuck it away in my heart so that I can always visit it, always cherish it. But it is hard to find the words. Sometimes, there are not enough words, or perhaps the words I have are inadequate. How do you describe the moment when you first see your child -- this little being that has been growing inside of you for all those months -- a baby you've dreamed about, yearned for and hurdled unimaginable obstacles to create.
I remember feeling relief wash over me in that moment -- relief that Andrew was healthy, relief that after what seemed like an eternity to me I was finally getting to see my boy.
More than that, I remember feeling indsecribable joy. It's a happiness I am not likely to experience again in this lifetime. I looked at Greg, tears running down his cheeks and I knew that for us, this was it -- the pinnacle of happiness. Our long awaited child was no longer an abstract idea or a wish or a dream or even a flutter in my belly. He was a real. I remember thinking "he's real. He's real," over and over in my mind.
But the feeling that I want to remember most from that moment was the sense of knowing. For me, when I looked at Andrew for the first time, with his blue eyes looking back at me and his funny little squishy face with his wrinkled forhead and his pink skin, I felt like I was meeting someone I had known all my life. "It's you," my heart said. "Of course, it's you. Who else would it be?"