She's eight days old today.

Motherhood has cracked me open and thrust me into an impossible fullness. I sing to her. Little songs come to me as I hold her and we both stare. She has her father's eyes. I cry with every emotion that exists. I cry my prayers into lifetimes. I cry for all that has come, all that will be, and all that is now as my tears flow.

Today I went into the garden for the first time. My body has been sore - recovering. I count every blessing that I didn't tear. That the aches and pains have been less than I was warned about. Bleeding not as heavy. Still, I've spent the last few days horizontal, (damn hemorrhoids got me, and... I keep having to remind myself... I just birthed a baby!) Forced to accept the unending support of Nyaniso. He's been a hero and I wish the world saw and saluted his initiation and his importance in this process as deeply as my own.

That's one thing that puzzled me so much through pregnancy. The lack of recognition for what a man must move through in order to find the father within. Surely, if we are to play equal roles in the parenting journey, then our initiation is of equal significance? Different nature, yes. But equal still. I made a point to hold space for his process as much as I possibly could over the last nine months. It was startling to me how often I met entitled moments in myself, ready to make our pregnancy all about me. I came to think, "This is what absent fathers are made of." An amalgamation of many mini moments which bypass the father's initiation in favor of the mother's. I did my best to untether myself from that entitlement and actively create space for my husband's process. I have no doubt that in doing so, I made way for Nyaniso to be unwaveringly present when birth came.

My Dad was an impeccable father. He set a supposedly impossible standard for my husband - and still, Nyaniso has risen into the process so powerfully and mightily that I find myself regularly cooing "Best dad ever" as I look at him. He dances with our daughter and sings to her. We laugh as she contorts her cutest-ever face into poop expressions and squirts herself all over him. She was born to his hands, in our home. We got the all-natural birth we prayed for. I breathed her down through my body through the day and roared her into this world at night. Waters broke less than an hour before we met her face. She looked just like her great-grandmother when she first arrived. Nyaniso's Gogo. A Xhosa princess. With each day since, more family members have arrived in her face. My Dad among them. Our last eight days have been gentle. Snuggled up under blankets without any visitors but our midwife. Just us - our little Dzedze family - finding our way to each other and ourselves before letting the wider world in.

Today as she basked in my arms in the garden, she tweeted her happy little sounds to the sun. I wish I could bottle her little tweets and her baby-happy and keep it with me forever. Already, after just eight days, I feel how fast she's growing. How every second is passing and precious, and I cry again. I cry with every emotion that exists. I cry my prayers into lifetimes. She's arrived.