@tinyroofnail So good. This reminded me of a passage from On Immunity by Eula Bliss which captures something of the before and after of parenthood.
“The day before my son was born was the first warm day of spring. In labor, I walked out to the end of the pier, where the morning sun was breaking up the ice floes on Lake Michigan. My husband held up a video camera and asked me to speak to the future, but the sound did not record, so whatever I said has been lost to the past. What remains evident on my face is that I was not afraid. During the long labor that followed that sunlit moment I imagined myself swimming in the lake, which became, against my will, a lake of darkness and then a lake of fire and then a lake without a horizon. By the time my son was born late the next day a cold rain was falling and I had crossed over into a new realm in which I was no longer fearless.”