feeling the love

I am feeling with number 3 what I feel like I never felt with number 1 or 2. Is that possible? Or have I simply forgotten? Can motherhood be so potently in-the-moment that even a few months or years later, one cannot conjure up a "few seconds in the emotions of"?

Let me explain:

When Nicolas looks at me and his eyes follow me around the room, I feel like a real mother, the cliché, mommy-help-email-spam type mom. The kind that they talk about in poems and "what to expect" books. Like I am the single most important person in the world (well, to this little being, of course).

When I look at Nicolas, it feels like my body expands, like the love fills up the cells in my body and I physically grow.

When our gazes meet and lock, symbiosis basically is complete; he is me, I am him.

It's not that I love him more, not at all. In fact, I probably neglect him more than I ever did Sebastian and Lucas.

What I think is happening is that the anxious, mildly neurotic, desperate-to-do-the-right-thing side of me is gone. These aspects have floated away, and all that is left is the impatient, daily-grind, hormonal mother who feels little else besides exhaustion and pure love.