I didn't go into this experience feeling brave.

When the nurse came into my hospital room, checked me, and said that it would be time to push soon, I started shaking so hard that my teeth clattered together. I didn't want to do it again, didn't want to think again that I might be dying, or that my child might be dying because I wasn't strong enough as a person or as a mother to get her out of my body safely.

I also didn't go into giving birth determined to have a "birth experience" like I've heard so many mothers-to-be talk about. I thought a birth experience was the domain of women who chose to go the all-natural route, who wrote out detailed moment-by-moment plans and wanted to involve things like baths and midwives and custom playlists and fancy breathing exercises. I thought that I just wanted to have the baby, have it hurt as little as possible, and be on my way so I could get to the real stuff of motherhood.

One week after my son was born, I wrote this:

And that's how I feel again.

Just thinking about this day today, and feeling emotional and excited and a little scared.

The truth: I'm feeling more than "a little scared." I'm really, really scared. More scared, in fact, than I was the first time, because now I know just how big of a thing it is to bring a baby into the world. The first time I figured, what, it hurts? Big deal. But now I know that it's not about "hurting," it's about one of the most exhausting, overwhelming and - yes - painful ordeals you can put a body through, and I know about all the stuff that can go wrong…and I'm scared. And that fear makes me disappointed in myself, because shouldn't I just be pure joy at this point, days before I meet my daughter? Shouldn't I feel like Christmas is coming?

I don't feel that way. I know that joy is on the way, of course I do…but right now I feel scared. And I guess I'm mostly scared that I won't be as brave as I want to be, because I wasn't last time.

But that's why I've been spending time every day looking at these photos: because seeing them reminds me that there's something much bigger waiting for me on the other side of the pain and the exhaustion and the everything-that-might-go-wrong, and that's that no matter what happens, I know this: I get to fall in love. Again. I almost can't believe it. I know there's "a baby" coming…but my daughter? That doesn't feel possible; it feels too big and too forever to be real.