Sleeping beauty

I thought it would be appropriate to start with the most beautiful thing I can think of, and that is of course my 2-month-old baby daughter. From the moment she was born she has been told that she is beautiful, perfect and the prettiest baby alive. And I agree. Her big and alert eyes, her dark hair, eyelashes and brows. Her cute hands that cling to my fingers. Her soft skin. The smell of her hair. Her big smile when she wakes up and I tell her good morning. And her lips, which we already knew were beautiful before she was born, since we had a picture of them from the ultrasound. Everything about her is perfect, and people often comment on that.

As a mother, however, I want to raise her to be and to know that she is beautiful on the inside. I want her to grow up to be a wise, self confident, warm and kindhearted woman of God. She already brings joy into our lives, and I pray that she will continue to spread light throughout her life wherever she goes.

She sure is cute and lovable, but the thing I am most thankful for is that she is healthy. When my Grandmother was still alive, she told me that she never wondered whether it was a boy or a girl that she was carrying when she was pregnant (which was the most common question we got when I was pregnant). She said that the most important thing is that the child is healthy. As a biologist, I often marvel at the miracle of life. I just can`t wrap my head around the fact that two cells fused togehter become a living, breathing human being. Once during a lecture at the university we discussed the heart and its functions, how electrical impulses from the sinus node makes all the muscle cells contract simultaneously, enabling the blood to circulate in our bodies. I asked the teacher about what mechanism is responsible of starting the heart of a fetus. "I can´t answer that", he said. "No one knows". Wow, I thought to myself. We know so much about how life begins and grows inside the woomb, but still we know so little. Thinking about the intricate design of life really gets me excited, and humble at the same time.

Her little fingers clinging to my thumb. When she was still a fetus she had webbing between her fingers, which can also be seen between the digits of frogs, for example. But in humans, this skin is removed in the creation process by apoptosis, a programmed deterioration of cell tissue, leaving five perfect fingers. This to me is the Creator moulding the clay.