Every morning our routine is the same: I get up between 6 and 7 am and let my wife, who wakes earlier to feed our newborn, go back to bed. I fix another bottle for our daughter, change her diaper, then she falls asleep on my chest for hours. I just read and occasionally kiss her little head, which — exactly like mine when I was born — is covered in so much dark brown hair it’s the first thing strangers comment on when they meet her. Every 15 minutes or so she sniffles or lets out a little yip and nuzzles her face into my chest and falls back asleep.

I’m racked by a sense of how ephemeral this all is — a kind of pre-nostalgia for when I know I’ll look back and remember these mornings in the sepia-toned blur of memory. I can’t wait to until she can share meals with me and talk and read. I yearn to see who she’ll grow up to be. But right now I just feel so lucky for these mornings, when nothing mattered except loving and nurturing her, being her ultimate protector.

What a gift unlike any other.

Reporter and writer. I cover energy, climate change and geopolitics. Contact me via my website www.alexanderckaufman.com and subscribe to kaufman.substack.com.

So beautiful 

I remember similar moments with my now toddler when he was a newborn

That all being said he still regularly falls asleep on me, so that feeling/experience probably isn't going away any time soon