Dear Henry, You won’t believe this, but I am writing this letter a day early. It’s true! You turn 10 months old tomorrow. Today is Father’s Day, and I have spent a lot of the day watching you and your papa enjoy each other. He held and entertained you during Sunday mass. He fed you […]

Dear Henry, You’re already 9 1/2 months old! I was 9 months old when I first came to America, so it has been especially fascinating and fun to watch you the past couple of weeks. Although I spent the early months of my life in the Philippines, my personal narrative really seems to begin when […]

Dear Henry, You turned 8 months old a few days ago. When you turned 7 months old last month, I missed another letter. I don’t have a good reason. I don’t even remember what was happening at the time. All I know is I started to write it one morning while you were napping, saved […]

Dear Henry, Yesterday, you turned 6 months old. That’s one half of one whole year, which is kind of a big deal, don’t you think? We celebrated by feeding you rice cereal for the first time, lounging around the house, playing, laughing and napping. I thought about writing this letter to you during different moments […]

Dear Henry, You are 5 months old today. It’s past my bedtime and I am wiped out, but I want to write this letter before another day, week or month passes by. You are fast asleep in your bedroom, where you’ve been spending each night all by yourself for almost one week now. I’ll admit […]

Dear Henry, It’s late afternoon on a blustery and chilly day. You are sound asleep, and I am racing to get a few things done before you awake. This letter, already a day late, is one of them. When I think about your fourth month, the first thing that comes to mind is how much […]

Dear Henry, My birthday is tomorrow, and now that nearly a year has passed since the last one I can tell you that I made a wish and that wish came true. I wished for a baby. The following month, on your papa’s birthday, we took a pregnancy test and it was positive. I was […]

Dear Henry, You are 2 months old today. Happy 1/6th birthday! I had meant to write you when you turned 1 month old—my goal has always been to write you a letter every month—but those first few weeks flew by in a blur. Our family who helped keep us afloat had just left, and your […]

• When I said I wasn’t scared to have a c-section, I meant it. I wasn’t scared because I hadn’t thought it through. I didn’t think about the fact that I would be sliced open and that I would have a scar. I didn’t think about the fact that I would take a heavy dose […]

The night before Henry was born, I entertained the notion that I might just be pregnant forever—or at least another week or two. I was already four days overdue. Bets had been placed on the 15th and the 18th, but here it was, August 20th, and I was only 1 centimeter dilated. “Maybe he’ll be […]