The other day Lilly was playing with our temporal scanner thermometer. She was pretending it was a magic mirror à la Snow White, but I wasn’t aware of that at first. We had this conversation:

LILLY: Here, Mom, look into this. What do you see?

ME: [Not sure what we were pretending yet]: Hm, I don’t know. What do you see?

LILLY: I see a strong, beautiful, young woman. . .

ME: How nice!

LILLY: and you!

ME: Oh.

LILLY: Noooo – it’s you, Mommy!

ME: Aw, thank you, Lilly!

LILLY: Just kidding!

ME: Oh.

Ouch. I admit it. That one stung a bit.

There’s the hormones that throw you into an emotional spin cycle in the immediate aftermath of childbirth, of course. And there’s the sleep deprivation that makes you feel just a bit loopy all the time. But the real killer — the thing that I have found only gets worse as your baby grows older — is the fear that one only knows when they love someone more than they could ever possibly imagine. In the first couple months of a child’s life all of those factors are in full swing and it leaves for one coo coo mama.

Before I had Lilly I remember my sister telling me of her repeated bouts with absolute panic when she would awake in the middle of the night convinced that her newborn son was drowning in a sea of blankets in her bed and she would desperately rip her bed sheets off looking for him. This was all much to her husband’s confusion since my nephew did not sleep in their bedroom, much less in their bed. But sleep deprivation and a mother’s love do crazy things to your mind – especially in the wee hours of the morning.

When I first heard this story, I empathized with my sister since I have had my fair share of odd middle-of-the-night behavior — just ask Elliott about my sleep-screaming habit — but mostly I found it funny. Since Lilly’s birth, it’s not funny, it’s life.

Whether it was the power of suggestion, genetics or a crazy little thing called love, I also found myself searching desperately for Lilly in my bed on several occasions while she slept soundly in her crib in another room. I have also spent too many nights to count reliving every minor injury amplifying my fear with what-ifs.

One of my biggest concerns about having a second child has been that another child would literally cripple me with fear. Doubling my kids would certainly mean a disproportionate increase in the number of what-ifs. Or, perhaps worse, maybe it would make me worry less – jaded by the sheer volume of concerns to process. Then what?

I dove into the abyss anyway, figuring there’s always psychotherapy. To my surprise, Henry’s arrival did not immediately send me into a fear-induced panic. Not immediately.

Yesterday, like so many days, I took the kids on a short excursion to Target, filling the little bit of cart space that remains once you put a carseat in the main part of the cart and two coats and a gargantuan diaper bag in the seat. We then returned to the car, unloaded our new goodies (aka diapers) into the trunk, the kids in the back, the cart in the cart corral, me in the driver’s seat. Halfway home I noticed both kids asleep and began fantasizing about all the things I could get done with two sleeping kids in the afternoon.

I pulled into the garage, moved Henry’s carseat into the house and prepped everything so that Lilly could make an easy transition to the couch in her napping state. I walked back to the car to get Lilly out of her seat. As I reached for her I glanced across the backseat and saw the empty car seat base on the other side and … lost…my…shit.

OH MY GOD WHERE’S HENRY?!?!?

The sight of that empty carseat base sent me to an ugly place. Panic and adrenalin pumped through my body. I frantically retraced my steps in my head:

We were at Target. He was in the cart. I swear I put him in the car! What if I didn’t?! What if he’s sitting in the cart? In the cart corral? In 40 degree weather! ALONE! OH MY GOD I’M THE WORST MOTHER EVER!! MY BABY! WHAT HAVE I DONE?!

While running through these panicked thoughts I ran to the backdoor thinking I just might have moved him inside already. And, lo and behold, there was Henry. Sleeping peacefully in his carseat just inside the door.

Oh, and did I mention the screaming? Yeah, that whole time I was screaming. Pacing my garage floor, screaming, “OH MY GOD! OH MY GOD!” When I finally realized I was not the neglectful mother I had feared, but rather just crazy, the panic-induced blindness cleared and I also realized my screaming had woken up Lilly and she was staring at me with fear and confusion in her own eyes. I collapsed into her carseat hugging her, crying, apologizing and attempting to explain to a 3 year old what sleep deprivation can do to Mommy’s brain.

There was no simultaneous napping that day. But I did have my two children at home with me safe and sound.

You can imagine all of the what-if images that could clutter my mind after that incident. I certainly can. And I assure you they definitely would have kept me up all last night. That is, if I wasn’t already up all last night closely monitoring Henry’s breathing, convinced that he was suffering from Pertussis and cursing myself for taking him to the mall during the holidays, where he was most certainly infected.

Turns out it’s an ear infection. We live to worry another day.

The trick, as a parent, is teaching your children to question those people and ideas that could be potentially harmful — strangers, miracle cures and brainwashing toy ads — while not depriving them of the innocence of childhood. It’s the Halloween Paradox: how to warn your child against taking candy from strangers while sending them out trick-or-treating to collect candy from strangers.

My parents were good at keeping the magic alive. The Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy, Santa Claus. They had me hook, line and sinker. I’m embarrassed to admit how long I believed in Santa Claus. It was far too long. Frankly, there came a time when they should have staged an intervention. But I can’t blame them for wanting to keep the magic alive for me as long as possible.

My parents found a balance on Halloween. They let us get all dressed up and excited for trick-or-treating. Then when we returned home with a sack of candy, they immediately confiscated it and only allowed us to eat the pieces that had been smashed and dissected and determined to be free of staples, pin and poisons. But you can’t really go halfway with Santa. There’s either a jolly old elf who brings presents or there’s not. Smashing and dissecting is not an option. And there are few things more rewarding as a parent than seeing your child light up at the sight of Santa Claus.

Keeping the Christmas magic alive for Lilly has been a challenge. First, she’s an inquisitive kid and it’s not easy to explain away the many inconsistencies that surface when you put Santa Claus and the many Christmas TV specials under the microscope. Second, she goes to a Jewish preschool where many of her friends are reassured by their parents that they are not really missing anything at this time of year because Santa is a myth.

Despite Lilly having already declared, to my surprise, that “Santa is not real,” we try to keep the magic alive. So it was exhilarating to see Lilly become ecstatic and starstruck when she saw Santa get off a Christmas-light covered fire truck at a recent holiday event with her cousins. The magic was alive again!

We got swept up in the magic ourselves and thought it would be fun to take Lilly for another Santa visit a few days later. But, man, did it backfire. When we walked into “Santa’s Workshop”, Lilly saw Santa from behind and ran up to say hi to her jolly old pal. But when they came to face to face, she quickly noticed this was not the Santa from the firetruck. To her credit, she gave him a shot to prove himself. But when Santa misidentified the generic monkey on her shirt as “Dora,” the ruse was up. I could see the wheels turning in Lilly’s head.

A Santa who doesn’t know who Dora is? I call bullshit.

Lilly quickly lost interest and walked away mumbling, “That’s not the real Santa.” We tried to salvage the magic by bringing her to see where Santa’s real reindeer were resting up for the big haul on Christmas Eve.

“Look, Lilly! It’s Comet and Blitzen!”

My parents used to take me to this same place when I was a kid and, man oh man, did I eat up the reindeer routine! Lilly, on the other hand, had reason to be skeptical. She’d already been burned. Fake Santa couldn’t be trusted. “Plus,” Elliott accused, “she takes after her mother. She’s a cynic.” So Lilly was not about to jump on the reindeer bandwagon without good cause.

She walked up to the reindeer pen; surveyed the real, live reindeer inside; walked the length of the fence carefully observing these purported magical creatures. I thought we had her when Comet seemed to take particular interest in Lilly and strolled alongside her for the full length of the fence. Hoping to document some more Christmas magic, I asked her to turn around for a picture with Santa’s reindeer. When she turned to me, she was . . . well, a picture is worth a thousand words.

But I bet she’ll believe in the morning….

Unlike Lilly’s delivery, which was a mostly impromptu tour of birthing possibilities — induction, laboring without drugs, laboring with drugs, labor with complications, emergency c-section — Henry’s delivery proceeded like a well-oiled machine. Elliott and I strolled into the hospital at 6:30 a.m., registered for an 8:30 a.m. scheduled c-section, chatted with some friendly nurses for a bit as they poked my arms and other regions and hooked up a fetal heart monitor and whatnot. I walked into the O.R., hopped up on the table, let them jab a ridiculously long needle into my spine and away we went.

Once I was on the table, getting numb, I was shielded from viewing most of the action, so my very funny anesthesiologist sat on my side of the screen and gave me the play by play until Elliott came in to take over.

“So, it’s kind of my job to just sit here and talk with you to be sure you’re not freaking out or having any bad side effects.”

“Ok. Thank you.”

“And it’s kind of weird because I’m not sure if you’re aware of this . . . but you are, like, totally naked.”

“Yeah. I’d noticed that.”

“Ok, just checking.”

I thought that was pretty funny, but I wonder how many times a protective, anxiety-ridden soon-to-be dad has punched him in the face for that joke.

Anyway, before long, my OB was announcing to the room: “Christa. Elective C Section. No Tubes.” And in what seemed like the blink of an eye, I was told to prepare for a lot of pressure, and several adults pushed with all their might on my abdomen. Then we heard the best sound in the world: Henry’s cry and a nurse announcing, “He’s got good color!” (Indeed, he did. For the first couple days, Elliott and I referred to Henry as “lobster boy” due to his shockingly red coloring.)

So, at 8:29 a.m., one minute ahead of my scheduled operation, Henry arrived at an itty bitty 6 pounds 9 ounces, 19 1/2 inches. (Elliott won our guess-the-weight-pool.)

If the lead up to the delivery flew by in the blink of an eye, the wait to actually see my little boy after he was delivered seemed like an eternity. Elliott got to immediately walk over to where the nurses were cleaning Henry up and taking measurements to meet his son and snap some pictures. I was lying there listening as intensely as I could to every sound from the other side of the O.R. and waiting anxiously as the anesthesiologist wiped away my tears of joy for me.

Finally, I got to meet my little boy. And he was, in that moment and forevermore, perfect. Even if he did scream for two straight hours.

Proud sis, Lilly, welcomed her baby brother, Henry, at 8:29 a.m. on Monday. The whole family is back home together and enjoying our newest addition.

Despite the fact that his sister was a whopping 8 lbs. at birth and that I made several pre-delivery trips to return newborn clothes that I was convinced Henry would be too big for, this little guy weighed in at only 6 lbs. 9 oz. I can still hardly believe how tiny he is, but he is 100% sweetness. I’m in love.

In short, this is my last post before we become a family of 4.

It’s kind of impossible to articulate how I’m feeling right now. I’m less than 12 hours away from major abdominal surgery, which if all goes well, will leave me at the crest of an emotional roller coaster with a healthy baby boy, a proud husband, a sweet little girl, who will be an amazing big sister, a stapled incision and more than my fair share of happiness.

Wrap that thought up with physical discomfort and exhaustion, excited anticipation, anxiety about being away from Lilly and undergoing surgery; sprinkle with some wishful thinking, and voila! You have some idea of what is running through my mind with every passing second.

And somehow I’m supposed to get sleep tonight. Wish me luck!