"What a difference a week makes!" I am talking to my friend Ilene, who has inquired about my baby and whether she still needs to hold her mommy's finger in order to fall asleep. I have reported that, happily, she has begun to sleep through the night on her own--and that this huge change in nocturnal schedule has happened just in the past week. "What a difference a week can make," she repeats, adding, "What a difference a day can make!"

It's true--and, I am fascinated to observe through my baby's experience, what a difference a minute can make. I have become so much more aware of how fleeting emotions (and the experiences that beget them) can be, if I let them. But too often we hold onto an emotion, forcing it to continue, because of the stories we tell ourselves about why we're feeling that way. Not so with babies. My Chloe can cover a spectrum of sentiment in the span of about 30 seconds, and it's always a delight to watch one of her little crystal tears disappear into the dimple of her cheek as she moves from frustration to laughter. Usually all it takes to elicit this response is raising my eyebrows and bugging my eyes out, which no doubt is a very funny sight indeed. But what a good reminder it is: that without our stubborn, cognitive massaging of it, an emotion can pass with a breath.

It is a spiritual practice, to notice an emotion, to be with it, without getting attached either to it or to the story of what we think caused it. What makes the difference for us as adults--why is it so much harder for us to let go than it is for babies? There are a number of reasons; but one of them, I think, is the capacity of wonder. For a baby, everything is new--there is always another amazing distraction or discovery to encounter, and even the must mundane item holds such glorious playtime possibilities (cardboard box, anyone?). It is a skill, and one that I'm hoping to relearn--to shift my focus from a frustration to a discovery; to remember what a difference a week, a day, a minute can make.

I lost my watch today--the one my husband gave me for Christmas a month after we became engaged, the one I've worn almost every day for five and a half years now. In some ways, the loss seems totally appropriate, for time has changed for me now--time means something completely different.

Four weeks ago today, I started the chapter of my New Story that is the most profound, and perhaps the most permanent--I became a mother. My precious baby daughter is 11 months old, born in China last July and, as adoptive mothers often say, born also in my heart. I dreamt about her before she was born; and when I saw her picture for the first time, I sobbed with a fierce, immediate love for this child, my child. It has been no different since we were united in person on May 31--I have a deep, amazing, abiding love for her, my little Chloe Xin.

That's the good news. There's also the fact that the last month has been one of the most challenging of my life--truly, to paraphrase the Bill Murray character in Lost in Translation, my life as I have always known it is now gone. I knew theoretically that I was in for a big change, but theory can only take you so far. The reality is being so sleep deprived (I now look sentimentally at May 30 as being the last night I slept all the way through) that I created a Stephen King-like plot for a short story--and I don't even write fiction--based on my own recent experiences. Here's the outline: A young baby will only fall asleep if she can hold her mother's finger or thumb. If her mother gently tries to move it to slip back into her own bed, the baby wakes up and cries. Desperate for sleep, the mother decides that she'd rather do without a digit than one more night without sleep. The ending of the short story? The baby holding on to a severed finger, with others lying close to it--and her mom, though self-mutilated, sleeping peacefully nearby.

Those of you who aren't mothers may think this terribly macabre and twisted. Those of you who are mothers will totally understand! And that's what I've become: a mother, and a woman now utterly in awe at those who have preceded me in what Oprah (and no doubt others) has called the hardest job in the world. With a 25-year professional career that has included several demanding positions to compare motherhood to, I can say with certainty that Oprah's right.

Needing to talk about some of motherhood's demands, I called my friend Ilene--a beautiful and vibrant woman in her early 70s and the beloved mother of five children. Ilene listened to me, then counseled: "Don't keep track of the challenges. Don't think in terms of 'It's been a month since I've had a full night's sleep.' Just do what you need to do--just keep going."

It's wise advice for anyone embarking on a New Story, whether it involves children or not. Don't focus on what's difficult; just do what needs to be done. Pay attention to the progress and the pleasures that occur along the way. Because here are some other facts: Despite feverishly wondering if I'll ever read another book, or even another magazine, or be able to spend more than 10 minutes at my computer ever again, I have found new, unexpected, simple joys: The sight of my daughter smiling is pure sunlight. Her little arms lifting up for me is a salve to my soul. And who knew that there was such elation to be found in a poopy diaper (or even that I would ever actually be using the term "poopy diaper")?! Such commonplace happinesses...now common to me. I am blessed by my baby; in many different ways, she has made all of my time so much richer for me.