Parenthood isn’t so much a stage you enter as it’s another dimension that devours you — body, soul, car keys and all. It’s a permanent “condition” that enters the bloodstream, travels to the brain and infects your pre-parenting world view. Similar to the Men in Black “neuralizer” (the flashy thingy), becoming someone’s mom or dad obliterates all memory of what life was like BK … Before Kids.

The transition to the “other side” — the side where the color and consistency of human waste make for acceptable dinner conversation, worry becomes religion and everything is captured on film – begins tamely enough. Just a slim pink line or measly blue plus sign heralds your life has forever changed.

For the next nine calendar flips, we gals live our prenatal lives with bungee-jumping hormones, lungs that inch daily toward our chins and reflections that truly “shock and awe” us simultaneously. Our every cell, every thought is transformed by new life. That’s why I felt compelled to explore and discuss each feature of the mother mode. My husband, not so much. (I’d casually mention “mucous plug” or “cervix dilation,” and hand him the grocery list on his way out.)

Then, just as we’re getting used to our miraculously swollen, baby-making selves, it’s time to get acquainted with the next transformation: the thrilling, yet sanity-testing, life-long responsibility we signed on for … being parents. So begins the lanolin-fueled, new-parent delirium that starts with baby’s first breath and ends when Dad returns to work, Grandma flies home and your angel, who finally slept three-and-a-half hours straight, discovers her decibel-defying shriek.

It’s that pre- (back-to-) reality, insulated bonding time between euphoric parents and newborns that I call the “babymoon.” Like a honeymoon with a baby, but less sleep and no sex, a babymoon is when Mommy and Daddy luxuriate in countless, astonishing “firsts.” It’s the dream-like stupor induced by two halves of separate hearts creating one, which beats in the chest of your son or daughter.

Cradle cap isn’t a knitted bonnet. The soft spot is in your heart and your baby’s head. “Onesies” aren’t followed by twosies, and sadly, a Diaper Genie can’t grant wishes.

I always get sentimental about the babymoon.

This (mostly) blissful period is when I employed the vocabulary that I’d been learning for three-quarters of a year; “swaddling,” “bilirubin,” “pertussis,” “Apgar,” “colostrum” are the passwords that grant new membership to the “Parents Only” club. Hubby and I also re-learned words with new meanings, like “latching,” “expressing” and “let-down” (which has nothing to do with blind dates or cellulite remedies). Cradle cap isn’t a knitted bonnet. The soft spot is in your heart and your baby’s head. “Onesies” aren’t followed by twosies, and sadly, a Diaper Genie can’t grant wishes.

The babymoon is when you plug in, turn on and wind up all of the new-fangled contraptions that have waited silently for a special homecoming. Unfamiliar gifts from veteran moms and purchases from new baby checklists — Sleep Sheep, Twilight Turtles, bulb syringes, Bumbo and bouncy seats, wipe warmers — morph into indispensable necessities overnight. Eventually, books with silly titles become favorites recited by heart.

It was during the babymoon when I began hoarding. Though remembering which side to nurse on proved too taxing for my sleep-deficient mind, suddenly dating, cataloging and preserving became obsessions! I saved the outgrown, gnawed and drooled on. Eventually, a cache of teeny teeth, bagged and tagged hair clippings, and three childhood’s worth of decorated doilies and handmade masterpieces were added to the sentimental collection. I lovingly recorded milestones in a special journal, never imagining a time when the treasured anthology would be neglected for an endless “to-do” list, crammed with a young family’s commitments.

Well-meaning, experienced parents attempt, but cannot fully prepare novices for their altered horizons. Beyond the advice and anecdotes, there are emotions and feelings they’ll have to try on for themselves. Honestly, can you prime a couple for the sensation of being alone with your child for the first time or becoming acutely aware that part of yourself exists outside your body? Is it possible to adequately describe what it’s like to rock your baby, feel newborn hair against your lips or lose track of time staring at a sleeping miracle?

Would I have believed that I would agonize over which detergent is the gentlest, cry over necessary infant inoculations and savor the faint “glub, glub” sound my son made while guzzling breakfast, his chubby fist tucked under his chin? How could I “get” the unexplainable, gravitational urge to check the baby one more time, or the way a distinct mobile’s waning strains can dissolve the day’s exhaustion and petty aggravations. And, could I comprehend that although the babymoon eventually ends, the heart-bursting, bring-you-to-your-knees blessing never does?