Dear baby boy,
How I went from telling folks: "We're having another baby!" to "I'm due a week from Sunday" I simply can't recall.
So much living found its way into what, last summer, seemed like a giant nine-month chasm that it now looks too small to contain anything more until it bursts and takes the shape of something else entirely.
Ready to burst -- that's quite literally how my body feels now as I await your arrival. And I suppose that's where I am with motherhood, too. Wrapping my brain around how to learn for a fourth time to love a new human being with everything that I am feels like trying to collect the contents of an ocean in a salad bowl. There's no way to do it, but somehow it's going to happen. I know that it will. That's where the grace of God comes in.
Your siblings are ecstatic about the mere idea of you.
They draw a new picture or write a new poem almost every day to hang in your nursery. They speculate about which one of them you'll most resemble. They rub my belly like I'm a genie's lamp. They wonder if it's at all possible the ultrasound technician got your gender wrong -- twice -- and you're actually a sister. They try very hard to pin the midwives down to the exact date and time of your arrival and they love you. They don't know the first thing about you. But they love you more than they'll ever let on when you're 10 and they're 15, 17 and 19.
Your Papa is so busy. He works a bankers' hours job at the Pentagon and has taken on grad school. He's helping Calvin with his Pinewood Derby car. He's teaching Henry how to swim. He's reminding Lili each day how beautiful and accomplished she is. He's hefting laundry for me and washing dishes when my back is sore. To be honest, he forgets for much of the day that I'm carrying you. He doesn't have you rolling around inside him as a reminder. When he does remember it goes something like this:
Just the other day I wrote a birth plan for our midwives so they know our desires for labor and delivery. It's mostly nuts and bolts about cord-cutting and breast-feeding and newborn procedures. But when I had your Papa read it over, he had tears in his eyes. He was overwhelmed by the idea of your coming into our lives. It makes him so happy.
And then, there's my experience of you. I've been meeting your needs unthinkingly for nearly 40 weeks now and I still don't feel I know you. I know how much you'll change my everyday life and I'm ready for it.
Meantime, I'm trying to get through a perpetual daily to-do list that doesn't ever have a space to write "Stop. Take a break. Have a baby." How can I possibly do that? There's so much else to do.
So I've come to the point where I need to decide that when your birth is eminent, I need to choose only you for a moment. As much as I can, I will steer my focus away from the PTA, away from Sunday school, away from small group, away from play dates, ice-skating lessons and ballet. Away from what's next and who needs me now.
And for the brief moment that I'm able to ignore all of that in order to bring forth life from my body once again, I'll be able to know right away what we've all been waiting for: You.
Love,
Mama
How I went from telling folks: "We're having another baby!" to "I'm due a week from Sunday" I simply can't recall.
So much living found its way into what, last summer, seemed like a giant nine-month chasm that it now looks too small to contain anything more until it bursts and takes the shape of something else entirely.
Ready to burst -- that's quite literally how my body feels now as I await your arrival. And I suppose that's where I am with motherhood, too. Wrapping my brain around how to learn for a fourth time to love a new human being with everything that I am feels like trying to collect the contents of an ocean in a salad bowl. There's no way to do it, but somehow it's going to happen. I know that it will. That's where the grace of God comes in.
Your siblings are ecstatic about the mere idea of you.
They draw a new picture or write a new poem almost every day to hang in your nursery. They speculate about which one of them you'll most resemble. They rub my belly like I'm a genie's lamp. They wonder if it's at all possible the ultrasound technician got your gender wrong -- twice -- and you're actually a sister. They try very hard to pin the midwives down to the exact date and time of your arrival and they love you. They don't know the first thing about you. But they love you more than they'll ever let on when you're 10 and they're 15, 17 and 19.
Your Papa is so busy. He works a bankers' hours job at the Pentagon and has taken on grad school. He's helping Calvin with his Pinewood Derby car. He's teaching Henry how to swim. He's reminding Lili each day how beautiful and accomplished she is. He's hefting laundry for me and washing dishes when my back is sore. To be honest, he forgets for much of the day that I'm carrying you. He doesn't have you rolling around inside him as a reminder. When he does remember it goes something like this:
Just the other day I wrote a birth plan for our midwives so they know our desires for labor and delivery. It's mostly nuts and bolts about cord-cutting and breast-feeding and newborn procedures. But when I had your Papa read it over, he had tears in his eyes. He was overwhelmed by the idea of your coming into our lives. It makes him so happy.
And then, there's my experience of you. I've been meeting your needs unthinkingly for nearly 40 weeks now and I still don't feel I know you. I know how much you'll change my everyday life and I'm ready for it.
Meantime, I'm trying to get through a perpetual daily to-do list that doesn't ever have a space to write "Stop. Take a break. Have a baby." How can I possibly do that? There's so much else to do.
So I've come to the point where I need to decide that when your birth is eminent, I need to choose only you for a moment. As much as I can, I will steer my focus away from the PTA, away from Sunday school, away from small group, away from play dates, ice-skating lessons and ballet. Away from what's next and who needs me now.
And for the brief moment that I'm able to ignore all of that in order to bring forth life from my body once again, I'll be able to know right away what we've all been waiting for: You.
Love,
Mama
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