9 mo of
me
for all
of you

Going through some boxes this weekend I found one of the many journals I scribble in when I have a thought I don’t want to forget. I remember being in the car when I thought of this – I was just thinking about what it takes to be a mom. A parent. What it really takes. How giving they say a parent is – especially the mother. To incubate life until it’s mature enough to live outside of her and then to continue to incubate that life until it’s ready to live without her.

9 months of me … for all of you.

I find this thought and the feelings that go with it beautiful. Not because they were my words or a thought I had while driving somewhere – but because the simplicity of it all.

We wanted to expand our family so we had conversations ad nauseum about it – then one afternoon Aaron sat down next to me on the couch with this goofy look (I was R-E-A-D-Y to have another baby) and he says “I think we should have another baby.”

Just like that. Whatever process he had to go through to get there finally ended with that statement. It was time. He was ready.

Little did I know that another pregnancy would render my body helpless to bounce back, to regain it’s composer, to take care of it’s self once again without help.

Obviously I wouldn’t change it for the world. But I very much remember life without our son – it was easier in so many aspects. We had our daughter all to ourself. We loved it. But being on this side of the family we’re building – with him …

it’s breath taking.

9 months of me…
for all of you.

I’m learning now though that the work of “me” is forever expounded beyond the 9 months. That the hard work doesn’t get hard for about 5 years … and then keeps on going. Sleepless nights and endless feeding schedules/diapers and decisions in those first years are all encompassing and most of the time isolating. You have to lose yourself to the process to finally come out on the other end with any idea of what the next phase of life might look like.

I think for us that next stage is just like a pregnancy. We’re in the 7th month of a pregnant life – once our lease is up in this apartment we will have been living here for a gestational period.

The third trimester of the “in between” is just beginning and it’s getting uncomfortable.

I love the symbolism here – that I’m still asked if we’re going to have more babies when, if you could just rename what a birth might look like to you, you’d all see that we’re in the thick of growing our family right now.

Soon, very soon, we’ll have announcements. They might even have a name. I don’t know what it is, what we’re having – where we’re going. But I do know that it’s new.

A beginning.

Nine months of me ………………. for all of you.