Anticipation and Grieving

There's something sobering and sweet about the last days before another baby comes. 

It's equal parts anticipation and grieving; waiting eagerly for this child to make an entrance into the world, and watching the child in front of you, knowing change is imminent. Knowing it will never be "just us" anymore. Knowing that, although a new and wonderful chapter is about to unfold, this familiar chapter will be closed for good. It's bittersweet. 

I will never forget the last morning we had together- just me and my oldest- nursing in bed in the morning light, as I felt myself slipping into labor. She was so small. She was a baby- my only baby. 

And the next morning when she awoke and waddled her way into our room, we greeted her with a fresh, red-cheeked little sister. I swear, that night, she must have grown two years-worth. No longer did she seem so small and helpless, as she laid sweetly beside this tiny newborn stranger. No, she was big now. Only eighteen months old, but so big.

How was it possible that, only 24 hours before, she had only been a baby, and here she was, a toddler, so grown and smart and capable? 

But it was then, as I held my "big" and "little," that the words of every mother before me finally rang true. It was then that I felt my heart swell bigger, making room for another to fill. It was then that I was finally able to laugh with relief at my previous anxiety that I could never, ever love another child the way I loved my first. That somehow my love would be split. That there couldn't possibly be enough of me to give to another.

Yes, my oldest was no longer a baby. She was older, she was bigger; she was a toddler. But to me, she was still my baby. 

And today, almost two years later, as we approach the last days of the chapter of two, and prepare to flip the page and begin the chapter of three, I still see my baby when she looks at me. She can put a 12 piece puzzle together by herself, and create a house out of stacked-up books, and make herself a sandwich, and tell me a made-up story, and wash her own hands. But when I look into her face, I still see that same 18 month old baby that I nursed that late summer morning. The one who called me "mama" and wore diapers and had a chubby little protruding belly. I think I'll always see her in there, even if just in glimpses. 

So I blink back some tears from time to time, as I watch my "big" and "little," knowing that in the coming days, a new "little" will be shifting the framework of our family. Knowing that these beautiful babies of mine will so soon be my "bigs." That they will look so tall as they tower over the next newborn stranger who will come to live with us. That they will seem so old as they teach him all the things they know. 

But, more than everything else, that at the end of the day, when those big kids snuggle up with me, wet-haired from bathtime and dressed in footie pajamas, milk in sweet little hands, I'm going to see the eyes of the same newborn babies I saw so many years ago, as they laid on my chest for the very first times. 

"As long as I'm living, my baby you'll be."