Open door confession time...we're trying to have another baby. My husband has wanted this for awhile, and I finally feel ready now. Ask me two years ago, and I wasn't. If anything, I was terrified. I felt I couldn't give my other children my all while nurturing a new baby. It felt unfair to them. I told myself I would only let everyone down. When I was carrying my son, I felt ready. Things felt right. I was instantly connected to him and I did everything in my power to carry a healthy pregnancy to term. But there were still so many challenges. Before I even got pregnant with him, I became a mom in an unorthodox way. I am the mother to another woman's child, and looking back, I never really had time to process what this would truly mean. I adore my daughter and I wouldn't change our story at all, but I held onto an underlying bitterness and resentment for the load I had to carry, for the loss we both experienced. It metastasized until I hated my own reflection, until I felt undeserving of her love, of motherhood itself. But time, love, and growth, it changes things.
What never does?
Well, probably the fact that it's an all encompassing journey. Motherhood is a hurricane of feelings. It always will be. It's mercurial in every way. We give, give, and give. We're socialized to do this. And then we slowly disappear until we can't find ourselves. Society celebrates the birth of a baby, but they forget about the birth of the mother. Nobody tells you that each time you become a mother, somebody different emerges. Someone entirely unknown to the person you once were. It's transformative in the best and worst ways imaginable. It stretches your capacity love, give, and show up in life. There is never-ending grief. Unbounded joy. Some moments where you shrink, others where you step into power.
If this next baby is to be, time will only tell. As for the beautiful expectant mother in this picture? I can't reclaim her. But I can give her something better...I can give her a rebirth.