Waiting

Today I read an achingly beautiful article, that like most things it seems these days, had me weeping.

I am at the tail end of this long, long pregnancy, at last.  While with Cora I did not yet feel ready when she surprised us by coming just after 37 weeks, now I am waiting, waiting, waiting. 

I am still a week shy of my due date, but already to a time when I thought I'd be snuggled in with my baby, not still noticing the daily expansion of my surprisingly round belly.

Each day I wake up wondering if it will be today.  And I go to bed at night, only to wake the next morning (and several times through the night) with the same thoughts.

To read this article today finally gave some shape to the way I've been feeling.  Moody and weepy, short-tempered and sentimental.  Impatient and still afraid...  Feeling incapable of doing anything of value, and still feeling an urgent need to cling to and appreciate the little moments that make up these days.

I am standing on the precipice of waiting for my life to change, yet again.  There really is no comparison for the changes that becoming a mother effects.  No other transition I have gone through that has shifted and formed me, or changed me down to my very being.  Yet here I am, about to become a mother again.  Is that really right?  Am I becoming a mother once again?  It feels like it to me.

I know what it is to be Cora's mother so far.  But what do I know about this new baby?  I know her sweet bumpy hiccups, soft kicks and long stretches.  I know that she likes to kick her big sister, and sometimes tries to hide when another hand tries to sneak in and feel her movements.  I know that she has been in there for what feels like eternity, and that carrying her has seemed to bring my life to a stand-still.  I've been to a large extent off my feet for about four months now, wondering how my body and my sanity would make it to the end.  I've been feeling so much guilt for not having the same energy for my Cora Bean, missing out on the spring and most of the summer, and staying inside watching way too much television.  It has felt so long and so lonely, and honestly, so very hard.

It's so hard to believe that this phase will soon come to an end.  And even harder to believe that a new phase will begin.

In the meantime, I find my moments of real joy in the snuggles that I get with my lovely little three-year old.  I climb into my bed in between bed-time and nap-time and she happily follows me in for the sweetest of embraces and a few giggles.  Those moments are what are carrying me through.

And there are those moments when I realize (although still in a kind of disbelief) that I will soon be creating new moments of a joy with an entirely new person, a person that I will somehow love as much as I love my Cora.

It's in those moments that I know that this waiting is worthwhile.