{Just a heads up....this post is long! It's filled with thoughts that have been on my mind for months now, so forgive my rambling.}
A few months back, I was standing in the play room, using the folding table to sort through clothes for a consignment sale. Cleaning out the outgrown clothes always pulls at my heartstrings a bit because it means the kids are growing up, but this was different. I suddenly had a stack of maternity clothes. And I burst into tears. Of course, Jarrod looked at me like I'm a crazy person, and I just couldn't put into words how I was feeling...so I let another blogger do it for me. I grabbed the iPad and pulled this post up, and asked him to read it. {Be warned, you will very likely need tissues....here I am reading it for probably the fourteenth time and I'm a puddle of tears once again.}
A few months back, I was standing in the play room, using the folding table to sort through clothes for a consignment sale. Cleaning out the outgrown clothes always pulls at my heartstrings a bit because it means the kids are growing up, but this was different. I suddenly had a stack of maternity clothes. And I burst into tears. Of course, Jarrod looked at me like I'm a crazy person, and I just couldn't put into words how I was feeling...so I let another blogger do it for me. I grabbed the iPad and pulled this post up, and asked him to read it. {Be warned, you will very likely need tissues....here I am reading it for probably the fourteenth time and I'm a puddle of tears once again.}
Here are a few of the parts that really touched me when I first read that post...
'I was unprepared for how completely transformative I found motherhood, how I loved even the mundane dailyness, how I found joy here.'
'It’s likely that I won’t ever be pregnant again, that I won’t carry a baby within me again, that I won’t ever give birth again. (Yes, I’m one of those awful women who loves pregnancy and giving birth.) When I think about not breastfeeding – one of the most real things I’ve ever done with this body – ever again, I catch my breath with longing.'
The Ache, right underneath my lungs, in the pit of my gut, the ache of what that means and the grief of moving on, of love, of knowing: No more babies. No more nursing quietly in the night. No more flour sack of milk-drunk baby bliss. No more gummy smiles. No more tiny diapers. No more baby clothes. No more crib. No more baby wearing. No more new baby smell. No more of the millions of moments that knit your heart so completely to another small soul.
But the Ache changes and grows as we move through our years, I imagine, perhaps in proportion to the life we live, the love we gather and give.
Our lives are changing. At first it was the big milestones.... Riley decided she no longer would sleep in the crib, so a big girl bed was bought. Riley insisted on wearing panties, so potty training began {and took a LONG six months...} But lately, it's the little things that have been on my mind. She's drinking her milk out of a regular cup. She and Gavin shared a bed in the hotel earlier this month, not needing to sleep next to me. I am able to take advantage of my Mother's Day gift of lunch and a spa appointment, keeping in the front of my mind the memories of being gone for just a couple short hours and how she screamed and cried, needing me to nurse her. And I realize these focus mostly on Riley, because she is the 'baby' in the family, but do I have to mention the fact that Gavin is about to graduate from kindergarten, no longer needs me to walk him in to school so he feels more comfortable, and is doing chores around the house like sorting laundry and emptying the dishwasher? I mean, seriously...how did we get here so fast???
Don't get me wrong...they're both still so little, and needy. I still stand next to Gavin's bed at night and rub his back for him at his request. We still need to help him brush his teeth or we'll be paying to have cavities filled left and right. I still had to unbuckle my seatbelt and climb into the back seventeen times on the three hour drive to Kansas City because Riley had sneezed all over herself, was spilling her water bottle, or had dropped the book she was reading down the side of her car seat. You know when she's not feeling well because she is constantly asking to be held and rocked. {And I will rock her any time she asks!}
Any time I catch myself saying something about how I can't believe we don't have any babies in the house anymore, Jarrod always chimes in that we could always have another. But that opens up a whole new can of worms. Having an odd number where one child will always be 'left out' bothers me, a lot. So, we'd need to have two more kids to balance that out....Jarrod says no way. Of course, we have to factor in that kids are expensive, and we don't want to give up me staying home with the kids, so money always goes through my mind. I think about things that we're able to do now that Riley's getting bigger and think how different things would be if we added another baby to the mix. And I love this stage that we're in. I love that we can have family dates to the movies, we can think about planning trips {like to Disney!}, and we can think about actually having a date night every now and then {not that we have...but it is a possibility! High maintenance Riley didn't make that a possibility for a couple years.}
I think about our little family, and it feels perfect. It feels complete and wonderful. But there's still something inside me that has a hard time selling that swing and pack 'n play that is still in the attic! Reading this blog post about 'the ache' made me realize that these tears I cry when I think about not having another baby aren't necessarily because I want another baby, they're just because that chapter of my life is closing, and it was such an amazing chapter. I always wanted to be a mom, but I never ever realized how much it would effect me. I never knew how seeing the world through your own child's eyes would change the way you view everything. I never wanted to breastfeed, and I spent 28 months nursing a baby. I grew up knowing in my heart I wanted a teaching career, and I walked away from that career for my babies with no regrets. Motherhood changed my life dramatically, and I'm so thankful for that.
I've learned to never say never. I'm sure my parents said they'd never have more kids after Megan, and 12 years later that changed. I said I'd never move away from Ohio. We all know how that turned out. So I won't say we'll never have another baby. But I'm pretty confident that the Pate family will always be a perfect family of four....and I'm so looking forward to all the memories we'll make as we go through new stages of life together, even if I am still living with the ache.
