An open letter to my last baby:
I never thought I would be here, especially after the years of infertility, but here we are. Time has a way of hitting fast forward without you realizing it, especially in parenthood. It has been a privilege to watch you grow and to be a witness to all your firsts that were also my last. I tried my hardest to soak it all in as much as I could. As you can tell I haven’t fully accepted that this phase of motherhood is over for me.
I find my mind wandering back to your first 48 hours of life, and I just start to cry. They are always tears of joy, but deep down I feel brief sadness that I will never have that experience again. Your birth was one of the most amazing days of my life. The days that followed, the weeks that turned into months, and now the months that have turned into an entire year, have been an incredible journey.
My pregnancy with you was far from perfect and filled with some of the hardest days. A subchorionic hemorrhage to start, and nausea for too many weeks to count. The worst exhaustion I had ever had, and then came the finger pricks daily until the very end. The positive that came from that was that I got to watch you grow on the screen every few weeks to monitor your growth.
You weren’t my first baby, or my first c-section, but your birth was something magical.
My prior births both involved some sort of trauma, so when we got close to your day, I made every effort to get the redemptive birth I wanted. And we did it! You came into this world screaming, and baby girl, I was instantly a puddle of tears. Crying so hard that they had to tell me to stop so they could stitch me up.
But in all that preparation for your arrival, no one prepared me for what it would feel like when I realized you were my last.
Sweet girl, you completed our family in ways I didn’t even know needed completion. And even though I know our family is complete, I think in some ways a part of me will always grieve this time of my life. Birthing babies is something so magnificent. I will miss everything about it. From all the years of infertility injections, to giving birth. The hard days of recovery, and sleepless newborn nights. I will even miss the difficulty that breastfeeding is at the beginning and the postpartum blues. I will miss it all so very much.
So here we are celebrating your first birthday, and at the same time I am also saying goodbye to my very last baby stage. As you enter toddlerhood this month, I am preparing myself to experience a new set of last firsts.
You will no doubt find me crying in a year as we celebrate your second birthday, baby girl!
