May 25, 2015
5 days ago, I gave birth to my last baby. Meowmina was born on May 20, 2015 at 11:11am. She was 5 lbs, 13 oz.She is a precious gift
to our family. She has the sweetest
spirit, rarely fusses and is easily content.
I am amazed at how much you can love someone in a few short days. Barbara Kingsolver wrote in Poisonwood Bible:
A mother’s body remembers her babies – the folds of soft flesh, the
softly furred scalp against her nose. Each child has its own entreaties to body and soul. It’s the last one, though, that overtakes
you. I can’t dare say I loved the others
less, but my first three were all babies at once, and motherhood dismayed me
entirely. The twins came just as Rachel
was learning to walk. What came next I
hardly remember, whole years when I battled through every single day of
grasping hands and mouths until I could fall into bed for a few short hours and
dream of being eaten alive in small pieces. I counted to one hundred and I rocked, contriving the patience to get
one down in order to take up another. One mouth closed on a spoon meant two crying empty, feathers flying, so
I dashed back and forth like a mother bird, flouting nature’s maw with a brood
too large. I couldn’t count on survival
until all three of them could stand alone. Together they were my first issue. I took one deep breath for every step they took away from me. That’s how it is with the firstborn, no
matter what kind of mother you are – rich, poor, frazzled half to death or
sweetly content. A first child is your
own best foot forward, and how you do cheer those little feet as they strike
out. You examine every turn of flesh for
precocity, and crow it to the world.
But the last one: the baby who trails her scent like a flag of
surrender through your life when there will be no more coming after – oh,
that’s love by a different name. She is
the babe you hold in your arms for an hour after she’s gone to sleep. If you put her down in the crib, she might
wake up changed and fly away. So instead
you rock by the window, drinking the light from her skin, breathing her exhaled
dreams. Your heart bays to the double
crescent moons of closed lashes on her cheeks. She’s the one you can’t put down.
This describes almost perfectly how I feel
about this sweet baby I feed at night. I feel that the clock follows me around
reminding me that she’ll be grown before I know it. I have enjoyed and treasured every infant I
have had, but I feel an urgency with Hannah that I didn’t have with the others. I know she’s slipping out of my fingers
before I held her long enough to convey how much I love her. All of mine have grown too fast…and when I
try to remember details about each one’s infancy, I mourn the memories I mix up
or have let slip away into fatigue and mental confusion. I know that the magic of motherhood will give
way to the beauty of maturity. They’ll
become their own little people, and I will revel in the differences and
celebrate the individual achievements. But, I know they will leave me. I
hope that they will want to move on to the next stage…and that stage requires
independence and separation from their mom. I know it’s coming, my heart just can’t totally catch up.
My doctor did a hysterectomy following the
C-section. That was the plan. I have needed the hysterectomy for years. The
pain of endometriosis has gotten excruciating. But, I knew we were to have 8. I
started doubting earlier this year when we had been trying for 8 months, and
the drs were suggesting that maybe I just have the hysterectomy. We finally set up the hysterectomy for
December 11th. I knew that I
needed to work on accepting Heavenly Father’s will…whatever that was. I knew I needed to stop trying by the
beginning of November and in the middle of September, I found out I was
pregnant. It was such a hard
pregnancy. I was in my first year of my
PhD, and I wasn’t sleeping, I was nauseated more with her than any other baby, and
my back hurt literally every day. I was
pretty close to miserable every day for 9 months. And, every day of that was worth it…to give
us Meowmina. She is perfect. She is beautiful, tiny, precious and I love
every detail of her.
I have been warned of the recovery of a
hysterectomy for months, and yet, I feel great. I haven’t had any major side effects of the surgery and all I feel is
just happiness at her presence in our life. I feel that Heavenly Father has given Brent and me so much to be thankful
for…He knew that we were willing to do whatever he asked, and now we have 8
beautiful children to put to bed at night. The last decade has been an amazing trip of faith and commitment to our
Father in Heaven, and he has blessed us tenfold. I have everything I could possibly want in
life. The most wonderful husband and 8
beautiful children that our mine forever.
