All I wanted was to hold her and feel her delicate skin touch mine, and through all the beeping and blood-pressure checking, crying, smiling and shaking, hand holding and stalling… it came time for the greatest gift life has to give, the crescendo that is new life. The final push.
With cheeks stained from tears, I’m transported to that place in time where she made me a mother, again. And for all the times I dreamt of holding my own little ones in my arms, for all the baby names I whispered just to see which ones felt right flowing through my lips… little did I know the effect her two little years and that of her brother’s would have. The immeasurable, invaluable joy their presence brought in our home. That just loving them, knowing them, watching them, breathing them would teach me the heart-bursting, fear-quenching, soul-satisfying kind of love.
It’s a birthday. The beautiful celebration of her birth.
I try and attach words to the beauty, the heaven that is wrapped up in loving a little one and yet, it’s something that words cannot attach to, because it really is so much more. And yet, I try.
Loving her, loving them this much, stomach clenching, tears spilling… means living up to everything I hope them to be someday. I couldn’t be more honored to have the challenge of teaching them everything there is to know about this big, beautiful, wonderful life.
And yes, maybe that’s where it can get a little scary, but watching them soak up life with ferocious and yet precious intensity… every fear, every doubt goes away somehow.
Two years may not seem like a very long time, but it’s changed our family forever, for the good.
Happy Birthday, Raegan Michelle. Oh, you are loved. Today we celebrate you, as a too-cute little two-year-old.
Oh, and did I forget to mention......
