I watch you sometimes when you’re unaware. Occasionally you even catch me, and then you’ll give me that look, raised eyebrow, lopsided smirk. You have no idea. You have no idea what I see.
I think about the wait for your arrival, and I remember all the thoughts I had as you grew inside me. Naturally there was excitement, and there was also trepidation over what kind of mother I would be, but then there was that underlying, constant concern. It was always there, even when I wasn’t consciously thinking about it.
I worried about you. I worried about that tiny baby I could not see. I worried if you were growing like you were supposed to, and though I trusted God for your life I still took about a billion pregnancy tests that first month just to make sure you were still in there somewhere.
It was crazy. All that worry for nothing. But there it was anyway.
When I wasn’t worrying, I was crying. I cried over stuff I didn’t know I could cry about. Happy, beautiful moments of celebration suddenly made me weepy.
I watched the scale numbers go up, and I guess that was about the only thing I didn’t cry about. I just wanted you fat and healthy.
I watched my nose spread, my hips spread, and then even my feet spread! I hung over the commode, and when I wasn’t laying head first over that porcelain bowl I was sitting on it again to relieve my never-empty bladder. I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t find a comfortable position to sit, and it hurt to stand. My bosom swelled, and so did my belly; a dark line painted by God swept across my blossoming middle.
You kicked so hard, but that was probably the only thing about the whole nine months that was truly enjoyable. It reminded me you were okay, that you were strong, feisty, and getting ready to meet me.
After your birth I wondered when I would feel right again, and though those aches and pains in my muscles slowly subsided over the next month, the emotional ups and downs never went back to the way things once were. Not that I had time to think about my hormonal instability.
No, I was too concerned with you to worry about me. Were you eating enough? Were you peeing and pooping enough? Were you growing enough? Did all babies wake every two hours all night long?! Was that a cough?! So many questions.
We made it though. We made it through the colic, the gas pains, and even teething. We made it through the terrible twos, and also the throes of the threenager. And through all the questions, whether the hundreds asked by you, or the pleading ones I begged of myself, the answer was always the same. It still is.
I would do it all over again.
I look at you, and I see the best thing that ever came from me. I look at you, and all the questions I may have of “if I’m good enough” seem to pale in the shadow of how good I did when I made you. Everything I have ever dreamed to be, or everything I have imagined I could achieve reaches culmination when I gaze at your lovely face. I would do it all over again. In a heartbeat.
No matter the struggles we have faced in the past, or the struggles that lie ahead in our future, I am certain of one thing. I was made for this. I was made for you, and you were made for me. And no matter how hard certain aspects have been, or how difficult some days seem I know this one thing with absolute certainty.
Baby, I would do it all over again.