Babies are often anticipated, tearfully welcomed and exhaustedly cared for. My last one caught me totally off guard, I didn't take the news of her impending arrival well.
My husband and I had tried unsuccessfully to become pregnant with our third child for about 10 years at which time we began persuing adoption. With the successful addition of our two youngest sons, Steven and Sean, I was finally able to quell the maternal voice screaming within me to have more children. My family was complete.
I busily set about raising my four little men with vigor and enthusiasm. I read books about raising boys, I brushed up on my soccer skills and I settled in to my home filled with masculinity. Only occasionally did I yearn for a girl child. Too old to be pregnant (the past had indicated that wouldn't happen anyway) and restricted by insufficient living space to adopt anymore children, I set aside my dreams of pink hair bows and shopping trips.
The summer the boys turned one, I got a bit of a shock. After two adoptions and twelve years of unexplained infertility...I was pregant. I sunk to the kitchen floor with the offending pee stick in my hand. I began crying, not tears of joy as you might expect, but tears of irony and despair. I was old, fat and exhausted. For nine months I fretted over the health of the baby, my weight gain, how I was going to manage three babies under two and how all this would affect my tenuous hold on sanity.
God, in His infinite wisdom saw fit to deliver unto me my girl. The second I held her sweet pink little body close to mine, I new all was right with the world. The warmth of her and the delicious scent of her skin carried me through the first five months of colic and the twelve months of pumping for her. My girl was worth the heartache and definitely worth the wait.
Mama loves you Bella.
