Due Dates

The Fourth of July was the due date for the second baby. I let the first due date go without saying anything here because, well, it was about two days after my first job offer and two days before I boarded a plane for my second job interview in Utah. And since then, well, life has been a blur.

I almost forgot the first due date, but I remembered the night before and had a mini-breakdown. In retrospect, however, that breakdown wasn't just about the baby. It was about these new possibilities that were being laid before us and trying to make sense of what our life would look like.

What I notice today, more than anything, is that this due date is easier than the first one was. Maybe it's because more of our future is figured out. Maybe it's because Baby and my body have been particularly ornery lately. What I feel more than anything today regarding our children is peace. Even last week when the midwife told us there might be something wrong with the baby's kidneys and we should go in for another ultrasound, I was completely at peace. Knowing, somehow, everything would be okay. It was, and we had the added bonus of seeing this lovely face.

I has cleaning today, and I dusted off the cross we have in the office. This cross will go in the baby's room in our new house and has written on it the virtues "faith, hope, love." It struck me that this is how my view of this baby's life has developed. Keeping faith, even in those dark days this fall, that there would be another baby someday, some way. Then hope that this little life that surprised us would stay with us. And then the deep, deep love that has developed for this kiddo over the past 33 weeks. This love filled the room last week when that sweet baby open its eyes for us on the ultrasound and looked right into our hearts. Ben grabbed my shoulder at that moment, overwhelmed. It was, simply, magical.

I have not done much to mark the other babies' due dates. But I have listened to "Olivianna" by J.J. Heller on both these days. It is no secret that I leaned heavily on music to get me through last fall. I discovered Heller and this song in the spring, and I think I found this song at the perfect moment. This song is inspired by the story of Amber and Luke Grover and their daughter Olivanna. You can read their story here. (Although I urge you not to read the blog the day of your 20 week ultrasound. You will start texting one of your friend in the midst of a panic attack. Let's not talk about how I know this). The Grovers' story is far more heart wrenching than our own. Their insights are beautiful and their strength is inspiring.



The thing I really love about Heller's song is that the music is, at times, upbeat. This is not a dirge. And as I came out of the other side of grief, I needed the hopeful resignation the song provides. My favorite line is "Life is short but it is wide" - something a relative of the Grovers' wrote to them in an email following Olivanna's death. I want this engraved on something. Today I was thinking I really would love to have it engraved on the back of this necklace. The necklace features lyrics from "When I'm With You," which is Baby and my song. I would love to have a necklace that encapsulates our whole journey toward becoming parents, both the sorrow and the joy, the bitter and the sweet. Because if I have learned anything in the past year it's that life is nothing but a negotiation between these emotions and it is what we do with these disparate challenges that matters.

I wish I had something eloquent to say to either my first babies or my third-time's-the-charm baby on this occasion, but I don't. Just that I love you all and you have all taught me so, so much (and to the one currently jabbing me in the ribs - yes, I know you are just beginning to show me everything you know). I am grateful for each of your lives.