the one about the baby

This week on Facebook, I have had a lot of friends sharing a link to a beautifully written article by Sarah Bessey. The blog post details the feelings of a mother who is at the point in her life where she will not be having any additional children. Merely reading the article gives you what she calls “the ache,” the feeling you have in the pit of your stomach as you realize you will never experience “baby things” again.

As I was reading her article, I found my throat tightening and my eyes welling with tears, but for a different reason. I will be 30 years old in about six months. My husband and I have two beautiful girls, and we very much hope and plan to expand our family in the near future. It is what we pray for, what we dream of, and what we desire– more chairs around our table.

I was feeling a different sort of ache, however. The ache you feel when you realize that by bringing another child into this world, the one who has been your baby for, in our case, 15 months, will no longer be “the baby.” She will be the big sister. Life as she knows it will be over.

As a mother of two who hopes to be a mother of three (maybe four, but I don’t want to be greedy), I wonder if I have enough arms to hold them all at once. If I have enough hands to guide them safely all at once. If I have enough patience, enough energy, enough time.

If I will be enough, for all of them, all at once.

While my heart is starting to ache for that new baby smell, that sack-of-potatoes snuggle, that smile-in-their-sleep thing they do so well, my gut is aching for her new baby smell, her sack-of-potatoes snuggle, her smile-in-her-sleep thing she did so well.

These days, she grows more by the minute. She learns more by the hour. She wakes up a new clothing size. She looks more like a kid and less like a baby. That’s precisely the trouble with babies– we can’t figure out how to keep them little forever.

“Time for another one!” people like to say.

But I can’t replace this baby with a new baby. I can’t recreate her or find a replacement. As much as I yearn for a new baby, I yearn for my old baby, too.

I know I felt this way before we welcomed Charlotte as the new baby and said goodbye to Noelle as the old baby. I know I had reservations and worries. Somewhere, deep down, I’m still feeling that ache, too. There’s no medicine, no cure, no remedy.

God-willing, this chapter as a family of four will begin to close, and I pray we are blessed with more children.

But I predict that as I’m holding a new, beautiful, third baby in my arms, I will feel the ache as my old babies, both of them, wear their big sister shirts and walk away.