SUBSCRIBE BELOW TO GET POSTS BY EMAIL

Enter your email address:

Wednesday, May 14, 2014

A Precious Calling

I loved seeing all the pictures online this week of my friends with their mothers.  As a mother I know how rare it is to be the one in the picture with my kids instead of the one behind the camera, and so I loved these glimpses. Mothers holding babies. Mothers fixing hair. Mothers on Christmas, Easter, wedding days. It was so beautiful to see Motherhood esteemed as the precious calling it is.

P.S. "Esteemed and precious calling" are not the usual terms I use to describe my daily vocation. But it is. Oh how it is. 

Yesterday I slept in til 6:50, rolling over and managing to pee and brush my teeth before the first little guy came in my room with his shy sleepy smile and side hug, his typical morning greeting. Not a minute later his perky sister bounded in, telling me she was “so excited!” about the day. (There was nothing special going on that I was aware of…) Then I heard the first strains of a cry from the littlest and they both informed me that Blue Eyes needed mommy. What would I do without these little helpers?

I’m 28.5 weeks pregnant today. Yesterday I had my 28 week check up, the one where you drink the bottle of orange goo and wait an hour to see how your pancreas responds to the influx of glucose you just downed.  Then I got a tetanus shot (a routine part of pregnancy now?), had my uterus examined and two brown-red vials of blood drawn. Being a momma-in-waiting in no glamorous thing.  My weight continues to climb upward (I'm officially up 30lbs for those of you keeping track), heartburn continues to plague me. My hips and pelvic region ache at the end of each day, no matter if I work out or try to take it easy. And oh my belly. It just keeps getting bigger.

It feels like I've been out of new mama mode for so long. Every now and then I'll say something to B Daddy like, "do you remember how small babies are?" or "what if this baby doesn't take a bottle?" I almost can't imagine what it's going to be like to go through all of that again. 

For this entire pregnancy I've been giving myself the pep talk that this time around will be much easier than last time. Yesterday I ran a quick errand with the kids and as we were nearing home I suddenly shouted to the bigs in the back, "OH MY GOSH ARE Y'ALL BUCKLED!?" Yes Mom was the instantaneous reply and I was transported back to my life when Blue Eyes was a baby and the Squirt couldn't even climb in the minivan by himself, let alone buckle. Sweet B was barely walking steadily and getting those three into the car and buckled up was more often than not a sweat-inducing and bad word causing activity. Now they get in the car and buckle themselves up and I don't even think about it. 

I am trying to appreciate that comparatively speaking, life is pretty easy right now. The kids get the milk out of the fridge for themselves and their little brother. Both bigs can dress themselves, pee by themselves and brush their own teeth. All three kids sleep through the night with regularity. No one is teething. No one depends on me for breastfeeding. I can leave my kids in the capable hands of grandparents or sitters for hours (or days!) at a time. All that is about to change again. 

This morning, when I woke at 4 to bring my feverish three year old a drink of water, I couldn't go back to sleep. My mind was in full gear, thinking about the next several months- what I need to do to prepare for #4's debut, what we need to get done today, this week, this month. 

I finally got up and decided that for today at least, I'm going to Carpe Kairos a little more intentionally. And this summer I'm going to bask in our time at the pool IN SPITE OF my large belly and my definitely not-sexy maternity swim suit. I'm going to SOAK up the days I spend away from the kids at the beach with my high schoolers before this guy makes his debut. I am going to appreciate the ease of having a baby in the belly as opposed to in the outside world. What a precious calling indeed. 


3 comments:

  1. I would have posted a Mother's Day photo but all mine were a. blurry b. kids were twisting out and falling out of our arms. We DID look nice though! Jack promised me a re-do! ;) And feel free to have me babysit all 4. I'm not scared.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Oh Katie...so precious...blessings, lynn

    ReplyDelete
  3. You're totally right about not having many pictures of me with my girls. They're so few and far between. As for #4 coming, your first three are pretty amazing-sounding, so I'm sure this one will follow suit (due to great parenting of course!). :)

    ReplyDelete

 
site design by designer blogs