’cause it’s on my mind

Isabelle is closing in on eighteen months old.  This is the longest it has yet taken me to consider the possibility of another baby.  In truth, the consideration right now is far from being a certainty of longing.  While there’s no denying the unequivocal blessing that each of my children are, there are so many things in life right now that temper the notion that we should eagerly pursue having as many children as God would give us.

Most insistent in my mind is the inescapable reality that my body is still not fully recovered from the c-section with Isabelle.  At least monthly, if not more often, there’s a stretch of a few days when my scar just hurts.  Sometimes waking me up at night.  Sometimes surprising me with its intensity.  It goes away eventually, and I forget a little, and my mind wonders if maybe my body is healed enough…but in the moments when it’s there, the thought of another pregnancy really scares me.  Like, deep down fear that it could be really bad for me, or worse, really bad for a baby that would need to be kept safe and healthy by my weakened womb.  So, I think about the possibility of being done…and it doesn’t always reduce me to tears as it has in the past.

But there are times, too, when Isabelle actually goes back to sleep on her own after waking up at three in the morning, and I just lie awake crying because my baby is becoming little girl faster than my heart can handle, and it has to happen, I know…and at some point, there will have to be no more babies and I’ll have to be able to let go of these days and maybe it’s selfish to want another little one so that I don’t have to let go just yet, but is it possible that the longing is still there because God has put it into my heart to have more?  Will there ever be a time when the last one can be the last one without deep sadness?  I feel strongly that this isn’t supposed to be our determination, but a yielding to the Lord…yet there is still a choosing necessary and I am just not certain about what wisdom looks like in this choice.

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