dear molly.featured

When you were born, I broke. Quite literally. 

It started with my water breaking six hours before your scheduled induction and five days past your expected due date.

Quickly followed by a bleary 2AM race to the hospital praying that the unexpected bleeding would stop and you would be safe.

Continued with a tense ten hours of watching your heart rate dip on the monitor with every contraction. My heart clenching along with it in a desperate, unspoken prayer to hold you safely.

Culminated in a delirious hour of pushing, shaking from fear and hormones and the wild anticipation of your sweet head finally resting on my chest. Close to my heart that had ached and begged and grieved and hoped its way to you through years of trying and months of waiting.

And then, you were here. 

The moment I saw you, I knew. Of course it was you. With a chin to match your daddy’s and a tuft of dark hair sticking up on top of your head. Scrawny legs and big feet and the most perfect cheeks. You.

The months of imagining and wondering what you would look like seemed silly when the baby on my chest was so intimately known. Every stretch of your arm, every curl of your tiny feet, every hiccup made me giggle at the familiarity of your movements from months of carrying you.

The reality of your life, holding you in my arms, undid me. As joy coursed through every atom of my body, I said to your dad, “It physically hurts to love someone this much. It feels like my heart can’t contain it all.”

The brokenness didn’t end there though. 

Looking at your face in those early days, I knew two things about motherhood. I loved you more than I could fathom. And I was drowning. 

In the nursing I expected to be intuitive but was in fact immensely awkward and painful. 

In the delirium of weeks upon weeks of little sleep. 

In my own delayed recovery as I often forgot to eat or drink much less sleep. 

In the crippling anxiety creeping up, preparing to roar in all its rage.

Weeks passed without us entering the picture perfect nursery I’d spent so much time preparing. The fancy newborn clothes and shoes never left the closet. All the contraptions and trappings I had thought were necessary suddenly seemed ridiculous when all you wanted was to be held and nursed every minute of every day.

As he always does, your dad saw me in my pain and led me through it. He got me the medical and family help I needed to manage the suffocating avalanche of anxiety and begin to heal my mind as well as my body. 

He began looking for houses close to family and a familiar, supportive community. And he suggested we leave the house for an adventure.

As I do not nearly often enough, I trusted him. We packed the car much too full of all the silly contraptions I still hoped would work and set off.

At ten weeks old, you had never taken a car ride that didn’t involve heart-rending screaming. Maybe you felt my exhale of relief as we drove late into the night, far from home. Maybe you were made for adventure and sensed the excitement of a world beyond the walls of our house. Whatever the reason, you hardly cried the entire drive.

On our first day in DC, we navigated our way to the metro through the concerned clucking of older women assuring us that we needed to cover you to protect you from the burning sun or uncover you to protect you from the scorching heat.

As we entered the station, I saw a mom in a suit pushing a stroller to the train while nursing her baby in a carrier. Having barely emerged from the fog of your birth and the weeks following, I stared in abject admiration and thought to myself if I could ever accomplish half of what that mom was doing, I would be ecstatic. It seemed unimaginable.

As the fog continued to lift, I broke in a thousand more ways. I watched my expectations of myself as a mom and my imagined picture of family life crumble again and again. 

I clung to what I knew. That I loved you more than I could fathom. That I loved your dad more than I ever had before. That the three of us were the beginning of a family.

Slowly, over the course of months and years, in the death of my expectations I saw the birth of our possibilities.

I’ve now held you and your siblings in carriers in metro stations all over the world. Sometimes two at a time. I’ve nursed in every conceivable situation, including in the carrier while pushing a stroller. And on a tiny boat in the arctic sea. I’ve climbed mountains and navigated unknown cities and languages with you snug on my chest or running ahead leading your sister and brothers. Your dad always by my side.

One of the things that grieves me most deeply about this diagnosis is that I won’t get to see my girls experience motherhood. To see you and Emma beautifully undone in the way you undid me.

I won’t be there to help guide you through the awkward, painful transition from who you were to who you are becoming. To hold you through the tears and breaking. 

To carry my precious grandchildren and rock them to sleep while you nap or walk or eat. To feed you and soothe you to sleep through all the worries thrust on you in new motherhood.

But perhaps through these words I can still be the voice in your ear gently assuring you that this isn’t the end. That this aching death will bring rich beautiful life. Not just for your children, but for you.

I hope when your heart aches from its inability to contain your love for your family that you understand the love I have for you. That the miracle of your birth and your being remade me. On the day you were born and every day since.

Your motherhood will not look like mine. Your struggles and triumphs. Your unique way of living out this vocation will be yours to discern. And I will rejoice with you and weep with you and laugh with you and be unfathomably proud of the story you write. 

The story that began in my womb and was held in my aching, tired arms and snuggled close against my chest.

You are a miracle. You are so beloved. Always.