The stretching of the mother's heart.
When we started this journey and made the decision to try for another baby, I was a million different things, torn in a million different directions. I was apprehensive; would I be able to handle two littles? Would I love this child as much as I love Oliver? Would I still have time to snuggle and enjoy my first-born? Surely I would never be able to make it stretch...to make it work. Surely there was not enough love in my heart or energy in my body to carry this child as heavily in the spaces of my heart and soul. There surely was just no space. Yet...we leaped. We plunged into the unknown waters, dark and overwhelming. I had faith that God knew what we needed and that this desire for another baby was more than a surface thing of "Oh, look at the squishy baby!". I knew it was deeper, but to say that I was fully connected from the start would be a stretch. I was excited, but the apprehension, the questions...they were still fully real and fully there.
When I saw him for the first time on the ultrasound screen, when his existence hit me like a strange and beautiful gust of wind, it started. I didn't make a peep as Andrew excitedly spoke to Oliver of his 'brother', because if I were to open my lips, tears would surely flood my eyes. So, I kept quiet as my heart swelled twice its original size. The stretching of a mother's heart. At that moment, the still quiet fear of not loving this child as whole-heartily as our first son evaporated completely. His home in my heart was burnt in that day, a permanent mark on my life and soul.
There's not much to say on the subject of the stretching of my heart that day except it's a strange, confusing, and beautiful thing. Each day my heart stretches and wraps around each of my boys a little more tightly. It's an odd combination of sadness for the 'loss' of your only child, but an immense and immeasurable gain that outweighs the sting. Oliver gets to be a big brother. He gets to experience things he never would have if we had chosen to 'stop at one'. And as for myself...I get to watch his beautiful heart stretch and make room for this impending arrival as ours stretch simultaneously. This boy will be loved. He will be so loved.
This must be how God feels when one of His children enters His Kingdom at last. This...indescribable fullness, warmth, pride, and joy. Like, this child has been with you forever; like you know him and have loved him a million times over before you've ever had the chance to kiss his face and call him by his name. I'm just so ready to let my heart continue to warm and stretch every single day and I am overwhelmed with so much peace.
Today at my regular prenatal visit, a few numbers threatened to break me, to cause our world to quake and crumble, to break my still stretching heart. I didn't see my usual midwife, and when this fill-in midwife was using the doppler to measure our bambino's heart rate, something was clearly wrong. Her face was stern as she took a few minutes longer to listen than ever before. She stopped the doppler and said his heart rate was low, like 108 bpm low, and that we needed to do an ultrasound to make sure everything was going okay. My chest seized and the worst thoughts flooded my brain as I tried to come back down from whatever strange place I had drifted off to with words of prayer frantically uttered inside my mind. It was more like a plea of no distinguishable speech, like my heart was calling out to Jesus before my mind could even form the sentences.
Another moment in which I was reminded that this child, this baby encompasses more of my heart than I thought possible and I reached out to him hoping to cling to him amidst the turmoil as I sat in the waiting area outside of the ultrasound room. "I haven't met you, dear one, but I love you and cannot let you go." I thought. I fought tears as slow, quiet prayer escaped from silent lips.
The ultrasound went fine. He was fine. A faulty reading on the doppler was to blame, but as I came down from this crazed high I had found myself in, I praised God. I praised Him and then also just really understood what this pregnancy, what this child, and what this family means to me, and how a single tear in the tapestry could cause the entirety to unravel. My stretched mother's heart was almost threatened with a massive break this morning.
I just don't think I've ever understood how a mother's heart works until it was my own on the brink. I never knew my heart could stretch to spread love like sunlight, or that it could break because of someone I've not yet met. And today...I accept the burden and blessing that is being a mother, to not just one beautiful and perfect son, but two. He may not be here yet and I may not get to kiss his cheeks or feel his gentle breathing against my neck yet, but he is mine. And I am ready for May.
Praise God from whom all blessings flow.
