Today my heart grieves. It sits in my chest like huge blubbering lump of an organ, kinda like my ovaries. In two days, my twins will turn 5. They will no longer be babies. They won’t be anywhere near babyhood. Every day they say, “Please, don’t call us babies. We’re big boys”.
Logically, I know it’s ridiculous, to be so upset about a fifth birthday. I’m expecting these kids to live to be 100. They’ll see things I can’t even dream of. They’ll crest a new century. They will probably get to go to the moon on vacation. It’ll be amazing lives these kids lead. If we round this birthday up or down compared to 100 years, they are closer to babies than wrinkly old men.
But lately, every time I see an older person I think about how they were once small helpless babies. Once, they were precocious toddlers who delighted their parents with their views of the world. Once they were little. They were new.
And when I see a baby, a little piece of my heart shatters knowing that I will never again have a baby. Never again grow little hands and feet in my womb and feeling little legs and arms stretch within the safe confines on my body. Never again, will I rock a sleeping infant in the dark of night. Never again, will I nurse my baby, wear them on my hip, stand over their sleeping shapes in the dark and listen for the sweet sound of their breath.
I think of all of the lasts that happen every day. The things that I didn’t even know where the lasts. The things that I didn’t even know I would one day miss. Things like onesies under feety pajamas, rocking little ones to sleep, and playing this little piggy on small toddler toes.
There should be mother books for things like this. This way we could keep an exact record of it. We could cherish all those things we rush through every day to get to the next thing. The last time I nursed you. The last time I needed to hold your hand while you walked. The last time you feel asleep on my chest. The last time I played the Tooth Fairy. The last time you called for me in the middle of the night to kiss your head and tuck you in. Sometimes they are small things we can’t wait to get past. The last diaper change. The last time I had to tie your shoes. The last time I brushed your teeth. The last time you cried for your pacifier. The last time they wore those small tiny training pants on their little tiny hineys.
This is just the beginning of the lasts. There isn’t anyone behind these little two to rock and hold and baby. This is the beginning of the end of this phase of my life.
It just breaks my heart. It breaks it into a million pieces.
Overactiveovaries 