You're due in three weeks.
The anticipation has moved from comfortable excitement to officially antsy!
I've been feeling you moving for weeks and weeks, now I feel you rolling and burrowing and kicking, and I can't describe exactly how that makes me feel, something like elation. It amazes me, to envision you inside me, a real baby, ready to be born, just waiting for the perfect time to make your entrance into the world. I'm on pins and needles.
And though I can't sleep at night from various aches and ailments, I'm in love with this pregnancy. I'm in love with you. As eager as I am to have you in my arms, I have thoroughly loved holding you beneath my heart all these weeks.
I can't promise you perfection in this life, imperfection is lifes only promise. Life will be imperfect, so will I, but I do promise my love will come with good intentions and it will be unending.
I'm nervous though, in these last few weeks of pregnancy. I'm fearful, but not of pain or of labor, but of ghosts of experiences past. I'm entirely in love with you, but entirely flawed and human and scared of things I'd rather never mention to you. I don't want to burden you with my scars and my wounds, they're not your doing nor your concern. But I can't wait to have you here with us, in our arms and safe and healthy. I can't wait to get you in our home, in your room, safe.
You can't possibly know how loved you are just yet, but you will.
XO
Dear Avery
You are amazing. You are smart and beautiful. You are independent and spirited. You are strong willed and delightful. I can't believe how much I love you, and that love deepens every single minute we're together. We butt heads, and I expect that will also increase as time goes on. You challenge me to be a better mother, and you reward me with your sweet love and dazzling smile. You are one of my life's greatest pleasures, and I am so grateful to God that he blessed me with you. You're going to be a great big sister for Stella, you already are to Landon, I can't wait to see you sisters together. Joy!
XO
Dear Landon
You are heart-melting. You are cuddly and sensitive and funny and precious. You are a joy! I love that you love rockets and air planes and cowboys, I love that you're all boy, but that you kiss boo boos for others and you come to my defense when your sister is being sassy. You're going to be some lucky woman's dream come true some day, you're already mine! I don't know how I got so lucky, just to have you here in my life, you're a gift and you're good for my heart. You're stubborn and strong willed, but so eager to please. You're just like your dad, which is why you butt heads with him and not me. You're special and cherished and amazing. You're a dream come true! Your sisters are lucky to have you.
XO
Dear Everett
God only knows how much I miss you. You're in my heart and on my mind every minute of every day. I wish you were here. I wish you were always here. I haven't forgotten one moment. I haven't stopped grieving you, I never will. I'm still so full of love for you, and grief and confusion and sadness. I still don't know how to be whole, or normal without you, I bet that never changes. I'm still your mom. I can't hold you in my arms, and that is my life's biggest tragedy, but I hold you in my heart all day, every day. You changed me. You inspire me. You made me better. Your death broke me, so God could rebuild me, changed and better. I'd give anything to have done it differently though. We're having a new baby soon. You're going to be a big brother now, and I wish with all my heart that you could be here to greet Stella and welcome her into the world. I wish I had all my babies together here on Earth, I wish I didn't have to wait for a reunion in Heaven. But I will, because you're worth it.
XO
Dear God
You give and take away. I've learned to be gratful for the gifts, I'm still struggling with how to be grateful for the ones you take back.
I'm full of fear and anxiety. You know more then anyone how I worry about loss. It keeps me up at night, the fear of losing another child. You know how nightmares of saying goodbye to another child haunt me. Aparently this fear is a lack of trust. A lack of trust in your goodness and your plans for me and my family. And aparently my anxiety over separation from my children means I'm placing them above you in my priority list. I think that's true. I'm sorry I'm not there yet. I love them that much. I know I need to trust them to you fully, like Abraham did with Isaac, I'm sorry that I can't. I trusted you once before, with my child, with my heart, and you took him. You took my son and broke my heart. I've never been the same. I've been broken ever since. And fearful. I cling to my children now for fear that one day they'll be gone. I can't handle even the thought of it.
Undoubtedly you comforted me. You picked me up and gave me comfort when I was in my deepest sorrow, and I am grateful. Without a doubt I love you and how you've changed my heart and my life. I can see how you made something good from my life's biggest tragedy. I can see how you used my pain to transform me. My son died and I survived. I survived it once. Once. But I couldn't do it again. So I fear rather then trust. I can't hold Avery and Landon and Stella up to you and say do whatever you will with them. I can't hold them up to you and say they're yours and not mine. They're mine.
I'm sorry that this means I'm doing this wrong. I'm sorry if it means I'm holding something back from you. I'm sorry if loving them with the intensity I do is sin. I hope you know I'm still a work in progess. But I don't know if I'll ever be able to give this over to you. This is my heart. You know it, you made it, I hope you'll forgive it.
XO
