Baby Blues with Number Two

Charity's birth day

            Bringing a child into the world is an amazing thing. It may sound cliché or redundant but the birth of my daughter, Charity, was the best day of my life. Seeing the beautiful tiny features of the baby that I carried for nine months, hearing her screams reverberate in the sterile walls of the hospital room, and holding  her fragile being in my arms for the first time filled me with an all-consuming love that I had never before felt. Amazing. No other word fits that experience justly. Fast forward 19 months and there I was, ready to do it all over again. But this time it was different. Very different.

            When I was four months along in my pregnancy with my son, my husband and I separated. Issues in our home forced my daughter and me to move in with my parents. fall semester at BYU had just started two weeks prior and I was unsure about continuing. I was unsure about a lot of things. School was hard that semester. An added forty minute commute both ways didn’t help alleviate the stress or difficulty. I persevered. During that semester I learned a valuable lesson, not necessarily through classroom teaching.  I learned how to ask for help and the value of doing so. I would not have made it through that semester without the help I received. I realize now that this experience, learning to ask and receive help, was only preparing me for the difficulties that lay ahead.

Why was I here? Why had I been so abandoned and destroyed by the one that pledged to love me all my life? How could I do this?

            Being pregnant is not an easy thing. Throw in a toddler, school, and a difficult separation and it becomes almost completely overwhelming. Hormones, emotions, and your weight are all over the place during pregnancy. That little baby growing inside of you sure makes things crazy for the momma. As I got closer and closer to my due date, I became more and more stressed. I was an emotional wreck. Not just because I was pregnant (although that is always a nice excuse for anything) but because I was alone. The idea of going into the hospital, going through labor and delivery, and bringing a child into the world alone is a terrifying thing. Why was I here? Why had I been so abandoned and destroyed by the one that pledged to love me all my life? How could I do this?

Atticus' birth day

         The answer to my hearts pleading came in an ironic fashion. Here I was, becoming a mother again. And who was beside me? My mother. My mom was with me through it all. Through contractions, screams, tears, and pain, my mom was by my side. She was my birth coach. She was my motivating and calming voice. She was the one who loved me. The labor and delivery of my son, Atticus, was difficult and different in many ways. I thought to myself, I’ve done this before, no big deal, I can do it. I was wrong. It was not what I anticipated or remembered, because it was different. Each child is different. Each delivery is different. And I was different. In the end, when I finally had my baby boy in my arms it was all the same. It was the best day of my life. And I pledged my love for all my life to him, just I had before to my daughter, and my mother had done to me. The love a mother feels for a child, as I have experienced on both sides in my life, is unlike any other worldly love. It goes beyond this life. It connects to our Father as we become co-creators with Him. We experience just an inkling of the amount of love He has for us. I wouldn’t trade that for anything in this world. I have learned valuable lessons as I embark on this journey of single parent life. The greatest of these is what real love, from mother to child and Father to child, really is and how it always will be.