Last week I wrote about my anxiety and disappointment that the joy and excitement we should all be feeling is being robbed from us amid this pandemic. I spent the two weeks prior to that post being stressed out and anxious. I started working from home before my company suggested it, and then mandated it. I was already limiting my external activities before my county issued a stay at home order for 30 days. That order lifts two days before my due date. I still have no idea what these next four weeks have in store or how much worse things might get.
But, I do know this: we are going to have an incredible story to tell this baby. It isn’t the one she deserves, but it will be uniquely hers.
It will be a story of joy and hope in the midst of fear, anxiety and uncertainty. Instead of telling her about all the things that couldn’t or didn’t happen we’ll share with her the amount of people who celebrated her arrival with us via all means of technology available to us.
Our hospital pictures will look very different than her brothers’ do and she won’t have the shot I really wanted – her brothers sitting with me in bed holding their baby sister, but we’ll show her the pictures of her brothers meeting her when we all got home and point out their excited faces.
We’ll talk about the amazing care team we had at the birth center and how they made sure we were well provided for and remained safe and healthy.
We’ll tell her about all the walks we took as a family and point out the same trees and flowers to her that we currently point out to her brothers. We’ll tell her that in the midst of a life we didn’t plan for and aren’t sure how to handle, she brought us a sense of peace and comfort.
No, it isn’t the experience I was hoping to have. It isn’t the experience I was PLANNING to have. The experience I had planned in my head included visitors at the hospital to meet her. It included her brothers coming to meet her and hold her and a group hug with Mom, Dad and all three kiddos. It included newborn photos that were taken by someone with an infinitely better skillset than I possess. It included so many seemingly silly and superficial things because this is my last baby. She will always be my last baby and her entry into this world deserves to be so much more beautiful than what I think it will be now.
But, when we tell her her story, it won’t include the disappointment for things that couldn’t happen because of a pandemic. It will include the message that she is fearfully and wonderfully made. That we know there are big things in store for her life – there have to be, right? Otherwise, what’s the point of being born in the middle of a pandemic?!?
My anxiety is still lingering in the background, and it is ready to pounce at the tiniest thing, but as I have been walking through our neighborhood I have been mindful to purposefully see that there is so much life happening around us. All of the trees are budding or in bloom; the forcynthia has bloomed; tulips are coming up.
In the middle of all this chaos, there is the normal, every day cycle of spring. And there are people having babies – like it was any other time. Just like normal. And while everything feels far less than normal, somehow I know everything is going to be alright.
Suddreth Manor 