I'm feeling especially sentimental during this last trimester. Maybe because the HG (hypermesis gravidarum) has finally waned and I'm able to eat again--as in eat ALL the food. Maybe because I know this is our "caboose" and the last few months I'll ever feel another sweet babe growing inside of me. Though that thought does make me feel a little sad, I'm mostly relieved to be nearing the end because it's been SO rough this go round. I am exhausted, but proud knowing that while my body has suffered greatly, I've still been able to co-create a new life three times and see it this far along. This little Peanut almost never was. I was told I was infertile, and still we tried and cried and prayed for this little miracle boy. Part of me feels "out of the woods" so to speak, 27 weeks is the "it" week after all. Yet I am also incredibly scared at the same time, for many obvious reasons, but mostly because now the countdown to labor pain begins. HA!
Deeper still though I am discovering that this overwhelming feeling of reminiscence and melancholy is because I am thinking about how this baby will never know my own Grandparents. Or rather how they will never know him. Sure, he may have already met them on the other side, but he will not know them in this life, as they were. My beautiful Maw Maw, who loved Spring and flowers and warm sunny days sitting beside the pool telling stories about her life, as we bobbed in the shallow end, listening to her smooth Cajun French filled voice. My handsome Paw Paw, who always smelled of wood chips and shaving soap, who loved to tend his garden and walk his property barefoot, all while pointing out the birds and bugs, and explaining to us the ways of the world and how we should change it. I miss them with my whole heart...every single day. He will never know how much they would have loved and adored him and that thought stings to my core.
My Grandparents before they were married. Straight off of the silver screen I swear!
Oh but this little one will always know stories of their greatness and hear of the true love they shared for one another and this family. I hope those stories do their memories justice. I hope that he will feel honored, blessed, connected even, to carry this small piece of them, within himself, through those musings. I hope that he will always feel proud of his Native Texan heritage as I do, as was instilled in me, by my real life John Wayne cowboy of a Paw Paw. I hope that he will look at this photograph many years from now and see it as a symbol of how far our family has come and my own personal "nod to God" for how much we have to be grateful for in this world. Family is everything, at no point in life before, have I felt that stronger than I do now, being pregnant with this child, in my 38th year. With so much loss and change over the last four years, I have gained that much more conviction, purpose and perspective that I did not know existed in me. Precious moments indeed, every one of them, even the ones that break my heart...and I am reborn and made whole again by them all.
