There’s something about that third baby that unravels you.

Maybe it’s the sheer exhaustion of having three kids to raise. Maybe it’s knowing what’s ahead and what’s behind and what that means for the right now.  Maybe it’s just because it has to be for you to survive.

Or maybe, for me, it’s just because I’ve changed that much between two and three. I had nearly nine years to recreate my life after all. Maybe I just did a better job this time.

Maybe I’m more prepared, or maybe I’ve just accepted how difficult this part is.

This baby has softened my edges and stretched my perceptions, my roles, and pushed me to hit a reset button, again, but harder.   

My third pregnancy was relatively easy. I didn’t gain much weight. I had normal amounts of morning sickness, and crappy food cravings and difficulty sleeping but nothing severe. I didn’t stress about what I ate, or when, I practiced yoga the entire 40+ weeks, my labor and delivery were beautiful and supported and exactly what I asked for them to be. I worked my normal 12-14 hour days doing three things I love and I didn’t take a single day off when he was born, not even the day I delivered him.

I was ready to slip him into our existing life. I was not ready for that life to cease to be as it was.

The more challenging it got to meet his needs, the further I got from the me that existed before him and the closer I got to the us that exists now.

How could I think having another child wouldn’t change things? That it wouldn’t change our family. That it wouldn’t change  . . . me?

Of course it did. Of course it is. Of course it will continue to do.  

He is like my other babies, and entirely not. And I am like I was with my other babies, and entirely not. We are learning each other and finding our rhythm.

And even though I “know things” and even though I’ve done it before, and even though compared to first-time-mom-me I make it look easy-

It is still hard. Really, really, really hard.

I miss my life before. I miss the me before. My body. My freedom. My ability to just pick up and go whenever. Sleep. I miss sleep.  I feel jealousy and resentment bubble up when I see things I’m not able to do now. I feel guilty for pushing to have this baby and the way it has changed our lives. I feel guilty for missing my old life. I feel guilty, for feeling guilty.

And at the very same time. The very, very, very same time. I look at my new boy and my heart explodes. I see my husband in him, and him in my husband and my love for them both deepens. I watch the older kids love him and I just want to scoop them up, all three, into my arms and hold them there for a year.

I cannot believe I get to have this much love in my life.

And I cannot overstate how hard that is to accept and manage.

This part is not easy. Not the first time, Not the second time. Not the third time. I continue to soften. To see. To feel. To learn. And to allow myself to become completely undone again and for good.

I acknowledge the realness that surrounds me. I stand firm in authenticity and my willingness to share and exist from that place. I’m finding my way back into wild in our new lives together, us five.

This is my Motherhood. This is RAW for me right now.

 

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