I love the responses to my last post...

But the thing is, I really can't write that article right now, because I am less than 7 weeks away from my due date and I'm therefore a ticking time bomb who simply cannot allow her mind to wander into those areas that, to me, qualify as "real" fear. So allow me to offer you an "IOU" on that, and perhaps if I can add another safe arrival onto my list, I will channel my hormonal emotional surges into the most ass-kicking tirade imaginable. But for now, I must shelter my addled brain and just sit here amid pokes and prods and eat chocolate and focus on sunny skies, when possible. I know you understand.

I love human biology. I was thinking about this the other night, when Greg was out. I had cooked dinner for the children, the kitchen was a mess downstairs, and I was upstairs wrestling tiny feet out of socks and helping people out of too-small t-shirts and running the bath. As soon as they were in I was folding laundry and putting toothpaste on toothbrushes and laying out clothes for the morning and washing hair. Then it was on with the jammies, brushing the teeth, reading books for half and hour and then an elaborate, original story creation with the lights out and a lullaby for each child.
This is all elective, I thought. Imagine that I have all of this, and all I want is more. More teeth to brush. More laundry to wash. More mouths to feed. More dishes to wash. Less time for anything else I might want to do.

Because?

More cheeks to smooch, more little warm bodies to hug, more giggles to echo through my house. How could there be anything more satisfying? Truly? I can almost, sometimes relate to people who haven't had kids who find the prospect overwhelming. Who wonder why you'd want to have two, or three, let alone four or five. But once you begin, once you realize that miracle of life you slip into a mode of service that is unlike any other: you are at the beck and call, at the will of another, and you want it no other way. Yourself has been cast aside for the time being and you love it, your tiny dictators cause you to laugh ferociously when they aren't looking, they make you cry with joy and pain every day, they fill you with more love than you thought possible.

I read this thing in a magazine at the doctor's office. It was an issue from last May, celebrating Mother's Day, and it was quoting celebrities opinions of motherhood. Gw.yneth Pal.trow was quoted as saying something to the tune of, "I just can't believe how much I love my children. I mean, I knew I would love them, but this is just a whole new dimension of emotion." It's probably the only celebrity-mommy quote I've ever read that I have related to. Because who coudl have imagined, before giving birth or conceiving for the first time, what this love would feel like? How this devotion would turn you inside out in a heartbeat?

It is amazing and fabulous and I'm so glad to be programmed to reproduce... it is the best thing I've ever done and I feel so grateful to have the opportunity to be a mother.