News, and such

There's a long story and a short story to everything, and so I could choose between the two in offering some thoughts on the dearth of writing lately. I'll select the short version, and state it like this, uncontained within one sentence as to state it as another might would make it all seem too real: 16. weeks. pregnant.

Did anyone really think I could ever stop this baby growing process with the culmination of my last beautiful effort, Fiona Clementine, she who has been like a blossoming new flower, scented beautifully vanilla, smiling and offering greetings and waves everywhere we go? Who curls into me and rests her fat cheeks on my shoulder and whose wet lips smoosh into my cheek and leave me breathless every day?

I have always known I would have to exceed all measures of practicality before I would be able to call it a day with conception and birth and, hopefully, the parenting of a newborn infant. So here I find myself, with a 6 year old, and a 4 year old, and a just-turned-1 year old, and as her half-birthday rolls into view and passes another one might come into our life, rosy and whole as her/his siblings, and the end may have come for this stage.

At this point we will have exactly one hand per child, not enough bedrooms, hardly room in our car, definitely (practically speaking) not enough money, and so this makes it just perfect for us, because to be practical in these circumstances, when there are amazing people to be made, is simply a waste of an opportunity.

So an opportunity we decided we would seize, should it present itself. Those of you who have known me for quite some time will remember the drama of conceiving the wee Clementine, and so will understand that whilst an 18 month spread does seem quite, absolutely, daunting to me at this point, there was no possibility for me to at once want another baby some day and at the same time use birth control for a while to try to space things out. I knew what I know now: if I'm ever lucky enough to conceive again, I will conceive again, and I will be grateful and lucky and beholden to everyone and everything. And days, or maybe a few weeks, after that decision was made, something took hold, and somehow it is still there.

And so it shall be.

And so I hardly dare to breathe the words, since things feel so precarious at all times, this is the truth of now.