A better catch...

This, here, is a better Maeve, captured in her usual pose. So, see? They all really do just look like sleeping babies. Sleeping Maeves, that is....

(this is Maeve fast asleep from the heat on our family's trip to Storyland, a trip I solemnly promised to my children last summer when I told them it would be "easier for our family" to travel this summer....)

The photograph of Charlotte that you see on the sidebar that is one of the most beautiful we have of our family, our trinity. We only have two photos of Greg holding her, and there is something about the way the three of us are wrapped around each other that seems so circular and whole. The raw emotion that this photo evokes has always left me breathless. In the beginning it was every time I looked at it, but now, as it hangs in three rooms in my house and is part of the fabric of my being, it is when I sit down and try to process it with myself, my amnesic self who lives in another nation now: this was you, you and your beloved, you are young and in your twenties, and you are cradling your firstborn, dead child. This fact still sends me reeling. (will it ever seem real?)

Charlotte looks so beautiful to me in this photo. To me it's the one that looks most like how I remember her, the delicacy of her little features, the chiseled beauty of her face. It's the one I always think of when I am realizing how similar all my children look to one another.

But there's one thing that's always bothered me about it, that I've felt a little self conscious about. I've always stated that Charlotte looked just like she was sleeping. But in this photo, she has her mouth open, and none of my babies ever did sleep with their mouths open. So I would wonder to myself, maybe this looks odd to other people: maybe she doesn't just look like she's asleep to them. I desperately want her photos to look like she's sleeping, it's as if I can seize her as living for just a moment if I imagine that somebody might look at her photo and not be sure whether she was a living baby or not. But for that mouth, that mouth.

And then came Maeve, my fourth living child, my fourth daughter, my little wisp of beauty that shares the same chisled face with her sisters and brother and always, always sleeps with her mouth hanging open, just like Charlotte in that photo.

Thank you, Maeve, for connecting me just one more time with my little first born. Thank you for making her look like any other sleeping baby in my favorite ever photo of her beauty, captured forever in black and white, seared into my heart.

capturing life

And all of it, because you never know.

I look at Fiona's face, and I think, this is how I cried. This is how it was, every day, for I don't know how long.

Did you know that grown-ups can cry like that?

I didn't either.

(it hurts your heart so much)

Finally...

Almost 20 years after my sweet old Pentax bit the dust, I am back to a "real" camera... and so happy for it.

Daughters and Sons

There was a time, after Charlotte died, where I felt sure that I would never, ever have another daughter. I steeled myself for a life of parenting rough-and-tumble boys, envisioning myself feeling wistful for a waif-like daughter with long blond hair, someone who would snuggle and read Anne of Green Gables with me...

Then, I had Liam. I had never had a boy in my life before for real, being one of only sisters, parented by a mother who was the same. I was amazed (silly me) to see how absolutely FUN it was to have a boy, and was humbled to realize that my son was full of more cuddles than I could ever imagine. Pregnant again for the third time, I imagined myself with another little boy: a pal for Liam, and his name was to be Owen Henry. Liam and Owen, my two boys... it seemed perfectly clear to me that this would happen. Occasionally the fear would flash before my eyes, but I would try to avoid it: maybe I will never have another girl, maybe she was it. But I would dismiss it, feeling defensive of Liam and how passionately I loved him. Boys would be fine, just fine. Perhaps I was not meant to have girls. I was building my walls of defense, just in case. Would it have been fine?

Three daughters later, I like to rationalize that the universe has a way of giving back to you somehow. Aoife gifted me a daughter and Liam a sister, Fiona gifted Aoife a sister. Maeve came close on the heels of Fiona to gift me the experience of two very close babies, as Charlotte and Liam would have been.

And when I look at Liam? I imagine this. The universe had a plan for me. A plan for daughters, a houseful of girls to run me ragged and keep me laughing and whip me into shape. But something happened, something awful, and that first baby girl couldn't stay. So Liam, sweet baby Liam, was a little special treat: the son I might never have had, the little boy I wouldn't have even known to miss if I'd never had him. I feel wistful, now, thinking that I won't have another little boy, ever, to visit construction sites and obsess over tractor models and farm equipment (although the last two rounds would have brought us Callum, not Owen...) It's funny to hold up the fear of not having another daughter with this near-sadness that I'll only have one son.

And my girls, my three living girls, they are a beautiful gift that follows, three little girls I can't say whether I would have had or not. But I'm sure glad I've got them. There was almost a sense of relief each time, like a catching up: somehow, with the birth of each daughter, we found ourselves with the number and ratio of sons to daughters we'd had in theory prior to her birth. Except that now we had one more. So we never caught up, of course...

I like to always tell the families I work with, although bereaved moms and dads often feel enraged at people who express a preference for the sex of a particular baby, it's also completely normal for those of us who are missing a child to have the (often very strong) desire to parent another child of the same sex. Why not? Wouldn't it simply make sense that we would want that experience? I hate the thought of parents feeling as if their worries are petty when they are grieving the loss of never having had the experience of parenting either a son or daughter. It's a real thing to grieve. And I'm saying this never having even really experienced it, as it was less than 3 years after Charlotte's death that my eldest living daughter was born.

It's the fourth of July. We went to a parade in a nearby town, patriotically dressing our 100% Canadian family in red, white and blue, waving little American flags. Our family looked tidy and complete and lovely walking down the street, bystanders sitting in folding chairs and on blankets waiting for the festivities to begin. Only I saw her, the ethereal mist following behind, the ghost of a daughter who began it all.

First smiles...

Maeve will be six weeks old tomorrow, and she's smiling like crazy. It's so amusing to see somebody who still sleeps about 22 hours a day wake up and suddenly grin like she's absolutely delighted about something... it makes me melt. She's so cute and growing up so quickly. We took her to visit her new cousin last weekend-- they are almost exactly a month apart-- and it was so shocking for me to see Maeve suddenly look big next to her 7 pound cousin. At her one month visit she had gained a pound and a half and grown nearly 2 inches!

I'm trying to bite my tongue daily as I'm re-entering the world with my four children and meeting so many people-- acquaintances and strangers alike-- who find it their business to ask, only moments after they congratulate me on the birth of Maeve and mention her resemblance to the others or her adorable cuteness, whether I'm planning on having any more children. I really want to say, It's none of your fucking business whether or not I plan to have another baby... because really, how incredibly rude is it to be asking somebody you barely know about their long term family planning decisions? Honestly I don't mind when friends ask me, because it's usually in the context of a conversation, and because we've a history to back it up-- but I'm just amazed at how many people that I barely know who are asking this question almost without fail. Is it because having four children is so unheard of nowadays that they are just curious to know whether I'll continue to break the status quo and keep having more? Is it because my kids are so cute and well behaved that they are hoping I'll keep improving the human race by making more? (Just checking to see if you were listening).

Truly the reason why I probably hate the question is because probably the answer is no, I probably won't have another baby after Maeve, and I can hardly stand to think about this. I love having babies so much... I love every bit of it. I love giving birth (and I've gotten so good at it), I love nursing, I love teeny-tiny babies and everything about taking care of them... I love watching my older children adoring their little siblings, I love filling the chairs around my dining room table... I love all of these things. I would love, in theory, to have a few more babies. It's almost a romantic idea....

but really, I want to be available for my children at least sometimes. I hate having to say to Liam, no, I can't play catch with you because I'm holding the baby, and I have to make Fiona's dinner. No, we can't do that because the babies are napping. No, we can't have a friend over because Mommy is too busy!

I also realize, with each additional baby, that I also feel the stretch for the baby-- at this point a real treat for me (and Maeve) is when I can sit down to nurse her-- as opposed to nursing her in the crook of my arm while I make sandwiches, or in the carrier while pushing Fiona on the swing, or getting kids in and out of the bathtub.

The more babies, the less time I have for each baby, and I want to spoil them with love and attention.

And, I'm getting older, and I'm testing fate each time. And I have FOUR. FOUR healthy, beautiful, happy, amazing, LIVING children. This is a miracle.

So while I would never do anything permanent right now, it's probable that the end of almost a decade of baby making and having and rearing is over. Hard to imagine.

I really don't spend any time thinking about this when I'm taking care of Maeve, because I don't want to feel sad and wistful about her. I just want her to be Maeve and to love every minute of her. But I did, strangely, get a little sad a few weeks ago when I put my fifth and possibly final peri-bottle into the dishwasher to convert to a bath toy.

The end of my bleeding, which to me told me that I could no longer claim that I had "just given birth", gave me a pang of sadness. My uterus, retired.

The first big one...

I was sitting on the couch.

The three kids upstairs were snoozing.

This time it wasn't just a wrinkle, or a twitch, or an attempt, or a maybe.

As I was talking to her my sweet little 8 and a half pound darling bundle of beauty broke into the sweetest little miniature smile.

I burst into tears.

She is real!

I can't wait for everything, and I love now.

If somebody had told me this would be my life eight years ago, I would have told them they were lying. How can I be so happy, when I have experienced such pain? And when the sadness still lies in my heart?

I certainly hope that the trueness of my joy can seep into the pain of somebody's recent loss to help you realize that while it seems absolutely unfathomable, somehow real, genuine, enhanced happiness is absolutely attainable... in enormous degrees. Right alongside all the sadness.