Just sitting here tonight and musing about how things come full circle. That should this baby come as early as his biggest brother did, then we’ve got about 3 weeks left.  That in a week from now I’ll be at the same point I was when my husband came home from six month deployment.  I must note what a change nutrition makes! At that point in time my BP was through the roof, and I weighed 30lbs more than I do now, despite the fact that I started that pregnancy 50lbs thinner than I did this one. I was looking at a picture of that day that I picked him up and could see how sick I was, and at the same time so incredibly happy. I was happy to have my husband back, happy to be pregnant, and full of expectation, excitement, and a nudge of fear of the unknown.  Right now, I’m at the end of that cycle, the end of the journey of pregnancy.  Coming to terms with that has been harder than I ever thought it would be. I truly honestly don’t want more children after this one. I have said for ages that three is my limit. And really, I haven’t enjoyed this pregnancy for the most part. I’m tired, it sucks doing this with two other small kids, pets, a house on the market, etc. And yet, I’m a little sad.  It seems like time is slipping away from me. I’ve said a few times that it’s snuck up on me, but really I had it in my head that once Thanksgiving got here, I’d have around a month or so to go. The end; the home stretch.  I’m not afraid of the delivery itself. Many times I’ve heard the expression that birth is as safe as life gets and for the most part that’s true. I feel somehow woefully unprepared to parent one more child though. And I don’t know why. I’ve got two beautiful, healthy (mostly!), smart, vivacious boys that I’ve managed to nurture, and at bare minimum keep alive this long, there’s no reason to think that I can’t do it again. It just seems to me however that with each child being so different, I fear whatever loop this one will throw me for. The first was clingy at first, but outside of that and the sleepless nights, he was manageable. But then the second came, and every last trick that worked for number one, the opposite was true for number two. And then number one threw us for the massive loop of potentially deadly food allergies and trips to the emergency room for IV’s full of epinephrine. Knock on wood but thankfully two has been somewhat low key in that respect. I figure that will come later on, since he’s a daredevil and as he gets more and more daring I’ll find a broken arm or leg somewhere from falling out of a tree or jumping off the roof. So I wonder, what will work for this baby? Will he sleep? Will he want to be carried, or prefer to play on his own? Will his brothers look out for him or torture him senseless? Will he have food allergies too? There is so much that goes with raising a child outside of just bringing them into the world. I get so many people telling me that I’m incredibly brave to birth at home, or to birth alone. I honestly wish that birthing was the hardest most frightening thing about motherhood because then the rest would be cake. Or the people who say oh babies are so hard. Yes, they’re time consuming, sometimes exhausting but really they are simple and don’t require a lot of thought. Hold them. Feed them. Change them. Burp them. Sleep them. Bathe occasionally. Keep warm. Smile at. Repeat. Then they start crawling, and putting things in their mouths, and then walking, and reaching for window cords, and then talking, and forming opinions, and asking questions, and things suddenly get a lot more complicated. I’ve never thought that it gets easier as they get older, just a different set of complications. They may sleep, or use the bathroom, but what do you do when they start asking how that baby got in there, or why people have different skin color, or why the man in the wheel chair has no legs, or why their aunt smokes when it’s so bad for you, so on and so forth? Today I sat there looking around my house wondering how children with older siblings survive, just looking at the toys with tiny small pieces, a scrap of plastic bag, an acorn, and a dozen other safety hazards I haven’t had to think about in some time. What an awakening! And time continues to creep. It seems like I lost something some where, complaining that my back hurt (because it did), or that I’m tired (because I am), because I should’ve been hanging onto these last moments.  Simultaneously part of me is just ready to get the show on the road, I wanted another baby, and miraculously got one coming (I wasn’t even supposed to be able to have the first two and now to be having a third is just amazing to me still), and I can’t wait to meet this little person. Just still, I hope that he hangs in a little bit longer, on the inside, just him and me. The end of the path may be looming near, even visible on the horizon, but we aren’t quite there yet, and are walking (waddling!) very…very…slowly.