That Old Familiar Feeling

A year or two before I got pregnant with Hayley, my doctor told me it would be extremely difficult for me to have children... if ever. So, when I got pregnant with Hayley, I felt so blessed. That was over 13 years ago. For whatever reason, God saw fit for me to only have one child. There have been times I've felt sad by that, but I have always tried to keep it in perspective. There are many women who don't even have ONE child, so who am I to complain? Even so, it's been a source of disappointment over the years. In more recent years, though, I've come to tell myself not to give it another thought because I'm really just getting too old to have children now anyway. I didn't realize how much I had hardened my heart toward the thought of having a baby in the house until the last week or so of babysitting. But having Lorelai here last week and now having Marly this week, I have those old familiar feelings bubbling to the surface. Babies ARE a blessing from God. I love watching them smile. I love how they smell (except for the dirty diaper smell... I'm not crazy!) I love the faces they make when they are sleeping. I love everything about them. My heart is bursting with joy, watching Marly sleep. But it is also feeling that old longing of having something that will never be. My own child is 13 and becoming more and more independent. In a few years she won't need me anymore at all. That makes me sad. Anyway, I guess this babysitting thing is a way of appeasing that maternal need to hold and care for a child, without the actual 24 hour a day obligation... not that it would be such a horrible thing.

Well, Marly is starting to wake up from her nap, so I better wrap this up. She is much more mobile than Lorelai was, which is keeping me on my toes (literally). She is crawling and pulling up. She was able to walk to me by holding on to the couch earlier, so she'll be walking/running on her own before too much longer!