our definitions

I wrote this post last July, and I thought that today I might share it.

I was reading a favourite blog of mine this evening, http://www.sortacrunchy.typepad.com/, and she just inspired me with her down to earth, hilarious and relaxed approach to walking lightly on this planet we call home and in this funny thing we call family. And it made me want to talk about my little family and how much it means to me that we are trying our hardest to do this thing together.

When David and I first got together I was adament that I did not want children. I think I had a picture in my mind of me jet-setting around the world or something, although honestly I can't even remember, it was as if that girl is someone else entirely! And as we fell in love with each other and began to slowly weave a life together out of our separate identities something fairly momentous happened to me - I became a Christian. Of course it was wonderful and awe-inspiring and frightening and a million other things that would require a blog of their own just to document, but mostly what it was was eye-opening. I remember very forcefully insisting to David (not that he was disputing me or anything, I'm just an incredibly intense person when I'm trying to make a point! LOOK at me, can't you TELL I'm saying something of EXTREME importance, and so forth.) that it was as if I had spent my life walking around with sunglasses on, and now I had taken them off, and nothing could ever be the same.

And the calendar turned, and we grew closer, and the words 'baby' and 'children' and 'little ones' would sometimes creep into our conversations as if we were testing each other, to sense reactions. And there was a proposal of marriage, sweetly asked of me in the kitchen of our wee apartment (where you could access our bedroom closet via the front hall, as a random aside) while I stirred pasta on the stove and David wrapped his arms around my waist and we couldn't see eye to eye. And I knew the answer was yes, and he knew the answer was yes, but still the butterflies flew.

And we can fast-forward to the time when we knew we wanted a baby. When I knew I wanted a baby, wanted one more than I realized it was possible for a woman to want something. Every pore in my body craved this to such an extreme point that I could barely speak of anything else. That first month I took a home pregnancy test it came back negative, and we cried on the sofa. I hadn't known until I saw David cry how much he too had desperately wanted this. And then the next month we tried again, and it was positive. I was elated, as you can imagine, and then I started to bleed and that was that. It was over, I told myself, but I had a hard time believing it. We tried again, attacking this like a problem to be fixed, and again I became pregnant. This time it lasted a few weeks before we lost the baby. Weeks of pregnancy tests and obstetricians and ultrasounds and then, finally, surgery and a sad recovery and two little scars to remind me.

I mourned it so much, and we went to our priest and knelt in the quiet church and he prayed for us and we cried, and cried. When we were leaving I said "perhaps we're meant to adopt. Maybe there is a baby out there for us." and our priest said "if God has called you to have a child you need to stick with that." I never forgot that. Stick with what you know is His will, and you will find happiness.

And then two months later, in the middle of a stressful move, another positive test, this time taken alone in a new province far from David. Our excitement and fear all over again. Our worry when again I bled, our trip to the hospital. Sadness may endure for the night, but joy comes in the morning. The heartbeat was still there, and our little boy came to us, and we called him Samuel, because God heard us.

And what I thought was the beginning of the end was just the end of the beginning, really. Can you ever really grasp the fact that one day, some time from now, you are going to walk into a hospital, and things will happen to you that you can't really begin to understand, and then a few days later you will leave the hospital with another human being. And it is all up to you to teach this new human everything it needs to know to not just NOT damage itself, but actively thrive and love and live and not pick it's nose in public and other important bits of information necessary for communal living. "I can't believe they're letting us take him home!" I would whisper to David. Surely we should be interviewed, provide references, produce bank statements and so forth to prove that this amazing blessing will be taken care of and nurtured.

Oh the joy of having him. I want to tell every story just to remember them all. I want to tell how hard it was to breastfeed, and then how easy it was, for both of us, as though he was saying "well of course, mama, this is how it's supposed to be!" and how hard it was to cloth diaper, and then how easy, and hard again. How we co-slept and snuggled with each other, and then how he decided to sleep on his own, and that first frightening night he slept in his own room. And how he smiles. And how I love him so very much.

This little boy.