last

last /last/ adj 1. coming after all others in time or order; final.

this pregnancy has been weird when i think of it in terms of “last.” my last pregnancy. the last time i’ll feel a baby rolling around in my belly thrusting little feet and arms here and there. the last time i’ll gain an absurd amount of weight and have to worry about how to get it off again. the last time i’ll feel little hiccups rocking my belly like miniature muscles spasms. the last time i’ll wonder who he or she is, and what he or she will be like, and how he or she will blend and mesh with our already developed family dynamic.

i can’t say i’m sad about the “last pregnancy” portion. i’ve never been a huge fan of being pregnant despite the fact that i have it relatively easy in pregnancy terms (no morning sickness, or throwing up…) but the photographer, life-documenter in me wishes there was a way i could document the movements and the growth within. how the baby moves. how it feels to have a little person growing inside of you. my camera can’t document that feeling. even a video of my rolling belly can’t capture the way it actually feels to house a tiny human being within you.

so this pregnancy, i’m trying really hard to focus on that. on the feeling. on the kicks, and the rolls, and the hiccups, and making a conscious effort to try to nail it into my memory forever. because i know me. and the real me, the real me will forget. won’t remember what it feels like. i’m not sure yet if this makes me sad, but it does make me think, and wonder, if i’ll remember it at all. even just a little bit.

but last birth and last newborn baby? well. we’re not even going to go there. i will say there’s a chance that this normally non-emotional (besides happy) mama may shed a tear. because, “last baby?”

that just sounds a little more final.

“But the last one: the baby who trails her scent like a flag of surrender through your life when there will be no more coming after – oh, that’s love by a different name. She is the babe you hold in your arms for an hour after she’s gone to sleep. If you put her down in the crib, she might wake up changed and fly away. So instead you rock by the window, drinking the light from her skin, breathing her exhaled dreams. Your heart bays to the double crescent moons of closed lashes on her cheeks. She’s the one you can’t put down.” {barbara kingsolver, the poison wood bible}

cheers *