Grieving Uterus
by Sherry Osborne
Breanna is growing so quickly. Every week she outgrows something else and so I fold it for the last time and place it in a bag which will eventually be
given to some charity. Two days ago I found a bag with a pair of pink sheep
pajamas that my older daughter Hayley had worn; pajamas that were my
absolute favorite. When I finally found them I nearly cried because I'm
almost sure that they won't fit Breanna and she never even got to wear them.
Each time she does something new, some milestone or just something
awe-inspiring, I feel so proud and then I feel a little melancholy that I
will never again see my own child do X, Y, or Z for the very first time.
Hayley is three and a half and already practicing to be a teenager. I don't
know how or when she got so big but I look at her baby pictures and can
barely grasp that they are the same person. I listen to her talk in long,
rambling paragraphs about everything from dinosaurs to what happened in her
dreams last night and I wonder when she stopped saying, "mamamamamamama". How
did my first baby become big enough to tell me knock-knock jokes?
It's the finality that makes me sad. Although I don't want more children,
I'm sad that I'll never have a newborn again, that I'll never lie awake in a
hospital bed watching a brand new baby's eyelashes flutter against her
cheeks as she sleeps. Although I didn't always love pregnancy, I loved
birth. I wish I could rewind and re-live both births at will just to
experience it once more.
It has nothing to do with numbers. I could have seven kids running around
and I'd still feel this way. It's not the number, it's the never.
I try telling myself that instead of feeling sad that I'll never experience
something again, I should try to remember to be happy having experienced it
at all. But sometimes it strikes out of nowhere: That onesie that doesn't
fit but doesn't need to be packed away for the next one; seeing Hayley
writing her name and realizing she'll never get smaller, only bigger;
hearing Breanna have a fit of belly laughs over the screensaver on our
television. It's those times that make something primal deep inside my
uterus not only ache, but scream. I guess it's this screaming that helped
humans to reproduce in the first place.
In the meantime I'll just hang on to the memories of all the firsts we've
gone through and be grateful for everything that I have. Then I'll look
forward to all the firsts that still lie ahead. And hopefully one day at
least one of them will have children of their own and I can live vicariously
through all their parental firsts too.
Sherry Osborne is a mom of two in Montreal, Canada. In between trying
to do battle with housework, she maintains her weblog at http://andromeda.qc.ca as well as writing for Montreal MetroBlog at http://montreal.metblogs.com/ . She is currently on a constant mission
to find a way to write for a living to avoid working for ten bucks an
hour at a part time job. Daily, she tries to remind herself that there
is more to life than diapers and Disney princess.
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