The Baby Ache

Our baby year is almost up. Approximately eleven months, twenty days, and two hours have passed since my second babe got her first glimpse of the world. I can't quite wrap my mind around the reality that she is about to be one. I mean, I'm happy about it and excited that she's doing that whole growing thing, but I'm also feeling a teensy bit forlorn about the fact that her age is about to be calculated in year(s) and not months.

And this, my friends, is why I need to discuss The Baby Ache with you. Currently, every single Instagram or Facebook photo of a new babe literally makes my eyes water and my insides do a somersault. The baby doesn't even have to be cute for this to happen. It's becoming a problem. Some days I even think I might need to save all the baby stuff and do this whole deal over again. And yet, this is a bad idea on most fronts. I'm 36. I've had two c-sections. And twins run in my family like you would not believe (i.e. my dad, grandma, first cousin, etc.) Plus, I am not a very good pregnant person. It makes me sad and gives me heartburn and makes me want to shoot things. Basically, I am a citizen of crazytown when I'm gestating a small human.

BUT, new babies are THE BEST. I love their teeny tiny everything and their smell and their tiny newborn-sized diapers and their mini sneezes and their dazed and confused stares. I LOVE it. To be clear, I do not love the weirdness that is the aftermath of giving birth. But, all that sort of melts away in the haze of new-babyness. And, one year later, it's getting dangerously hazy and so I can start to think that doing the whole pregnancy/birthing thing is not that big of a deal and having a new baby again would be totally worth it.

And maybe it would.

But, I've had an epiphany of sorts recently. I've come to the realization that no matter how many new babies I gave birth to and brought home to sweet little nurseries and sniffed the heck out of their tiny little bald heads, I would still want more. Every time the one year mark rolled around, I'm pretty sure I'd start getting teary over people's Instagram shots of their new babies and the need for "just one more" would come rushing back. And so, I'm starting to understand how the Duggars became The-Duggars-Have-Twenty-Seven-Kids. I'm pretty sure they must be addicted to that new baby stage and so they just gave in and became baby hoarders. I get it.

My friend Amanda told me recently that, now that her youngest are getting close to five, she's moving past the need for a new baby. Sure, she can appreciate the cuteness and the perfection of an infant, but she doesn't feel herself wanting to steal that baby and make it her own anymore. (Not that she ever did, really. Maybe that was just me). So, perhaps there's hope for this baby addiction I seem to have developed in recent years.

For now, there aren't going to be anymore babies cooked up in this house (though adoption's a very real possibility.) But, as my friend Jake so aptly put it a few years back when he and his wife got pregnant a few months after getting married, "Sometimes babies find you." So, we'll see.

Here's to one year of Baby Mae and that crazy hairdo she showed up with.
She's pretty much the best thing since sliced bread.