Letters to Babies

Last Monday, we went for our big ultrasound with Baby # 2. Our insurance only covers two ultrasounds unless complications require more, so if all goes well, we won’t get to see littlest one again until sometime in late October! We decided not to find out the gender, and even after watching this little wiggle worm spin around and around on the screen, I really have no clear guess as to whether or not it is a he or a she.

I really wanted to wait to find out with Chase, but he was the first grandbaby/nephew for all parties involved. People were just so excited to learn more about our little one, and maybe we were just a tad curious ourselves. I struggled with the decision of whether or not to find out for weeks, but we decided to go for it and make everyone happy. I was so overwhelmed by the all the possibilities of the person growing inside me that I wasn’t ready to begin to limit those possibilities in any way. I felt so afraid to know whether he was a boy or girl because I didn’t want the world to just go ahead and assign him a personality, a set of likes and dislikes, or a life path. I wanted him to always know that he could be anyone. I wanted him to come into this world undefined.

This is what I wrote to Chase before we learned he was a Chase:

September 17, 2009

Dear Baby,
Today is the day we find out if you are a boy or a girl. On the one hand, I am excited to see you again and to know that you are healthy and safe. I am excited to learn more about you. But, on the other hand, I am sad because I know that you will already begin to be defined, categorized, and classified before you are even born or get the chance to become anyone. I have to tell you, before I know anything about you other than that you are my child, that it doesn’t matter.

It doesn’t matter how you want to act or what you want to do or who you want to be. I will always love you for being exactly who you are. I hope that I can show you that every single day of your life, but I know sometimes I’ll mess up. And sometimes the world around you won’t be as supportive of you as you want them to be (or I want them to be…or they should be). Sometimes, many times, the world will try to tell you who to be.
The greatest desire I have for you is that you are able to shut out those voices and create in yourself the person you want to be. I hope that you are always becoming that person, even when it is the most difficult, the most confusing, the most scary thing in the world. I want you to love yourself, to know yourself, to be happy with yourself, and to know that you have the potential to be whomever and whatever you ever desire to be…follow your heart to that person. And while you are doing that, always ALWAYS know that you are loved and respected in this family for having the courage to be yourself and do what is right for you.

I love you,

Mom

Now that I know him, the beautiful little soul I wrote this letter to nearly two years ago, my fears are quiet.


This boy follows his feet where they carry him. He doesn’t wait for anyone’s approval. He runs toward himself and we follow him just to witness his brilliance and catch some of the joy that scatters out along his path.

And so we wait to find out more about Baby #2. Not because I am afraid of definitions, but because I am excited to meet everything about this little one when he or she gets here. We wait because of the excitement of big (huge) surprises. We wait because 20 more weeks fly by when you have a little Chase to chase around…in no time at all we’ll be holding both our babies and watching them both become themselves.

So here is my letter to you, Littlest One,
I trust you. You will be exactly who you are supposed to be. I love you, exactly how you are and ever will be. You are our blessing, and you are one lucky little baby because you’ve got the most wonderful big brother to follow. He will help you find yourself in this big old world. There is a big hole in this family waiting to be filled by you. There is a place for you here. We love you.

This is how my garden grows...

Sometime in the summer of 2009, after I found out I was pregnant with my son, I bought I big, flower-covered journal to write to him in. I didn't know anything about him yet, even that he was a boy, but I had so much to say...so, so much I needed to say in written words to my baby - words about my pregnancy, how much I loved him, how I hoped his life to be...words about myself, my own hopes and dreams, my flaws and my shortcomings...words about our life, how it began and how it was changing. After he was born, I continued to write to him. At first, I wrote a lot.
But as things got busier and busier, that little journal just sat on the nightstand collecting dust. Now that he is almost seventeen months old and has another sibling on the way, I feel a renewed need to say things to my babies that they just can't understand right now. I feel a need to record these days for them...to show them how we grew.

As a blogger, my history is a little spotty. My first attempt in the blogging world, Conversation Time, was a lifesaver to me in the months after Chase's birth. Writing in that space about anything and everything gave me a renewed sense of self in a world that I was struggling to place myself in. As I tried to learn to recognize myself not only as me, but also as someone's mother, blogging was a way for me to reconnect with who I'd been...to find my voice during a season when my heart had grown so big that it drowned everything else out. But, like the baby journal, that blog has been sitting in some forgotten corner of the internet collecting dust for months now.

I have realized that what I need as a blogger (and a writer...and a person) is focus to follow through. I need purpose and less personal pressure to be perfect. Like the plants in my garden, and the babies in my home and belly, I need a place to grow. I need a place to plant seeds and watch what they grow into. I need a place to talk about who I am becoming as a mother and a person. I need a place to watch my family grow and change. So, friends, welcome to my garden!