He is such a happy baby. He is the proverbial "easy" baby. He has been playing this way for the past half an hour at least. He is laying on his back, in his striped "Mommy Loves Me" pajamas, reaching up and grabbing at his toys that are hanging above him. He has toys hanging from links in a little jungle gym arc contraption. There's a bee, a purple star with a reflective mirror in the middle, a rattle, a soft tiger looking thing . . . just plain links. He grasps at them and is able to hold them in his grip. He's also using them to help pull himself onto his side — he's almost ready to roll over. He kicks his legs and alternately stops grasping at his toys to put his fingers in his mouth and suck on them a bit. He is the apple of my eye — he and his older brother and sister, of course.
During his pregnancy, I was fraught with fear: Would what happened last time happen again? Probably not, my mind reasoned, since what happened last time was such a freak, hardly-ever-happens kind of a diagnosis. Would something different happen this time? I made it to 12 weeks, when we could have an initial ultrasound and measure nuchal translucency. That was normal. Stress lessened, just a bit. Then I had a CVS . . . normal chromosomes (and it's a boy!). Stress lessened even more. The AFP test came back normal — now I was feeling pretty good. One last hurdle to get over . . . the "big" ultrasound. The one that checks for anomalies, the one at which we got our bad news last time. No anomalies! All I had to do then is to sit back and get round . . . and worry a bit. That worry never went away. Would something happen during delivery? Would I still come home without a baby?
Luckily — thanks be to God and the universe! — everything turned out as I had hoped it would, and here I am with him on this quiet Sunday morning. The house is tranquil — Daddy is sleeping as T gave him a hard time last night! The other kids were at grandmas for the night — and it is just he and I. He's playing with a plush blue elephant now, trying to grasp as many things at the same time in his tiny hands as possible. It is a joy to watch.
His brother is always in my mind, though. I like to think that their spirits were together for a while, playing together, in that nethertime before T's came to join us in this world, and that M is constantly with us, with him, watching over and protecting him in a special way. Protecting all of us in a special way.
T is my caboose. He's definitely the last of our brood. I cannot go through another tension filled pregnancy again. I worried with all of my pregnancies, to some degree, but his — for obvious reasons — took the cake. I cannot mentally do that again. I passed through the eye of the needle, and I'm grateful, but don't want to tempt fate again.
