The making of me

My sweet fourth baby broke me and remade me into something new.

Sometimes it feels like I peaked as a mother of young children at three kids. I had myself the most together around that time in my life: the perfectly packed bag, juggling night shifts, nannies, pumpkin patches, and summer breaks like an absolute boss.

That season of mothering holds such a special place in my heart and in my soul. I was doing it alongside one of my favorite moms and favorite people, surrounded by a community of sweet chosen family. My kids were tablet-free, my bag held modeling clay and coloring crayons, and dollar theater snacks were safely hidden inside.

I don't know if my children will remember those years with the same fondness that I do. The morning movies, afternoons at the pool, and early evening cuddles with friends exhausted from sun and chlorine. But those memories live on in my mind and in family photos: little boys in Star Wars costumes or superhero capes, with a toddling princess chasing behind them.

There were afternoon Nerf battles and water gun fights. Iced coffee consumed amidst piles of laundry while communing with friends and planning easy summer dinners. It was magic in the purest sense of the word.

My fourth pregnancy came along four years after my third. A much larger gap than any of the others, and completely unexpected.

She was completion. She was desperately desired by me.

But she also broke some things that maybe were brittle to begin with.

It was a pregnancy marked by loneliness, isolation, and complete vulnerability. When I feel unsupported, I tend to retreat into a mindset best described as, "Fine. I'll do it myself." It is protective in its own way. Abandonment is something I find incredibly difficult to carry. I own that I shut out everything that felt to painful to manage because I could not figure out a way to make myself ok with doing it alone.

So I settled deep into myself, as though the only way to pay for the gift of a fourth baby was to earn her through loneliness and endless vomiting.

I cannot adequately express how much I puked.

I could barely make it through morning report and handover before my cold, dry trader joes pop-tarts were redeposited into the toilet. In the few photos I have from that time, I look flat and hollow, green around the edges and utterly exhausted.

The week before I was due to deliver, I realized I hadn't really processed enough to be ready for the act of birth itself. In a last-minute attempt to catch my mind up with my body, I audited a birth course at work.

Even then, when my OB sat across from me and said, "Today we call it. Today you look awful,  your labs and blood pressure are not improving," all I could do was sigh and nod in agreement.

I was well and truly done.

So along she came in what felt like the longest solitary labor for a fourth baby. Everyone assumes the fourth one will just rush right out. This one took her time.

I labored the way I gestated: alone, inside my own mental fortress.

And then came the fourth baby.

The baby I spent the most time with, thanks to six beautiful months of maternity leave through Baby & Co. I soaked up every drop of baby goodness. I smelled her head and her toes. I memorized her.

In so many ways, I gave more of myself to mothering her. I wasn't chasing a toddler. I wasn't in my twenties trying to figure out how to care for a newborn. And I was keenly aware of how fast and fleeting the baby stage is because I was simultaneously parenting children who were already nine, seven, and five.

Organizationally, however, this baby was simply along for the ride.

The ride of school runs, sports practices, and being the baby of a mother working at a start-up that offered both incredible flexibility and enormous demands on my emotional and mental space.

There were no perfectly packed diaper bags.

Sometimes there weren't even packed diapers.

To be the youngest of four children is to spend your life chasing the ones ahead of you.

I have grieved the missed phases of babyhood and the rushed maturity that comes with being the youngest. Watching movies above your age range because I cannot fully segregate you from your siblings, and they are absolutely going to watch Jurassic Park whether you are ready for it or not.

You will never experience holding a brand-new sibling or meeting a new baby brought home from the hospital.

But you have something different.

You have a team of memory keepers.

People who knew you from that very first hospital visit and remember every moment since. People who can tell stories about you before you can remember them yourself.

As for me, I am not a perfect mother.

But I am a more peaceful one than I used to be.

I know now to give every phase time because none of them last forever. So you still sleep in my bed at eight years old. And last autumn, we made our way to a pumpkin patch because I wanted to see the joy on your face as you explored it.

When you hold a grudge and tell me you hate me, I pause. I remind myself that I am your safe place to feel all of your feelings.

I am remaking myself too.

Learning that I deserve support and do not always have to be the one providing it.

Learning that sometimes it is okay to be alone.

Learning that I am not responsible for another person's unhappiness.

Learning that even if I am not liked, or loved, in every arena of my life, it does not mean I am not likable.

Or lovable.

Perhaps that is another gift my fourth baby gave me.

Not only the gift of knowing and loving her, but also the chance to know and love myself. Just as I am, and all the iterations of myself that I have been and continue to become.