On New Babies

I have always loved newborns. How can you not? There are beautiful little miracles, sweet and cuddly and good-smelling and so perfectly tiny. I tell you though, I remember when that maternal instinct flared up to full force.

I had been working at the pre-school for about three years when the office manager had a darling little baby girl. I loved sneaking away from the classroom and stealing up to the office to love on little Natalie. She was just so calmingly wonderful. She was really my first 'long term' exposure to babies since entering my prime baby-making years adulthood. I wasn't yet engaged, and here I was pining away for a baby. I started spending more and more time in the infant room. I started paying closer attention to my friend Amy who was pregnant with her first, and was horrified that my friend Lora, who was pregnant with twins, was so far away from me!

I had baby fever.

At my wedding, there were no less than six pregnant girls there. SIX! Including Lora, my matron of honor. I looked at each of those women with their bellies in different stages of baby roundedness, and said, either out loud or in my head, 'Oh, I can't wait to be in that stage!'

Turns out I didn't have to wait long. While Joshua and I certainly weren't planning on having children for a couple of years, the Lord had different plans. Our wedding was in late October, and by Christmas, I knew I was pregnant. I was super excited, but it took a while to figure that out. The shock had to wear off first.

When all my girlfriends started delivering their children, I was ecstatic. I would hold those little ones and ooh and ahh, and was still really prone to say, 'Oh, I want one!' People would laugh and remind me I was pregnant. Even when I was seven and eight months along, I could be heard saying, 'Oh, I can't wait to have a baby!'

It wasn't that I was wishing my life away or being un-thankful for the season I was in. It was just that I had a hard time believing that I was actually with child! It was such a grown-up thing. And here I was just barely married, playing with four year olds all day long at work, not really remembering that I was the grown-up this time around.

As each of my children have been born, I have marveled at how sweet it is to have a newborn resting on my chest. They are so sweet and so small and so perfectly made. Newborns are full of hope, full of promise.

Today, I got to do prints for a brand new baby in the Gossett family. It is always such a privilege to get to do newborn prints. I reached out for him, held him in my hands and gazed on that perfectly formed little face, reveling in God's handiwork, then I snuggled him up against my chest and inhaled of that wonderful newborn scent. And I said...

'Oh, I want another one!'

Mrs. L (maternal grandmother) was there, and she laughed at me and said she remembered me saying that right after her last grandson's birth, and look how I had gotten right to work on that! As she made this comment, she gazed down at my suddenly-not-quite-so-small Anna, who was contentedly resting in Mrs. L's arms.

I stuttered and sputtered as I acknowledged the truth of her words, but assured her I didn't mean right away! I explained that I am not opposed to more at all, but perhaps it would be a couple of years before we started adding to our brood.

Oh, but I am so ready to go back to the Gossett's today and love on some little Graham. Congratulations, friends. Welcome to our world, little one.

**Not my site, but this is what I mean when I say prints. Perhaps, one of these here days, I will get around to a website.