Our Next Stage

My wedding ring still doesn’t fit.

My c-section incision scar burns from time to time.

I have approximately zero professional outfits which fit and have been trying to figure out how to make flannel shirts and leggings look business-casual.

And.

There is a sixteen pound little-big boy who has captured my heart, my hands, and my breath and I have to leave him tomorrow for the first time to go teach other people’s children.

This leave was different than my first. (Not in the fact that all my time was unpaid. Because both leaves were FMLA, unpaid, thanks to them being July babies.)

I knew Maverick would most likely be our last baby, so I have tried feverishly to cherish each moment instead of wondering when I’ll next sleep for more than a four hour stretch.

Last week, when it was snowing during the night and I was feeding him at three a.m. in the rocking chair in his room, I closed my eyes, laid my chin atop his head, and inhaled everything about the moment.

I willed myself to remember what it felt like, smelled like, sounded like to have the baby God chose just for me in my arms.

I memorized the smell of formula, cold humidifier air, and Dreft for days in the future when I will need to recall it.

Because, one day, this baby is going to be a grown man and I’m going to be in a rocking chair, alone, wondering what he’s doing, wishing so badly to return to the snowy November night when he gazed into my eyes like I was the only person he ever needed.

This is the baby God thought was perfect for me.

I am the mother God thought was perfect for him.

And we have reached our next stage together.

I will carry him through this one. I will pack him up tomorrow morning in his little Carter’s outfit and zip him into his sherpa-lined carrier and carry him down the stairs to Suzi’s house.

A few years will then pass and he will walk into a kindergarten room and I will no longer be his only teacher.

We will do these transitions together.

And because I’m the mom, I will lead us for now.

There will most certainly be a day where my Maverick is as tall as his father, where I will fit under his chin.

One day, I will leave him in a college dorm room and cry like I will in my car tomorrow when I leave him at Suzi’s.

One day, he will hold my hand while I walk down a shaky porch stoop, my bones old, my muscles weak.

God chose us for each other. He knew we needed each other.

Maverick needed a mom who feels her feelings hard, who speaks her mind, who will always remember how desperately she prayed for her babies.

And sweet Sarah needed a son who loves her unconditionally, who grips her shoulder protectively while she holds him, who closes his eyes and smiles a toothless smile while she kisses his cheeks over and over.

Cognitive Reframing

I am, by no means, saying that tomorrow will be easy or that I’m glad to leave my baby and my toddler.

But. In my mom’s group, we’ve learned to cognitively reframe things to help process them with less angst.

So instead of thinking about how it won’t be me who feeds Maverick all of his bottles any longer, I’m going to remind myself that my children are fortunate enough to be loved by a woman named Suzi who God himself put in our lives.

Suzi sings a welcome song for each child she cares for and plays a lullaby cd at naptime and holds my children against her chest like a family member.

Suzi says things like, “Maeve, let’s make a better choice.”

I say, “Jesus, Maeve. If you slip on the ice again, it’s your own fault.”

I will acknowledge that I have to wake my babies up in the dark and cold and drive them 35 minutes across town each way, but I will remind myself that they are watching their mom hold down the job she’s had for 17 years, provide health insurance for her own family, and help families less fortunate than our own.

It will be difficult. I want to be the person to lay them down for naps and make them lunch and take them to daytime library story times.

But. I will remind myself that I am not the first or last mother to make this transition.

My support system is supportive enough to achieve world peace.

My teaching partner, Sarah, knows that it will be eating me alive to sit at a table and grade papers on my first day away from my babies. So she told me not to worry about my return, that she’s buying us Panera lunch, that she planned what we’re doing for the rest of the week.

Sarah is more than a teaching partner. Sarah knows me so well that we don’t even use language to have conversations sometimes. Sometimes, just the way we exhale confirms what the other Sarah is thinking. Sarah had to leave a baby boy at home nearly fourteen years ago to return to work and she knows what it feels like.

My friend, Kristen Black, will look at me tomorrow and just the way that she acknowledges me when I walk in the room will confirm that she is helping me hold my swollen heart. She will hug me and we will giggle about all the things I’ve missed since I’ve been gone—the recent snow day, her new haircut, Santa Shop signup.

And the school day will end and we will do this over and over and over again until June, when, once again, I will get to be the person to feed the bottles and lay them down for naps, and attend the library story times.