three years ago today

Three years ago today I was on what would turn out to be my tenth and final full day of bedrest. The idea actually sounded lots better than the reality, even to a confirmed couch potato like me. I was having contractions and had been for almost two days. I was worried I was messing up the whole stop-watch timing thing and would end up giving birth alone in the bedroom with a rerun of The Gilmore Girls in the background. There was math involved so I was right to be worried. I was watching the Vatican window on tv, waiting for the damn white smoke. I was emailing my three aunts who were so dialed-in to my routine of doing nothing that they all knew I'd gone into real labor and left for the hospital the next morning once I stopped instantly replying to their emails. Three years ago today I was the mother of one just turned two-year old. I was worried I wouldn't love a new baby as much as I loved the one that had lived with us for a few years and who I'd just recently gotten used to. Three years ago I was 33 years old and didn't know what it meant to literally be born to be someone's mother. The Cutie Q always seemed to be on autopilot, almost like he knew better than we did what he needed and what would soothe him. All we had to do was listen and learn. Three years ago today I didn't know that I wouldn't meet this baby until the morning after he was born because he spent his first night in the NICU and I was too dizzy to get myself there. I didn't yet know that he would be a he or that he would be pulled from me blue and stay that way for too long to think about it now without crying. I didn't yet know that he'd teach me that I had the ability to light up a room just by entering it. I didn't know that this baby, my second son, would think I hung the moon just for him. I didn't know that he'd have my eyes, which it turns out are my Gram's eyes too and that I'd think of her often when he smiles and they turn down ever so slightly. I didn't know that our family of three wasn't complete without him. I just didn't know. How could I have possibly known how much more love was out there?