A Little Bit Sad...

In less than a month, my sweet Miss Mia will be a year old. A YEAR OLD! I don't understand where the time has gone. I remember so well holding her freshly born little body against my chest in the delivery room, I remember all those tiny pink and purple newborn outfits I had bought and hung up in my closet waiting for her to wear them...and then, I was so delighted as she wore each of them, and filled up memory cards with picture after picture. She might actually be the most documented baby in Fontenot Family history...okay so part of this might be because Albert had bought me a brand new Cannon Rebel right before she was born...
I have loved every single second of this year with her. I am such a different mom now, at thirty-four, than I was at nineteen. I often joke about the fact that our younger children have really gotten a far better mother in so many ways, than what our older couple of kids got. I was so young back then...and now I am so much more confident and knowledgeable and so much less likely to be influenced by what I read, or what I hear other people say. I feel so much freer now to raise my babies MY way and I think that turns out to be far better for them than if I just went along parenting them unintentionally and haphazardly.
But I digress...
Mia will be one soon and our first year together will be over. My baby will be gone and I'll have a toddler. In some ways, that prospect is a lot of fun. Albert and I both long for the day when we don't have to lug a diaper bag around everywhere, when we don't have six car seats in our van, when we can stop buying diapers...and Mia's one year milestone just brings us that much closer to those things. And I am so excited to see how she will grow, to find out what she'll look like at 18 months, at three, in kindergarten. But part of me also wants to slow down time, and just keep her as an infant a while longer. I love her teeny tiny hands and feet. Her complete reliance and trust in me. Her sleepy smile in the morning. The way she cries for me when I walk into the room if someone else is holding her. I don't want that to change, I don't want to give that up.
Mia is probably our last baby. In some ways, I absolutely love saying that. We're done!!!! In other ways, I'm not so sure. It feels a bit sad, and empty. Don't ask me how I feel both ways at once, I can't explain it, but I do. For example, I'm looking so forward to going into this summer NOT PREGNANT. It feels so good, physically and mentally. My body is not working double time, my hormones are under control, I have things to wear that actually button and zip, I don't feel like I will die without a nap, I am through with the sleep deprivation stage, all my babies sleep through the night. Yet when I pass newborn clothes at Babies-R-Us, I'd be lying if I said I didn't feel a twinge. I don't know if that twinge means I really want another baby one day...but I'm not a hundred percent certain it means I don't.
Albert, on the other hand, is pretty close to 100 per cent certain. He hears the call of a private beach somewhere with just the two of us and knows full well that dreams like these can never be a reality as long as I have a nursling...or two.

And so all of this makes Mia just a little extra bittersweet for me. She's my last baby. And I am in no hurry to let any of her stages, phases or milestones hurry by. I want them to linger...and linger some more. As babies go, she has been fairly needy and requires a lot of time and attention. And I loved it. Even the parts that I normally wouldn't have been so excited about. I gladly woke up with her as much or as little as she needed as a newborn. When she wanted to sleep in her swing, she slept in the swing. When she wanted to co sleep, we co slept and when she wanted to sleep in her crib, we transitioned her there. These are things I can't say of my first couple babies, whom I raised in different ways...ways that work fine for some, but not for me. With my last few little ones, I've finally found my way of doing things, which surprise, surprise has simply been to do what baby needs me to do. So maybe that's the part that is hard for me to let go of...but I digress again.

Next month, I won't have a little baby, or one on the way, for the first time in a long time. And I'm so happy about that and a little bit sad about that all at the same time. My sweet Mia is such a joy and an honor and a blessing to take care of and it is such a privilege that God picked me, to be her mom. I don't want to miss a second of anything that's to come...with her or her amazingly precious nine siblings. I am blessed to have exactly what I grew up wanting in life. Exactly. I know I can't freeze time, and I wouldn't if I could, because if I did, I'd miss out on what's in store for tomorrow. But I don't mind if she takes her time growing up. It's okay if she wants to go slow...I'll wait.