i want a baby

i want a baby.

more than anything, anything, anything. i want to be a mother. i want to give birth. i want to experience that first miraculous moment of skin-to-skin with a human that is half me and half someone i love with  deep, deep love. a human that grew inside me. one that i exerted the pinnacle of mortal physical effort to bring into the world.

i want to be spit up on and change diapers and have hundreds of baby-cry-induced sleepless nights, and then i want to fall asleep with my child, my very own, snoozing on my chest. i want to look into the glossy eyes of a newborn to whom i personally gifted dna, whose veins have me running through them. i want to hold, cozy and tender and supple in my arms, a tiny body containing the spirit of one who has anticipated arrival to me as mother from the heavens.

i want to struggle and ache and worry and hurt, and i want to be frustrated and exasperated and exhausted and harrowed – as a mother. i want a tattered body and frazzled mind and tired spirit – because i’ve spent as a mother. and i want to experience moments of golden, amber, honey love that make it all worth it.

i want to watch, feeling wonderstruck, my baby meet my parents, my brothers and sisters, my dear friends, and, eventually, his or her older siblings. i want to wade through chaos and screaming and messes. i want to get my kids ready for the first day of school, and set up lemonade stands on the corner, and fruitlessly deal with tantrums, and be kissed on the cheek by little sleepy lips and squeezed by little chubby arms at bedtime. 

i know i can’t imagine how authentically hard it is to be a mother. but i think i can imagine, in some itty bitty effulgent slivers, how wonderful it is to be a mother.

indeed, motherhood is my life dream. and i feel so excruciatingly that motherhood is my life mission. 

photo is of my nephew peter, taken by my sister saydi
more from me about craving motherhood here and here