Originally published in Catholic Digest - May 2005.
Last September, I got all three of my kids on the school bus and off to full days of school - my little guy was finally in kindergarten. I watched the bus drive away and thought, well, that's that -- on to the next chapter of my life as a mom.
My husband had already begun making plans for our impending (thirteen years from now) child-free, swinging later-middle-aged-dom. The travelling! The vacations! All the great things we'd do as a couple in just thirteen short years! (Funny, we hadn't done any of these exciting things before we had kids, but that's beside the point...)
As the school bus disappeared, I started to feel a little funny. Not emotionally - physically. A little funny, in an oddly familiar way. I looked at the calendar, did some math ... and realized the whole morning had just been a set up to get to this punchline: I was pregnant.
We had thought about having a fourth child after our last son was born but it just didn't seem to in the cards. In fact, we had pretty much forgotten all about the idea. Now almost five years had passed, I was over 40 and we were having another baby.
We checked with the doctor and everything seemed to be progressing nicely. We knew we couldn't keep it from the kids for long, especially with my round-the-clock nausea. So one Sunday, we took the kids to my mom's and broke the news.
My husband had been kidding me about having another baby at my "advanced age". In keeping with that theme (which he thought, incorrectly, was quite hilarious), he had worked out a way to break the news to the kids. "Remember Sarah in the Bible and Elizabeth, Mary's cousin, who both thought they were too old to have a baby? Well, sometimes God has other plans."
They looked at him, then at each other, and finally at my mother. "Nanny's having a baby?!"
I don't know if I've ever seen my mom laugh so hard. Then they realized it was their own mom who was pregnant, not their grandmother, and that they were going to have a little brother or sister, not a new aunt or uncle. When we got home, our kindergartner stood out on the porch yelling at passersby, "Guess what? My mom's gonna have a baby!"
The first few months passed in much the same way they usually do for me when I'm expecting - in total misery. Ginger ale, saltines, Ð did I mention I felt terrible? Finally, just in time for Christmas, my first trimester hangover lifted. I felt so much better I happily ate my way through the holidays and gained a festive eight pounds.
We had plans to make. We'd given away most of the baby things but still had a crib. Friends brought a high chair and rocker. My home office -- the one that used to be a nursery - was morphing back into a nursery. Good thing we never took down the cow jumping over the moon border.
My office gone, I'd work from a laptop in my bedroom or in the kitchen or wherever time and my children and the new baby and the dog and the cat will allow.
The baby is due Mother's Day. The kids can't wait although they are getting a kick out of feeling the baby kick and watching the surface of my large stomach roll with movement.
The picture has changed for my husband and me. How old will we be when our youngest child graduates high school? (Five years older than we thought.) When our daughter leaves for college, will we really still have an eight-year old at home? (Yes.) When can we retire? (Never.)
Looks like the early fall of our parenthood will be that much brighter because of this spring baby.
