Because I'm exhausted to my core, because you were awake every two hours last night, and because I stillandwillalways love you, little man, here is a poem I wrote in March during my pregnancy:

Tending Toward Joy

August.  Waking, strands clinging

To my forehead and neck, I think of 

the last pregnancy test:

Negative.

The past two days were fat with

Soggy Kleenex and despair,

But I dreamt about a soaring rainbow

Directly over my head. 

It seemed if I could reach up

and touch its filmy colors, I’d have pulled away

covered in its promise. 

There’s a rainbow-hued light

Shining through my cracked world.

October.  Scents of hot cobbler and fall

fill my parents’ kitchen.  Mom stirs

Enchilada sauce on the stove.   

A glowing three-week old secret tickles my lips,

Ready to be born.

Staccato thumps my heart as

I make the announcement.

Now a blueberry in my hand, cold from the fridge: 

Our baby is this big.

Mom is so elated she can barely finish

making dinner, let alone eat it. 
Dad’s got tears in his eyes.

January.  Christmas and New Year’s have gone without

A drop of champagne crossing my lips.  I revel instead

in my just-swelling belly. 

No one said pregnancy would feel like

This paradox.  Wonderment in my capability as a woman –

One that is now growing a clean, new life –

Mixed with a selfish desire for my old body –

One that could run three miles and drink beer. 

Those first little wobbling flutters

Remind me how much I want this.

March.  June is just around the corner, and it’s

An eternity away.  Birthing classes, breastfeeding books,

Nesting for the little one inside me. I don’t even know him,  

I think, as I trace lines on my belly,

but there is already this titanium

link I feel melding my heart to his.  Some days are still

full of soggy Kleenex, but my husband’s everyday smile

is my anchor, and my child’s presence is my

anticipation.