Baby Bump the Fourth

Since I’ve not been blogging regularly, or at all, I never announced I was pregnant with our fourth baby. We had been hoping and praying for another baby. I just can’t seem to get enough of babies, the second my youngest seems to have a bit of self reliance I need to replace them with an all consuming new baby. Emmitt reached that stage a long while ago and I had to wait on God’s timing for this baby, not my own.
After a few days of unexplained  exhaustion and general horrible feeling I realized what my symptoms were a result of and took a test. Positive! Later that day we told the girls “God has given us something we’ve been praying for for awhile.” And before we’d even finished saying it Jerusha was jumping around shouting “I know, a baby!!”
We went out that Saturday for breakfast as we traditionally have. With all the other pregnancies it has been on a Sunday morning to Putnam Inn but this time we went on a Saturday and were forced to choose a new location, a hometown diner here in Greentown. The following weekend we went “home” and Emmitt wore an “I’m a big brother” shirt to tell my parents and siblings at home then  we sent out a text to family and posted our announcement on social media.
It might be my favorite announcement yet.

I’m due at the end of December, 33ish weeks currently, and today I finally finished this baby’s painting. You may, or may not, remember that I paint each of my expected babies a picture, I suppose when they’re grown, if they like it, they can take it with for their own home.
It took me a long time to decide how to do this painting. It was a hard thing, there are so many feelings behind it. I wanted a baby badly, but since the joy of that positive test, I have a growing worry, a fear, an anger, that I will be bringing this baby into a dark world. I hate living here, away from my people, so isolated and alone. My depression has been a more constant battle, a daily enemy, but more often than not, simply my old friend. I hate the thought of this baby entering our world of isolation. Growing up without his or her aunts and uncles as play mates, without weekly Sunday dinners at Grandma’s house, not favoring Papa’s lap, not recognizing family members by living beside and growing with them rather having to be introduced, having to split time at “home” between its daddy’s side of our family and mine. To bring a baby into a world, mothered by a woman who daily has to force herself to function and believe in living; it’s a dark and dismal picture, but none of that takes away from the joy and blessing this child is. And somehow, I wanted to paint that. So here it is, a dark, horribly miserable looking dreary day, the pure innocent joy of a child, and home at the end of this walk.