Will you be my last?

Entrusting me to grow your long, dark lashes, your ten fingers and ten toes.

Will you be the last one?

My last time to be penalized for simply brushing my teeth, by returning the contents of my breakfast in the nearby toilet, with you in mind.

Is this my pregnancy finale?

Assuming I can supply you with two knobby baby kneecaps, and perfectly aligned miniature teeth set under a pink gummy smile.

Do you trust me, really, to know when you’re the size of a key lime, then an avocado, or a kumquat, too? Do you expect me to even know what a kumquat is, let alone how to pronounce it?

Do you wonder if this third time around, I’ll choose the pricey prenatal vitamins when scanning across the row, and assume I’ll remember to take them daily?

Do you think I know what the heck I’m doing, though it’s not my first rodeo?

And all the while, my body moulds back into a saggier version of its former self. And I’m here questioning if this is the final time I’ll watch my belly button shriek out in disdain at the flattened donut hole it has grown to be, and wonder just how much more or less these double A breasts can possibly become.

Perhaps this is it, I wonder, as I lay down to rest, in terms of making space in my heart and home. And am I preparing my girls, really, for just one more, one last time?

I speak to you every now and again as I’m driving down the road, asking you if I’m savouring you enough, doing you justice, relishing in the time that remains while you’re still on the inside…

Just in case, I’ll rub my belly just a tiny bit more, and just in case, I’ll choose the tight fitting shirts rather than the muumuu to wear you proudly.

I’ll have three by 30. And no, you weren’t exactly part of any plan in this said timeline, but truly, unplanned is different than unwanted.

At 12 weeks pregnant I look and feel 20 weeks along, with my pelvic floor drooping down (it prays), perhaps, for the very last time. And though the ability to hold my urine for longer than two minutes at a time has been affected, though my mood might say otherwise, and my fall asleep at 7pm game is stronger than my toddler’s, I am, at the end of it all, in a space where I have come to feel grateful.

I’m turning the corner into the second trimester for the third time for what very well may be the very last time. And though my pits are sweating for no reason at all at 6am on a Friday morning, and I’m dead tired though I’ve slept for nine whole hours, I wonder to myself, how much more blessed could I possibly be?