post-partum hormones suck

I don’t find myself anxious or worried.  I find myself more or less sad or depressed at the finality of things…. At the quickness of the newborn stage, the desperate attempts to preserve and remember everything and the fear of failing and forgetting it all.

With Amelia, I thought she was our last.  She WAS our last.  And I still did a miserable job of documenting so much of her pregnancy and the newborn stage.  Her scrapbook is still barely there. That kills me…. the boys have such elaborate, thoughtful and heartfelt scrapbooks.   Eloise for sure is our last.  A surprise, a second chance, maybe, but for sure our last.  And I sit here in the quiet of the middle of the night and think about how much I already failed to document because “it won’t matter” or I didn’t think I would care.

Sure, in a few months or years I won’t care that I declined maternity pictures with our birth photographer. But tonight, I wish I had sucked it up and done it even though I felt fat and ugly.

Later on, I won’t think about the way my belly moved toward the end when Eloise was kicking and rolling around… But tonight I wish I had taken a few moments to record it.

I walked into the hospital telling myself I should take one last belly picture, but I didn’t.  And tonight I wish I had taken a second to snap even a poor selfie in the bathroom mirror.

Last week Amelia reached up and grabbed my belly and kissed it.  Why didn’t I ever take a picture of her loving on her baby sis and talking to her while she was in my belly?

When the kids came to the hospital to meet Eloise, why didn’t I take a video and preserve the looks of awe and pure wonder on their faces, and record their voices and sweet things they first said upon meeting her?

I hate all these regrets.  These moments that pass so quickly, often without a second thought at the time, but in the days following delivery I always replay them in my mind and load up on wish I would haves and why didn’t i’s.  I know it’ll pass and in the coming weeks and months it won’t feel so awful or like such a loss.  Maybe, though, just maybe, I can attempt to document more from this point on.