Roots: A Sixth for the Merry Band + One Month of Verity Caroline

I don't talk about it a lot except with Rundy, but pregnancy is hard and keeps getting a bit harder each time. The bodily house I live in is a little bit less recognizable every time it becomes a home for another. Who I am has not stayed still for all these years either; it ebbs and flows and changes just like the body that holds it. It is a strange thing growing older and being shaped by all that is around you and within you, the goodness and the hardness, the things you speak and all of the things you don't. It is the paradox of maturity meaning the recognition of immaturity; of repentance both preceding and following after righteousness. God moves in a mysterious way, truly; who can know it?

But all of the evolutions, the turning and returning and shifting and displacing and replacing, are profound even in their discomfort. Mothering is beautiful and breaking, just like marriage, just like all of life when we really see it. I'm finding even in my failure to live it out that wisdom is knowing how to seek God in the great aloneness, and joy is when His presence gives comfort there. Love is as inexplicable as God; one defines the other. I want to be wise and joyful and loving. Life is teaching me slowly how little I know about any of these things even when I most yearn for them. I cannot set the pace for my own growth.

Pregnancy and birth and raising children cannot be separated from all of these things; it's the stuff of life, the beauty we crave and the fallen groaning of the earth beneath us. Teaching my children cannot be separated from being taught myself.

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After the roughest end-of-pregnancy stretch I've ever had, I limped my way to the finish line (quite literally; I sprained my ankle around 34 weeks and the houseful of responsibilities had the gall not to accommodate my incapacitation by slowing down one whit). I'm so glad I'll never have to do that particular final trimester ever again.

Nine days after her due date, our new daughter joined us. September 3, 8 pounds and 9 ounces. It was a bizarre labor, but the active part was short and smooth. Although I was well and healthy and ready to soak her in and care for her, poor babe had aspirated meconium and had to spend four days in the NICU. I won't try to describe the haze of those nervewracking NICU days, but they were hard. Really hard. I am so grateful for God's preservation. He taught me a lot in the first week of our new baby's life on the outside.

At long last we were able to bring our new girl home. Verity Caroline--"the truth will set you free." A name that's a prayer for her life and for her mama's. I pray she grows into it well.

Homecoming.

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Those early days.

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Official One Monthiversary.

It was a hard first month with Verity. Her respiratory issues hadn't entirely abated when she came home, which meant a lot of conscious awareness and attention to her breathing. Then she got her first cold. And I spent a lot of time sick. Then we realized she had digestive issues giving her grief (she still does, poor girl). But we made it through. It was no fairy tale; it was a real start to real life. But through it all ran a golden thread of gratitude that this baby who labored so hard for her first breaths was home and with us and growing stronger and weathering sickness without issue. What a gift.

I love new babies, and Verity is just as lovable as they come. Favorite special Verity traits so far--her curly lashes and the dimple in her chin. I also loved her first real smiles, probably more than I ever have before. It was such a hard pregnancy, such a worrying time having her need special care after birth, such a physically rough first month with sickness and lack of sleep, and then she made me wait and wait and wait for that first smile (sober big-eyed baby). But when it came it was glorious. She was over 3 weeks old when she started giving me glimmery smiles, then the really big ones started coming the day after she turned one month old.

Baby smiles never meant quite so much.