All the Feels

3 years ago, I found out I was pregnant with my daughter.  Since then, I’ve been on this crazy journey called motherhood, and I can already feel the memories slipping away in my rear view mirror.

I’m calling this the best season of my life.  It doesn’t mean that everything’s rosy and perfect – far from it.  In fact, it can get quite messy and there are times I just want to hit the fast-forward button.  But it’s the season in which I’ve felt things most intensely.  The highs, the lows, they’re all more intense than anything I’ve ever felt before.   I literally have all the feels. I’m going to attribute part of this to the fact that I’m currently 24 weeks pregnant, so I have all of the hormonal pregnancy feels on top of of all the normal motherhood feels.

And I don’t want to forget it.  I want to remember it all.

How do I know this is the best season of my life when obviously I still (hopefully) have many more seasons to come? You’re right, I don’t know.  But some day my kids will be grown, and then they’ll be grown forever.  This is a brief season.  They’re tiny.  Growing and raising tiny humans is no small feat.  In fact, it’s a freakin’ miracle.

A younger friend of mine recently said that based on what she’s heard about pregnancy from me, that it doesn’t sound too awesome.  And I realized that I’m doing her a huge disservice by not painting the whole picture.  All she sees are the foods I can’t eat, the drinks I can’t drink, the complaints of nausea and back pain, and the general lack of sleep.  But there are so many wonderful things about pregnancy and motherhood I haven’t shared with her.

Like the huge rush of joy I felt when I heard that tiny heart beat for the first time.

Like the feeling of falling in love with my son every morning when I lay as still as I can in bed so that I can feel every kick and flip and roll in my growing belly.  

Like the way my heart swells every time my daughter gives me a tight hug around the neck and says “Mommy, I love you” in her tiny voice.

Of course, there’s all of the messy feelings too.

Like the devastation I felt after miscarrying and seeing an empty ultrasound. 

Like the fear I felt before I heard my next baby’s heart beat on that next ultrasound.

Like the anxiety I feel about my next breastfeeding journey, hoping it will go more smoothly than the first. 

See?  I said it got messy.

I realize I’m about 3 years too late in documenting all of my feelings about this season of my life, but most of those memories are still fresh enough that I’m going to tackle retro-actively writing about them before this next baby comes. Obviously I won’t forget the actual big events… but I want to remember how I feel.  In this very moment, when I have all of the feels.