I’ve spent a little time tonight filtering back through posts from my previous 100 days journeys, and I have to say, I’m so grateful. Here, sixteen days away from a presumed end to this countdown, it’s a little bit of a fight to find the words and to say what I mean to say–especially without saying all of the things I could say and don’t need to say quite so candidly.

I try to be real with you here, friends, I really do. But real Molly these days can be fairly unfiltered and maybe too honest for everyone’s taste, so I’ll attempt to keep it forthright without oversharing.

This end of pregnancy gig is hard. Way hard. Harder than I remember, which is why we’re certain to forget at some point, so that we might ever be willing to give it another go. I’m actually crazy-thankful that the hard parts fade over time…I love having babies too much to throw in the towel because the last few weeks come hard and heavy each time. It’s changed with our babies, for sure: birthing a first born is different from when the second one comes along and so on, but I still want to remember the sweetness over the obstacles, the delight over the pain.

It’s always good to remember your “why” as an exercise of self-evaluation and personal motivation, isn’t it? Looking back on the months leading up to this pregnancy, what was my why? And what was it when I decided to write for 100 days again, not recalling then just how hard it would be to commit to this mini-documentary here on the page, day after day?

Why did I pray fervently for this baby? Why is he or she such an answer to prayer? Because I felt a deep burden on my heart that our family wasn’t complete, and I wanted to be used as a vessel to carry more life into this world. I longed for another sibling for Henry and Eloise, and I longed for the chance to mother a tiny baby once again. I prayed and prayed and prayed because God had put this baby on my heart…probably long before I even realized it. And when it wasn’t happening, month after month, I prayed and prayed that I could let it go and release our family’s future to God, and then I waited for what could only feel like a miracle.

This miracle. This beautiful life, swirling and twirling and almost ready to come into the world–a reality and an answer to thousands of petitions for a someday baby.

How quickly we take for granted the things we once knew only as distant hopes and intangible dreams.

Eighty four or some odd days ago, I approached my third trimester and this exercise of documenting the last third of another pregnancy, starry-eyed at the thought of leaving a legacy for this baby to someday read and (hopefully) enjoy. I didn’t calculate all of the very sleepy nights and the third trimester aches and pains and my growing desire for time and space to prepare for baby in tangible ways. No. I counted only my desire to build a pile of memories and the intention in my mama heart to keep things even for all of our kiddos. One hundred days for Henry and the same for all who follow.

I may not have scrapbooks or organized albums of our children for their first years of life, but now, I do have this. Countless details I would never have remembered otherwise–the sweet and the good, the hard and the bad. Being pregnant is a gift and a whirlwind and a marvel all at once, and I’m so grateful that I can look back and recall how each baby has been amazing and amazingly different.

I’m not sure where we’ll cut off this countdown with baby #3, but what I do know is that when the time comes, I will be nothing short of elated to celebrate the newest birthday in our family. And it won’t be because I can put an end to the countdown and move on, rather it will be because of the countdown and the journey that comes with it. Where I’ve been as a mama in these past months and where our family is coming from are so closely related to how this baby finds a space in our lives and home–how he or she has been making a space in our hearts for a long, long time.

We’re ready for you baby, soon and very soon. You stay tucked away for a bit yet if you’re still comfy in there, and then please come when you’re ready to join our crazy, amazing world.

love, love, love,

mm