I have so much love inside me.
It starts from the very tips of my toes and reaches all the way up to the hair on my head.
It has always been there.
It sits and it waits for you.
I promise I have been very patient..and positive, even mostly upbeat while I have waited, for so long now I forget where I end and you start.
I have watched everyone else around me meet their little joys.
I have lived vicariously through them, cuddling my nieces and nephews as much as I could. Hoping that feeling of being someone's mother, sprinkles on to me a little bit each time.
I have tried everything to get you here.
Distracting myself in hopes you would pop up one day and say 'Surprise'! Trying to pour the love I am keeping for you onto your Daddy, on to friends and family and their children....even the cat, but there it still sits, stubbornly knowing it is only for you.
I have tried lots of tricks to bring you along that little bit faster.
Some of these tricks have made me very sick, some had me doing very strange things and some made me feel prodded and poked like a pin cushion. All of it worthwhile to see your face, your little fingers and chubby legs.
I do not know how it is possible, but I do completely already love you - without you ever even existing. I have picked out your name, and it is as beautiful and strong as you will be my love. I have already guessed your hair colour; auburn like Mummy, and your eyes, beautiful blue with flecks of green like Daddy. The way your soft cheeks flush hot and red when you are tired. The way your little hands feel as they take mine.
I smile for you. I grieve for you. I crave for you more then I have ever craved anything.
I think about you all the time now too. For a while it was every now and then. Little tiny thoughts and wishes I dared to conjure, a soft and breezy whisper; now though it is a tornado whirling around in my head over and over.
Even though my whole body painfully aches for you, the thought of you actually appearing is quite incomprehensible. Because you see, I dream of you but I also dream about lots of things that won't ever come true.. so I worry you won't either. To have you would be like winning a lottery, and I am just worried that I am not that lucky.
I watch people with their little ones, and how they almost take for granted how easily they came to them. They simply thought it and it happened. Photo frames on desks of camping trips and seaside adventures; children's smiles taunting me with their easiness and regularity...reminding me what is normal for everyone else on the planet but me it sometimes seems.
I also think of you a lot when your amazingly, fantastical Daddy does something that is kind and lovely for someone. You are really going to love him. He wants you to arrive just as much as I do and I am just so excited for you to know his love. It feels like a warm, sparkly summers day. How lucky are you.
When I am feeling more positive and sure you will come, I daydream about what it would feel like to look down and see the swell of my tummy. To feel you growing and moving inside of me, protected and loved so much already. Hearing your little heart beat.
Finally the relief washing over me knowing everything was going to be OK.
Knowing I was not a failure.
Knowing I too would be a member of a club I have longed to join forever and a day.
Knowing I have succeeded in giving Daddy and I everything we ever wanted all wrapped up into one little being.
I have spent many years watching many women who had come before me, their belly's swollen for a time before they got their tiny wish granted. I was happy for them, while distracted with all that youth brings, never noticing how quietly time ticked on and days turned to night. I had all the time in the world I said. I had many mountains to conquer before you would come...
Soon women in my life who came after me, started to have swollen belly's too and so then came the fear. Despite this fear that surges in the dead of the night, I do deep down believe we will meet some day little one. I hope it is soon.
I hold on to this love for you, like a keepsake box filled with many things. Our first touch, skin on skin. Your first suckle. The first time you cry for me. The first time you smile for me. Our first book we read together in your room; in our house; in our life we have made ourselves with that same tornado of love that now churns out of my body releasing it all around you.
In the meantime, if you do hear me cry at night, just please know that I do a lot more smiling then it looks, just sometimes...sometimes the pain and fear of never seeing you or holding you is too much to bear. I really want you to know no matter how hard it has been for us; all this waiting and pleading to the universe for you; it was all worth it, every second of it. I would do it all again, for you.
Even if you never come. We love you, so quite simply and surely, we had to try.
I know we will be OK; we will find some other way to use this love we have for you. But for now there is hope and hope will do me just fine.
So, I sit and I wait. Filled with love,
from the tips of my toes to the hair on my head.
Emma Kate xoxo