Thinking About Birth Plans

I'm at 21 weeks here, growing a baby in my guts, W is on a training exercise for 30 days, and I am exhausted.  I have so many plans and ideas and things I want to do, and I am exhausted.  Jooj is growing like a weed, I half-expect to need to go buy her a prom dress any minute now.  Buster is a little sponge for facts and figures, most of which he gets from TV*, and Jojo is a massive Rage Hulk.  And then we have a Damn Dog, who is just as smart as Buster, and just as destructive as Hulk, and as potty-trained as the two of them put together. 

And, in the few minutes before I pass out every day/night/in between spare minutes I think "What am I going to do with another one of these?" 

My birth plan with Jooj involved giving birth.  I wanted to feel those kicks and be a part of every minute.  Instead, she was given to me by a sweet, heartbroken girl who felt those kicks and knew she wasn't going to be able to be a part of every minute from then on.

My birth plan with Buster involved Hypnobirthing and organic cloth diapers and multi-level-smuggery from all involved.  His actual birth involved ambulances and tiny tubes and nothing I can remember because I was under general anesthesia. 

My birth plan with Jojo was a little more grounded, but I wanted to push and nurse, and hold my baby after he was born, and under no circumstances was he staying away from me for a month.  But when the day came, I was again unable to see or hold or be with him for a few days, he drank formula and I made it through a Christmas without my boy in my arms.  And then I spent a full year in a tailspin. 

This one?  This sweet one that will have to fit in wherever there is an empty spot?  My bag is already packed and I am planning on freezer meals and saving for babysitters so I can go to the hospital all day, every day.  I am hoping for pumping but hoarding Costco formula.  Saving my Netflix Queue for the week or two of hospital recovery, and practicing sneezing and laughing while holding my stitches. 

I never wanted a family like this, I never planned things to be this way.  I had dreams and goals and a LIFE.  But then this unseen hand pushed me, directed me, and led me to this way of living.  Where we move and the kids come from who even knows where and when, and who am I to have any say about my future? 

And yet, I feel no disappointment or regret--maybe pain at some of the remembrances of hardship--because I know that this family, this life that I have is my LIFE. And this new one will fit in the closet  and will travel to a new state and will learn to yell over the brothers and sister and will be exactly what I never knew I needed.  They have all been exactly the way God planned, which has been exactly the way that was best for me.


*exhausted