Just Like That.

Hormones are a funny thing. You’d think, having gone through two births and recoveries, I would have been better equipped the third time around. Instead, the day we came home from the hospital with Olive, I plopped down on my bed (okay, I actually lowered myself very gingerly) and sobbed because I couldn’t find my hairdryer.

I think I was truly upset about my hair dryer. But probably also because there was this teeny, tiny creature lying beside me and oh-my-god-we-have-three-kids-now. I stared at her in awe and disbelief. I had photographic proof that Ella and Milo were once that small, but for the life of me, I couldn’t remember it. And it was THAT thought that caused me to spend the subsequent hour holed up in our upstairs bathroom, eating chocolate chips and crying (even harder) into a hand towel. A few minutes had passed when Jake opened up the door and set a small glass of wine on the bathroom counter. This was clearly not his first rodeo, either.

And then, just like that, the hormone surge was over. The rest of the evening felt like deja vu- oddly familiar, but then again not. We put the kids to bed, ate a late dinner on the couch and watched TV, and I relished the feeling of Ollie’s perfectly round head in the crook of my arm. I knew we were outnumbered, forced into zone defense- but we would be okay. I knew this, if for no other reason than for the fact that time simply moves on. However depleting and exhausting the newborn phase feels, it doesn’t continue on with the intensity it brings in those first four weeks. “It might feel like it will, but it won’t,” I have told my recent mommy-to-be friends. And although I intend for it to sound optimistic and encouraging, I can’t ignore the fact that it’s tinged with sadness. The telltale wistful quality that can only come from someone who’s held her last newborn.

In fact, the “hair-dryer incident” (as it’s come to be known) was six months ago. We no longer have a newborn in the house, and now, we’re about to have a Kindergartner. There’s been an undercurrent of excitement and angst in our household over the last week as we tick down the days to the start of this new chapter for Ella (for all of us, really). It was once so far off- the idea of packing lunches and morning rushes and a backpack that was twice her size. But just like that, it’s here. I’ve busied myself shopping for clothes and school supplies and yes, even building a new dining room table, because it meant I didn’t have to acknowledge the speed of it all. The intensity. The finality.

They’re growing up.

I’m getting older.

I’m actually going to have to let them go.

I remember the first time I had to let Ella go, and it happened much sooner than I thought it would. It was 11:30 pm on the second night I was in the hospital after having her. There I sat- on the side of my hospital bed- shaking and crying. Poor Jake helplessly offered up every convenience he could find: Another pillow? A blanket? Some takeout? Chocolate? A foot rub?? It was the hormones, sure. But it was something else, too. I cried until I could barely breathe and then, when he was a few seconds from paging a nurse, I finally stammered out…

“I want my baby. I want my baby. I want my baby.”

“What?”

“I need them to bring her back to me. I just need to hold her.” I missed her. It didn’t matter that I had just fed her and sent her to the nursery in the hopes of getting a couple of hours of sleep. It didn’t matter that she was only a hallway’s length away from my room. It sounded ridiculous at the time, but it was the first time in 41 weeks that she hadn’t been WITH ME. It left me feeling almost panicked in a way I couldn’t have predicted. Come to find out, parenthood is a series of those panicked moments- the HOLY SHIT moments when you realize you have absolutely no control.

The knot that’s been welling up in my throat this past week is nothing more than the increasing awareness that I have no control over this this proverbial, runaway train of parenthood. I’m on it, indefinitely. And not only am I on it, I’ve somehow been charged with making it worth the ride. Holy. Shit. So this Tuesday morning, a small contingency of family members will be walking Ella to her first day of Kindergarten at her school two blocks away. The morning light will have that golden look to it- the way that early September does as it ushers in yellow school busses and nostalgia and the first crunchy leaves on the ground. I know our family. We’ll joke, keep the mood light, be excited (because we really are). There probably won’t be a lot of pomp and circumstance. In fact, it might even be somewhat anti-climactic. But then, as we start back home, I’ll probably bite my bottom lip and remember back to that night in the hospital.

I want my baby. I want my baby. I want my baby.

But she’s ready. She was born ready. She’s just needed to give me five years to get used to the idea.