Three daughters in four years.

It wasn’t easy, but we decided we were done. I don’t think about it often, but every once in a while I do.

My period came. It will always come now.

She is nursing, but she is nursing less. When she is done, I will be too.

She is walking. My last baby is walking.

There is celebration and joy within these milestones, but as I have learned in these four years, with every soaring trip my heart makes as the girls triumph, a part of me becomes irreparably broken.

I want to stomp my feet and stop time, but there are kindergarten matriculation papers that make me giddy. First days of school and new experiences.

There is Avery’s any-day-now first time going to be without diapers. Her excitement is contagious.

Just around the corner are first trips down the slide, learning to jump and skipping.

I am frozen in wanting and not wanting.

I am awed by how euphoric sorrow can be. I am consumed by the wonder of lives ending and beginning, overlapping and contradicting. I am, despite my fear, open to it all and ever so grateful to be in the middle of this delicious conflict.

*The title started as a reference to Fin, but by post’s end, I think the she actually became about me. Baby steps, right?