Whenever You're Ready

Dear Baby A and Baby B,

This is your Mama and your Tata here, writing to let you know that whenever you guys feel you are ready, we are ready for you. We know it has been a long journey for all of us filled with ups and downs, and we know we've sent you quite a wash of cortisol and adrenaline and such in our worser moments, but we did the best we could and tried to mitigate all that stuff with as much good nutrition and sleep and joy as we could muster. Hope you didn't mind all the kale.

We've cleared beautiful spaces for you in nearly every area of our home: your nursery, of course, awaits you, but besides that, we have a co-sleeper safely attached to Tata's side of our bed, so he can hear you and touch you and smell you all through the night. We have several of the many bouncy seats set up for you in the living room, cabinets dedicated to your bottles in the kitchen, a freezer to store extra breast milk in the laundry room, and a futon set up in our office for the comfort and rest of all the family members and friends lining up to help take care of you. And yesterday we got a new car to chauffeur you around in safety and style. You haven't even arrived and already you have altered the topography of ever area we inhabit.

Mentally and emotionally, we've done our best to clear space for you too. We've read the books and talked to friends, trying to comprehend the radical change you are about to drop into our lives. We've joined the clubs and posted questions. We've talked and thought and cried about your brothers, trying to work through our feelings, to separate the events of their births and your births as much as we can, and we promise to keep doing that sort of work, to protect you from our past, to allow you to only be enriched by it.

We are scared, no doubt about it. We know, despite all our efforts, our research, our purchases, that we have no idea how to care for you, because we don't know you yet, don't know who you are or what you will need. But we are also excited beyond measure to try. And to fail. And to try some more. Excited to see your faces, to watch you see ours. Excited to learn to nourish you and calm you. Excited to learn from you. Excited.

So, we just wanted to make it clear, after all this time of trying desperately to keep you inside Mama, that whenever you guys feel that you are ready, we are ready for you.

All our love always, -Mama and Tata.