"no way to explain a mama's heart"

I wish that he could know how my saying no breaks my heart as much as his. I am pinned down under a nursing baby and he runs to me, snot and big beaded tears running down his face, his eyes puffy and big with fear and incomprehension, asking for cuddles I cannot give him. There is no way in that moment to explain a mama's heart, so full of love and guilt and sadness and regret and hope. I know, in a rational, adult, functioning part of my brain that this new baby is the greatest gift I could have given my family. That we will only be complete with him in our midst. But in that moment of so wanting to scoop up those lanky legs, that belly shrinking away from babyhood, that sweet sweaty mophead, and not being able to, I wonder, right along with my sobbing firstborn, What have I done, what have I done. Who is this baby filling my arms and coming between my big sad boy and I. I know in time we'll find out. But it's with a heart that's sometimes divided, and eyes sometimes filled with tears, that we wait.


Linking up with Christina Rosalie's Just One Paragraph.