Happy.

I love having babies.  I just love being around babies.  I love having them in the house.  I love walking by James in the bassinet and seeing him kick his little fat legs and waving his arms.  He's still so new that when I return to him from something else (like laundry, getting one of his brothers dressed, etc.) I still feel a little surprised when I see him there, doing his baby tai chi or maybe being perfectly still looking at the light.
I say to myself, "Oh!  It's you!"  I'm a little surprised, and at the same time it's like he's always been a part of this family.
Lately I've been marveling at him when he's up at night (although I expect those feelings could switch to feelings of dread as I accumulate more sleepless nights.)
This baby makes me happy and I could stare at him all day.  It's funny little things that I enjoy about him, like the color of his legs and the wrinkles in his fingers.

Happy.

I wasn't certain I was going to feel this way when I was pregnant.  When I think back to the feelings I had early on, when I realized I was pregnant AGAIN, and then when we found out we were pregnant with a boy, AGAIN, I can still understand those feelings, but I don't have them anymore (thankfully.)  I cried, sometimes privately, sometimes to friends, almost every day for the first two thirds of the pregnancy for the daughter that I would never have, for the irresponsible-ness of an unplanned pregnancy, and that made me feel like a jerk.  So on top of feeling sad, disappointed, heartbroken, I was also sad, disappointed and heartbroken for having those feelings.   
Then at the beginning of the third trimester I decided I should try harder to be okay with everything, so I started practicing feeling differently.  And by the end of the pregnancy, I was feeling nervous, but pretty much good and accepting about the whole thing.  Then, when I was in labor, something unexpected happened.  I'm not a crier in labor, I'm more of a disappear-er.  There's this moment for me when, in my mind, I hear myself say (to myself,) "I'm going now" and that's when labor gets really, really hard.  But with James' labor, right before that moment, I had a big cry.  It was a quiet, releasing, transforming kind of cry like I've never had before.  Right after he was born, I was kind of like, "What was THAT all about?" Now I realize I was just letting go of the last of those feelings of turmoil that I had stuffed.  I had stuffed them in my attempt to "practice" feeling better but they rose up and washed over me and then...  they just washed away.

Anyway, like I said, thankfully, I don't feel that way anymore.  I'm happy about this little guy.  And he smells good too.