There's Something Different About the Baby

I am reading "The Poisonwood Bible" by Barbara Kingsolver. (I just realized that is was one of Oprah's Bookclub Choices!) Anyway, I have really enjoyed the book but wanted to share an excerpt with you about "the baby". I know I have heard people for years say, "There's just something about the baby...," and I find myself saying the same thing, but we just can't put our finger on what it is. I always add, "I love them all - not one more than the other, but there is still something different."

In this book, the character, Orleanna Price, describes it beautifully. I got chills reading it and wanted to share it with you - especially moms! Here is what is different about the baby...

"A mother's body remembers her babies - the folds of soft flesh, the softly furred scalp against her nose. Each child has its own entreaties to body and soul. It's the last one, though, that overtakes you. I can't dare say I loved the others less, but my first three were all babies at once, and motherhood dismayed me entirely. The twins came just as Rachel was learning to walk. What came next I hardly remember, whole years when I battled every single day of grasping hands and mouths until I could fall into bed for a few short hours and dream of being eaten alive in small pieces. I counted to one hundred as I rocked, contriving the patience to get one down in order to take up another. One mouth closed on a spoon meant two crying empty, feathers flying, so I dashed back and forth like a mother bird, flouting nature's maw with a brood too large. I couldn't count on survival until all three of them could stand alone. Together they were my first issue. I took one deep breath for every step they took away from me. That's how it is with the firstborn, no matter what kind of mother you are - rich, poor, frazzled half to death or sweetly content. A first child is your best foot forward, and how you do cheer those little feet as they strike out. You examine every turn of flesh for precocity, and crow it to the world.

But the last one: the baby who trails her scent like a flag of surrender through your life when there will be no more coming after - oh, that's love by a different name. She is the babe you hold in your arms for an hour after she's gone to sleep. If you put her down in the crib, she might wake up changed and fly away. So instead you rock by the window, drinking the light from her skin, breathing her exhaled dreams. Your heart bays to the double crescent moons of closed lashes on her cheeks. She's the one you can't put down."