If I think too much about the passage of time, I physically ache.
Not a metaphorical ache, but a hurt rooted deep within my chest. Can looking at my son’s face while he sleeps break my own heart? Can noticing the once cherubic cheeks that have leaned, the jaw more set in a more distinct shape, and the teeth on the precipice of becoming loose cause literal chest pains?
Logically, no.
And still I feel it.
The shift from toddler to preschooler is a rapid one, but newborn to baby even more. I’ve experienced this twice and still the time with my newborns feels stolen from me in the night. All at once, I lift my daughter out of her bassinet and her legs no longer scrunch. Her eyes follow me across a room instead of narrowing into sleepy slits when I move out of sight. She sees me in the mornings and lights up glee for far more than just the food I have to offer her.
It is amazing, and God it is heartbreaking.
Ow.
A year ago today, on August 10, 2025, I took two pregnancy tests. I was an early tester to a fault, tracking the moment I’d ovulated to the earliest possible day a line could seen. It was my 8th month of trying at that point, with a distressing early miscarriage scattered in those long months. Donning nothing more than a Taylor Swift concert tee and black boy-shorts, I picked at my nails anxiously and watched my reflection in the mirror, waiting for the 5 minutes to pass.
The digital clock on my phone’s screen above the photo of my little family changed to 6:15am and I rapidly moved aside the wrapper and leaned down. There it was. Faint, but clear. A second line on both tests. The confirmation of a long-awaited, hoped for, final baby for our family.
And those two lines became her.
The little bean on the first ultrasound, and the word “girl” on a genetic test. The mango-sized human wiggling around during my 20-week ultrasound to avoid the technician and the kicks and rolls that kept me company on so many nights of insomnia. The one who stubbornly slept through the required non-stress tests in the final weeks of pregnancy, and landed us in the hospital early once for limited movement (sleeping, again).
And it was her who broke my water 24 hours before my scheduled c-section and who came out at 9lbs 10oz crying for the world to hear.
Nearly 4 months later and I still can’t believe it. All along, it was her. And just like my son, I would change none of the waiting or the heartbreak or mishaps of their births. Not one single thing. Because if I dared change it, I wouldn’t have them.
But, oh that ache.
Time slips through my fingers faster than I can hang on. I am grateful for these addicting, ominous devices for one massive reason and that is the ability to go back. The photos and videos numbering in the thousands. To fall back into time with a video to when my son couldn’t pronounce words properly or to when he was the same age as my daughter, to compare their photos side-by-side. Yes, she did have his hairline. No, her eye shape is more like mine.
But oh, put the phone down, I am missing them now. At 4-years and 4-months old. At the way her first belly laugh was from his silly antics. I missed getting that on video. Without proof, will I still remember five or ten years from now that he was the first reason she really laughed? Does it matter when I saw it with my own eyes?
I clutch my chest. It’s back again.
I suppose the only way to survive this grief of time passing too quickly to hold on, is to let it go. I will never get to relive these days, so instead I have to thank God/the universe/life for them instead. To be so privileged to get to raise these two humans. To watch them grow from their first breaths.
To know that this throb in my chest is a reminder that I am alive and here to bear witness to their lives, at all.
Leave a Reply