ESSAY CONTEST RUNNER-UP
"Baby 101: It’s the Love, Stupid!"
by Michelle Collins Anderson
Diaper Genies. Lamaze. Port-a-cribs. Baby name books. Car seats. Wipes.
From the absolute instant of conception—and even before—parents-to-be are bombarded with information, advice and lists of "must haves" to prepare for the life they will be welcoming into the world. Yet, looking back now as a mother of three young children, the single most surprising thing about motherhood is this: nothing prepares you for the love.
Sure, there’s a vague understanding you will care about this being in a way you haven’t cared before. But until that child is in your arms, it’s hard to comprehend just how
much—how deeply and completely—you will feel that love.
I’ll admit I was a skeptic. I am the "glass half-empty" to my husband’s "half-full." Before we had children—and we were married nearly nine years before we did—I spent hours detailing the downsides of childrearing. Worries ranged from the existential to the mundane. Could we still be a couple? Would our love change? Could I write? Would we still talk? Cook? Travel? _________ (fill in the blank, ad nauseam)? Mostly, it was the fear talking.
Of course, there were real concerns that never crossed my radar screen: "Will I ever get to shower?," "Can I just be in the bathroom alone?" and "Could we see an Oscar-nominated movie
before its DVD release?" But that’s another essay.
Over and over, my husband reassured me we would still be the same people. We would just be sharing our love with someone new.
Then came Benjamin.
He arrived a week before Christmas at 8:54 p.m., weighing just 5 pounds, 11 ounces. He didn’t "pink up" immediately and was whisked off to the NICU. When I finally got him back around midnight, I was mesmerized. I stayed up all night, staring at this indescribably perfect and wholly terrifying creature. That was when I first felt it, in that small barren hospital room amid the gentle snores of my husband: that ferocious, inside-twisting, wild-eyed crazy, I-never-knew-love-before-then-came-you feeling.
That’s when I realized that
love was the thing, and that it was not quantifiable, rational or finite. The more you love, the more love there is to go around…not less.
Has it been easy? Absolutely not. Our journey to a family of five included two miscarriages. There was the horrific breast abscess (surgery left a two-inch deep hole in my left breast that was repacked with gauze for months while I nursed on the right). And a frightening few weeks when a prenatal blood test suggested our third child might have Down’s syndrome—an experience which taught us that we loved that unborn baby girl fiercely, sight unseen, no matter what.
It’s the
love, stupid. I didn’t get it until my kids showed up. And no matter how clearly I articulate that when I talk to an expectant friend, she won’t get it either.
Not yet.
OTHER RUNNERS-UP
Catherine Anderson
Kirsten Brunner
Maureen Murov
Judy Nugent
Kathleen Peters
Suzanne Scanlon
Back to Grand Prize Winner 
