When I was little I wanted to be a nurse and a mother.

Not necessarily in that order.

Funny how things turn out, hey?

The pull to motherhood was very strong and, in all honesty, started to consume my thoughts around the time I was nineteen.

Young you think?

Maybe.

I was drawn to all babies.

When I held one I felt that pull, that longing to have one of my own.

Of course, due to fertility issues and miscarriages, I didn’t lay my hands on my own baby girls until I was twenty three years and nine months old.

As soon as they were born, I knew I wanted to have more. I loved the beautiful earthy smell of newborn skin. I loved how they changed and grew and became these amazing interactive beings.

I loved that they made me a Mum.

I was always of the mind (especially after I became a midwife) that women  just knew when they were finished.

Society at large (mostly my father, actually) prevented me from trying too soon but when Lily came into our lives I still felt that drive to be pregnant again

and so it went that William and then Ivy and Noah were born.

After that the doctors tied my tubes and deemed my uterus closed for business

I was devastated.

For the first year I grieved the loss of my fertility, that I would never ever carry another life inside me.

I longed to have another baby.

I know.

I’d had six kids, four miscarriages and all of the trauma that goes along with it plus I had two little guys, not my own but mine, who needed love and attention but I just didn’t feel finished.

I spent nights crying trying to work out why I was so upset. Perhaps I felt that a part of me was still missing because Will had died. I wasn’t sure and I knew that another baby would not fill that terrible hole.

Ivy and Noah were not brought into this world as a stop gap.

I just loved to be a mother, I loved having those tiny new babies and I loved being part of that world.

Time has marched on.

Friends and family have fallen pregnant and I have felt that tug, that cluckiness, that want to be pregnant.

I have kept my distance and tried not to hold those sweet babies, so as to protect myself

but on the weekend I held this:

Gorgeous, Phoebe, moon goddess, second baby to my sister in law, Amy

and I felt

nothing.

Not nothing.

She is so beautiful and soft and deliciously new that I could have held her all day

but that pull has gone and I know that I won’t be having anymore babies in my lifetime.

I’m not sure when it happened, whether it was the last three years that have taken its toll on my drive to procreate or if it has been a slow acceptance that I am ready to leave those baby years behind.

Whatever,

I’m done

and it feels

a little sad

a little like I’m leaving something important behind

but mostly

okay.