My Uterus Says Goodbye...

I know I am sure I could have come up with a different title for this post but I was at a complete loss of how to express how I am feeling.

I have come to the sad realization that this body with every pound and every stretch mark will never again hold and nurture a life.  I am very saddened by this thought and although I am completely certain that my family is exactly as it should be, I am still sad. My uterus will never be stretched or pushed to its limits again, I will never get another stretch mark caused by carrying a baby for 40 weeks, nor will I ever again feel the movement of tiny little hands and feet.  I am having a hard time with this realization.  I am so thankful and happy for the wonderful bundles of joy my body did bring into this world and I can't imagine my life without them in it but I can't help but feel that a part of me, part of the journey I call life, is over.

A friend came by the other day with her 9 day old baby and I was right back in it.  I could so carry another one, love another one, but I know that the other part of me is done.  I feel like I have two personalities.  The one that feels like having another baby would be great, one more wouldn't be so bad, we could try one more time for a girl, and the other, the practical me, says you have enough, you have one daughter and that is enough (practical me remembers the meltdown the other day and the hormones that will eventually rear their ugly head soon enough) and you can't guarantee that if you get pregnant again, that it would even be a girl.

I can tell myself all of these things and yet a small part of me is dying inside.  A part that really has defined me in the last 10 years.  I will always be a mother to my 4 wonderful little beings and that will have to be enough.

I don't want to sound ungrateful or make anyone struggling to have just one baby upset with me.  I am all too familiar with those struggles myself. It took me 15 months, 2 rounds of fertility drugs and countless trips to a specialist, not to mention the myriad of tests I had to endure as well to have my very first little person, so I understand the struggle of others to just have one baby. I just am having a hard time closing this door.

I know that another door will open.  All the things that are still left to accomplish.  I will be okay about it soon.  But for now, I will be sad about never being pregnant again.  But I will forever be happy about being mommy to the best 4 kids on the planet.