If This is Baby Fever, Please Pass The Tylenol

She crept in so sneakily, I didn't even  notice she had arrived.  She found little crevices and cracks, open and unattended.  As round two announcements came, she grew, little by little.

I don't even know that I want what she pines for.  Why does she even have a place in my life?

She is unwelcome.  Her name is Bitterness.

I thought she was banished away for good when the aching arms were filled and the childless woman became a mother.

Everything about my family is just right for now.  Dare I say parenting a single child teeters on the border of being "easy?"  Who would want to change that?  And if I admitted I wanted to, I feel like that makes me fifty shades of ungrateful for the miracle that has already happened in our lives once before.

But tonight I noticed she had arrived.  Still  just a spark, not yet a flame, but present just the same.  When I should have been saying, "Congratulations," I found myself backing into a corner and putting up my walls.  Don't say a word, don't acknowledge the pain of having no control.

So now I grab her and say, Leave, you have no place here.  I replace her lies of comparison, jealousy and incompleteness with truth.