One thing I didn’t expect about having kids is the arranging required to do absolutely anything outside of the normal schedule. You take this kid, I’ll take this kid, Mimi will pick up that kid, and ugh, I wasn’t even thinking about their carseats. Do we have enough Goldfish and carseats?

The arranging is why moms just stop doing things. Dentist appointments, hair appointments, the gym. It’s easier to skip it and go to the park. But then you get pregnant and you have no choice but to go to doctor’s appointments…lots of doctor’s appointments.

For the last 40+ weeks Tom and I have been arranging childcare for my doctor’s appointments. Tom stayed with the kids for some, and I had a rotation of friends who watched them for others.

Late in my pregnancy, I realized that Tom hadn’t met my OB (the doctor I had for my previous two pregnancies is no longer practicing), so we arranged childcare so Tom could come to an appointment.

When we were sitting together in the quiet of the waiting room, I looked at Tom, smiled, and said, “This is sort of like a date!”

A date. At the obstetrician’s office. My, how things have changed since the days when Tom drove to Richmond and surprise me with a bouquet of roses and a moonlit picnic overlooking the river.

What I want to say is: thanks, everyone, for letting Tom and I go on that date. We couldn’t have done it without you.

It takes a village, they say. They are right.

The lilies in our backyard, I look forward to them every spring. Now I know — they bloom just in time to celebrate Baby Thomas’s birthday.

As my due date approached, Tom’s parents babysat for us over and over so we could get out just the two of us, before our life was sucked up in a whirlwind.

A friend invited us over for dinner and sent us home with a week of meals because, “no one should have to make dinner past their due date.”

Even strangers…I talk a lot about rude comments from strangers, but never mentioned the woman we saw at a Mexican restaurant who went out of her way to tell me I looked beautiful. I did not look beautiful.

So many of our friends, family, and neighbors offered to be on call if I went into labor in the middle of the night, even though it would be totally inconvenient for them because they all have jobs and kids of their own.

On my due date, I got an email from a friend who’s an L&D nurse, to let me know she had prayed for me and my family, and mentioned how great it is when babies are carried all the way to 40 weeks. The sentiment almost made me cry.

My parents drove to Richmond with enough changes of clothes to be here for a week to help out and be available for my kids. When they had to leave, my mom called my sister, who dropped everything to be here for me.

Perhaps most remarkably, they both exhibited great restraint by never, not even once, suggesting that cooking or cleaning or getting off my butt to fold the laundry already, would induce labor.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

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