She plays so gently with her baby doll, wrapping its cotton bottom in tiny play diapers, offering it a bottle, rocking it in her arms.
“Ella,” I ask, “what’s your baby’s name?”
“This is my sister baby,” she tells me. And I have to leave the room because my heart is breaking.
“Mami,” she says to me one night after I have finished my dinner and am waiting for her to finish hers, when I have overeaten and am wearing an unflattering shirt, “you have a baby in your belly?”
And my husband answers so that I won’t cry in front of her. “No, Ella,” he says. “Just a food baby. Sometimes we have to wait a while to get a sister or a brother.”
I know the last comment is really for me, and I know that he is not wrong. I know that I have to have patience. I have affirmations for fertility stress relief, I have scripture upon scripture about waiting patiently for God and about having faith – and more patience, and more faith – in God’s timing, I have secret Pinterest boards that are full of other women’s advice on how to “survive the two week wait.” I am trying. I am trying so hard to wait, with grace.
And yet I am six days late, and it is all I can think about.
So in a minute, I will pee on my fourth stick of the day. I will wait, and I will pray. And then whatever the result, I will go pick up my daughter from school, hold her close, and thank God for her life. I will ask his forgiveness for my impatience, and I will ask him again to help me give Ella a sibling. But above all, I will do what I have done for so many months now, and ask God to make me brave enough and strong enough, and, yes, patient enough to simply wait.
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This article originally appeared at Coffee + Crumbs. Follow Coffee + Crumbs on Facebook.
