Dear Baby,

For a long time your daddy and I have called you "the bean." But that doesn't seem appropriate anymore given that you are as big as a watermelon now, or whatever fruit "What to Expect When You're Expecting" would compare you to at 38 weeks. I think it's a little strange to compare babies to fruit, given that babies are much sweeter than any fruit could ever be. But I digress.

I've waited a long time for you. I've always wanted to have children, but I've always wanted to do it with the right person. And for some people, the right person doesn't come along in high school, in college, in graduate school or even in the workplace. As a single person, someone actively dating in their 30s, everyone will tell you, "You'll know it when you find it." And for a long time, I didn't believe them. As you'll discover from having me as your mother, I can overthink things. Make them too complicated. Doubt that good things will come to me or that even if they do, somehow it will fall apart. The other shoe will drop and I will be alone again.

But when I met your daddy, it wasn't complicated. I liked him from the first moment I saw him. I liked talking to him. I liked that he listened to me with an intensity I'd never really felt before, something we now jokingly refer to as his "ministry of presence." He called when he said he would. He picked interesting things for us to do together. And best of all, he never used emoticons or LOL in his emails.

Sure, I had the early dating jitters during our first few months together, but I didn't pick him apart like I had with previous boyfriends. I didn't think, "Well, he's successful but bald" or "he's funny but he competes with me." You see, you get a lot of bad advice about dating and one of them is "relationships are work." Another is "nobody's perfect." So often I stayed in relationships when I had conflicted feelings because I thought I was doing "the work." I thought I had to settle because "nobody's perfect." And neither am I, so who did I think I was being so picky?

The good news is I never married any of these people. Or had a baby with them. Something inside me held back. That was hard to do, given that one friend after another got married, even my younger brother (your Uncle Eric), who seemed much more resistant to adulthood and "settling down" than I ever was. Then they all started having babies. Even Uncle Eric and Aunt Sonnet.

I'll never forget when they called to tell me they were pregnant with your cousin, Helix, six years ago. It was St. Patrick's Day. I was at a bar in Chicago with my then-boyfriend and his friends. It was cold outside and I had gone into the vestibule — the space between the outer and inner doors of the bar — to take the call so that I could hear them above the din of the green beer drinking and celebrating. When they told me I felt sick to my stomach. I pressed my face against the cool glass of the outer door. Things weren't going well with the then-boyfriend. We would have to break up soon and I would have to start over. Meanwhile, your Uncle Eric and Aunt Sonnet were getting something that I badly wanted. And it wasn't fair.

As I got closer and closer to my late 30s, I often thought about what I would do if I never found the right person by the time I was 40. I felt angry at the biological clock. I didn't think it was fair to put that kind of pressure on finding love within a certain time frame. I didn't want to adopt, or get a sperm donor. I had no interest in being a single mom. Being a parent is something I wanted to share with someone — the right someone. So I began to resign myself to thinking I'd just be the world's greatest aunt to Helix, and your newest cousin, Arya.

Another thing you'll discover about having me for your mother is that I'm not the most patient person. It's hard for me to not know what's going to happen, how things will turn out. I often want to control the circumstances, dictate the outcome. I want to prepare myself for heartache or disappointment before it even happens so that I won't be blindsided. But that's silly. Understandable, but silly. Life doesn't work that way. And having those kind of defenses doesn't really protect you anyway. You still get hurt, only longer, because you've spent so much time dreading it, then thinking "I knew this would happen."

But here's some more good news: somehow I was brave enough to just keep going. To stay open to the possibilities, despite attacks of doubt, loneliness and jealousy. And now you're here — just under the deadline. I mean, you're not here, here, but you will be within the next few weeks and I cannot tell you how excited I am to meet you, to hold you, to feed you and to play with you. I probably won't even mind changing your diaper.

I'll do everything I can to be your perfectly imperfect mother. Just like I'm a perfectly imperfect wife to your daddy. We'll all walk through this together (okay, crawl first, but you know what I mean). Because you, dear baby, are someone I will never take for granted.

Love,
Mommy