This is the last time I will ever be pregnant and deliver a baby.

Wow. Seeing it in writing there makes it all the more real. But it’s true. This is the last time.

There’s something odd about knowing for sure that the pregnancy you are experiencing will be your last. In my previous pregnancy, I had no idea whether or not it would be my last. I suspected it would. Pregnancy and I don’t get along, and the thought of enduring it again made a stint at Guantanamo seem like a pleasure cruise. But I had no way of knowing for sure. I mean, things happen, right? Clearly, as evidenced by my current state of affairs, things happen, and people (read: me) wind up pregnant. 

But this time? This time I am 100% certain it is the last time.

I know this because when I deliver this baby, the doctor will, through some act of rebellious noncompliance and clever sleight of hand against the Catholic hospital forbidding it, perform a tubal ligation with the help of some fellow recalcitrant practitioners, making conceiving another child virtually impossible (provided the procedure “sticks,” as it were). The official excuse they’ll use to appease Jesus will have something to do with an insufficient uterine thingermajig. The excuse doesn’t really matter, though. What matters is that in that moment, my fate will be forever sealed.

Part of me is happy about this. Ecstatic, to be exact. And it should be. Anyone who’s not ecstatic about undergoing a procedure like this electively ought not to be trusted with her own choice of breakfast cereal, let alone her own medical decisions. And really, what’s not to be ecstatic about?

This is the last time I will suffer from debilitating morning sickness — the kind of morning sickness that lasts all day and prompts me to beg my husband to mercy kill me with a pillow.

This is the last time I will gain 2/3 of my pre-pregnancy body weight in just under 9 months.

This is the last time I will stand in front of a mirror and lament the new stretch marks that seem to be breeding overnight on my breasts and midsection.

This is the last time my uterus will feel so heavy, I’m certain it will fall off my body at any moment.

This is the last time I will cry myself to sleep from the pain and discomforts of pregnancy and will wake up multiple times in the night to pee and reposition, sobbing myself back to sleep all over again with each disruption to my slumber.

This is the last time I will drive to work, sit at my desk during my conference period, and sprawl out on my bed with ice packs shoved up by my crotch in an attempt to squelch the radiating pelvic pain and bulbous vaginal swelling that results when two forces of nature — macrosomic baby and gravity — combine to kill comfort and joy.

This is the last time I will cope with nearly incapacitating anxiety about my upcoming delivery — anxiety fueled by a deep fear that this pregnancy will turn out just like the last and my baby, like my second son, will also endure a lifetime of physical disability and emotional turmoil, if not something far worse.

This is the last time I will panic as they wheel me into the operating room, poke and prod me to get the spinal in through my degenerated and diseased discs, and gut me like wild game as I look to my husband for reassurance that I’m not about to die at any moment.

This is the last time the pain meds won’t work to halt the searing ache emanating from my c-section incision and my husband and I will have to first insist and then shamelessly beg that somebody do something — ANYTHING — to help make existing moderately bearable for me in the days following my surgery.

Truly, there are plenty of things to be ecstatic about. But part of me is also a bit…sad isn’t the word. Hesitant? Nope. Definitely not right, either. Part of me is…. Part of me is prematurely nostalgic, I think. Part of me is already existing in a state of sentimentality about pregnancy and delivery. Not in a sense that I want to do it again. Rather, in a sense that there was this thing I did, and despite the hardships associated with it, this thing was beautiful. Magical. Miraculous, even. And when you think about it, what’s not to be prematurely nostalgic about as well? After all:

This is the last time I will pee on a stick, see a positive result, and share that news with my husband — news that, in the various times we have shared the moment, was accompanied by both shrieks of joy and tears of fear and apprehension.

This is the last time I will be sitting somewhere and will be suddenly overwhelmed by the thought of a tiny life growing inside me.

This is the last time I will feel those first flutters and taps — gentle motions that eventually turn into jabs and kicks to parts of my body I didn’t even know a baby could reach.

This is the last time my husband and children and family members and complete strangers will want to touch my tummy to feel the baby moving.

This is the last time I will talk to my stomach and someone will actually be in there, listening.

This is the last time I will daydream about the child I’m about to bring into the world — about his eyes, his hair, who he will be and what he will accomplish.

This is the last time I will experience the primal pain and pleasure that is delivering and holding an infant for the first time.

This is the last time I will be amazed at my body’s ability to do something so seemingly horrific and superhuman at the same time — something that, in the grand scheme of things, is merely natural.

This is the last time I will bask in the excitement that is bringing a new baby home.

This is the last time I will diaper tiny bums and feed tiny mouths in the middle of the night while the rest of the whole world rests — the last time it will be just baby and me, intimately and forever linked.

This is the last time I will rock rhythmically and sing lullabies and whisper love notes while a bitty head rests right in that sweet spot of the neck between the collar bone and the jaw.

This is the last time I will ever be pregnant and deliver a baby.

The. Last. Time.

And seeing it in writing there makes it all the more real. But it’s true. This is the last time. The last time. And I am both content in and prematurely nostalgic about that knowledge.