Friday's Guest Blogger ... Robin!

(In Robin's words ...)

I wrote this when I was in my last trimester of my first (and only) pregnancy. My son is now 10 months old. I regularly wrote letters to him in my personal journal, but most of them are pretty mundane. This one is a little more universal. Maybe other moms who were bringing babies into the world this year can relate.

A little background, just to avoid confusion—my son has two mommies. ;)

Dear Baby,

What a time for you to be born. The Phillies just won the World Series and Barack Obama was just elected president. Everyone seems to be feeling this incredible sense of hope and ease. We have a long road to hoe, baby, but I feel confident that we can do it. It's an amazing feeling--hope.

Your mommy and I had been on edge, worrying about the outcome of the election. Worrying about what kind of a world we were bringing you into. While I was pregnant with you, our country was in the middle of a war that looked like it would never end (it's still not over, but i hope by the time you are reading this, it is) and gas prices had shot up to almost $5/gallon, making it really difficult to justify going anywhere that wasn't absolutely necessary by car. While I was pregnant with you and the presidential candidates were duking it out on television in debates, it started to look like John McCain (the guy who ran against President Obama) was going to win the election. People really started to rally behind him and we all felt so worried and we thought, how can we bring a sweet new life into this tainted, terrible world with no promise of it getting better?

But then, in just the past two weeks, everything changed. Living in Philadelphia as our baseball team experienced its first championship in something like 20 years -- the city was so celebratory. There was a huge parade; it was all you could hear about on the news. We saved the front page of the newspaper for you to have. And then, a week later, the election. Your mommy and I were taking a tour of the hospital as the election results were coming in. In fact, I was standing in front of the hospital nursery, looking at a baby born the day before and thinking about how you were on your way and you would be just as tiny and reliant and amazing and your mom came over and told me she had seen some early election results coming in and they looked promising and my heart swelled with hope. This tiny baby in the nursery, these other expectant parents standing around me, these moms about to give birth in the rooms up and down the hallway, you inside me, me, your mom, your grandparents, your cousins and the friends you haven't even made yet--all of us are going to be ok.

What a time for you to be born.

I can't wait to see your sweet face (just a few more weeks now!)

--Love,Mama