I stood there in my son’s room, staring at the crib that held all four of my babies. I had just finished deep cleaning and putting everything back together so that I could bask in the memories one last time. A week prior we had ordered his ‘big boy’ bed, so I knew any day that it would be coming, and we would be packing up his crib. Although I was excited for the next step, I was also heartbroken. I expected to have some melancholy, but I didn’t expect it to hit me that hard. My eyes began to sting as a thousand memories flooded up looking at that crib and rocking chair that helped me raise a family.
We made a decision to be done with 4. Our family planning was fairly meticulous, and I was in no way surprised at this milestone. Nonetheless it certainly pulled some heartstrings to see something that held such a great part of our family life be taken down. There were long nights rocking my babies back to sleep. The hundreds of times I oh so gently laid them back down on the mattress. Countless sleepy smiles as I tried to wake them. The transition from swaddled babe to bouncing toddler. The finger prints on the headboard, the unfortunate bite marks on the railing from the teething. It was all there, a montage flipping through my mind.
Moving Onward
We used the same crib and rocking chair for all of our babies and I don’t regret a thing. They withheld for 11 years. The crib we plan on keeping and turning into something else. I’ve seen some people turn it into a bench for their garden and I love that idea. Or perhaps we could find another use for it. I don’t know just yet but it’s too precious to get rid of. It may seem silly to hold onto furniture, but as a mom you know the memories that things like that can hold. It’s not just a crib or just a rocking chair. It’s closing the door on a stage of life that we won’t revisit again, it’s hard to say goodbye to.
Now that we are transitioning, if you have any ideas to repurpose a crib I would love to hear them! Or if you want to share your transition of officially being done with the baby stage I would also love to hear that.
