for the mother-to-be:

"I want her to know what she will never learn in childbirth classes: that the physical wounds of childbearing will heal, but becoming a mother will leave an emotional wound so raw that she will be forever vulnerable...that she will never read a newspaper again without asking, 'What if that had been my child?' That every plane crash, every fire will haunt her."
...from Everyday Miracles by Dale Hanson Burke

This weekend I found my eyes welling up at a the children's program at church. I am not normally that kind. Two girls in velvet and fur sang solos as their mom fought back tears. I don't know the mother well, and I don't really know her girls, but I have watched them. I remember them when they were small. It just goes so fast. As I held my own squirming one, I watched this mother smiling proudly up at her now big girls, big enough to memorize lyrics, big enough for patent leather shoes with heels...it just goes so fast.