Sabrine

Dear Sabrine,

I dreamed about you again last night.

In this dream you came relatively easily into the world. You were silent and big-eyed as you took in your new surroundings. My mama held you for a long time and when you began to cry I gathered you into my arms and nursed you. When I woke up this morning you were tossing and turning in my womb as though the dream had woken you too.

You have been so active lately. Even though the space you inhabit has been occupied twice before, feeling - and often seeing - another human jostle inside of me never fails to take my breath away. There have been times I have called near-stranger’s attention to my taunt belly, pointing out your tiny knuckles and heels as they arch across my skin. I am already so proud of you and hungry to show you off.

Earlier this week you even woke your Papa up in the night. It has still been cool enough that I don’t mind him sleeping close and apparently your kicks to his ribs were enough to wake him. He tells me he poked you back and the two of you spent some time conversing in this strange morse code while I slept. It’s odd to think of you two sharing moments like this while I sleep. He is also good at finding your heartbeat, one of the advantages you have in being the third occupant of my womb. He rests his ear on my stomach at night before we go to sleep and then taps out the rhythm he hears on my side.

He and I call you by the name we have chosen for you, Sabrine Elizabeth, though often still privately. Mikat insists you should be named “Alinda” a variation of a good friend’s name, and while Annabelle cycles through various names with vaguely royal implications, she most often calls you simply “Talata”, number three.

Your name has stayed with us for a long time, long before we saw that unexpected pink line on the white stick announcing your existence. It comes from the Arabic word sabur, which you will learn means patience. In the past few years we have heard our North African friends use this word over and over again as they face trial after trial. But we must have patience, they say. God has asked us to be patient.

And they are. Endlessly, beautifully, heartbreakingly patient.

Your name ties us to a people and a place that has become a part of our very hearts. It calls us to a gentle strength that we have witnessed again and again and that we want to own in our own lives and that we pray you will own in yours as well. You are named for the resilient beauty we believe God calls us all to.

The name Sabrine translates wonderfully across cultures too. Variations show up in poems about ancient Scottish princesses and modern-day magazine articles about Egyptian movie stars. From France to the Phillipines to Brazil, the name Sabrine represents something that can be transmitted across languages and cultures with an easy fluidity, while simultaneously retaining a subtle exotic foreignness, at least in most places I suspect. This is also something I hope will be true for you too, that you will be a citizen of the world, able to identify and connect with all manner of people and places with relative ease, yet without ever becoming so melded into any one of them that you lose distinctiveness. This is not an easy blessing to bestow on your unborn child, but if you can learn to carry it well, it will bless your life in immeasurable ways. And I trust that you will bear this gift with incredible grace.     

You are getting bigger by the day, which means so am I. We plan on going to Kampala just before Christmas to wait for your arrival, and by then I suspect I will be huge and tired and sweaty most of the time. It hasn’t been unbearably hot here recently, but I feel each of the hauled buckets of water and ovens full of white-hot charcoal by the end of the day. Even so, I am so grateful to be pregnant here among people that see my swollen ankles as such a gift. In America dear friends responded to our announcement of your impending arrival with, “Number three? Whew, better you than me, girl!” as though they feel a little bit sorry for my bad luck. While here women say, “Mashallah, you are getting so big. God’s work is such a blessing!” as though my current state is worthy of great envy. I like being around people like that. People who talk about how good it is to have your daughters first so they can help with later babies, instead of which maternity clothes are the most flattering.

Of course, there are two sides to that coin. Almost every single woman here in North Africa has answered my question, “How many children do you have?” with two numbers. The first number is higher – 5, 7, even 10 - the number of “stomachs” she has had, pregnancies or babies born alive. The second number is always lower, sometimes much lower – 5, 3, 1 -  the number of children in her home currently alive. In this world babies aren’t named for weeks or even months after they are born, maybe similarly to how in the West rarely name a baby as soon as we get that initial positive pregnancy test, rather waiting at least until the end of that first tenuous first trimester. And yet named or not, mothers always give that first number, including every life, however short it may have been, I am a mother of ten. I have four children living at home.

Sometimes the realities of this world pressing in around me like a swaddle get to me and I begin thinking too much about whether or not the mosquito that just bit my ankle is carrying malaria, whether the bush hospital down the road has oxygen for preemies, how I’m not even sure yet if the hospital in Kampala will let your father in the delivery room with me or not. I am so much less fearful with you than I ever was with your sisters, and yet even so I have moments of anxiety.

But your sweet kicks and rolls and the precious moments of hearing your name spoken out loud and finding it lovely give me such peace. You seem so healthy to me, and despite the growing aches and Braxton hicks, I feel so healthy too. God has been so absurdly good to us. There is even a peace in remembering that no matter the circumstances surrounding your birth and the days and weeks on either side of it, you and I have little to no control one way or the other. So we ride these last few weeks out together, savoring the sweetness and knowing that the aches along the way are passing.

I am so excited to meet you sweet one. Keep following God’s instructions as you grow and stretch, as you practice blinking and sucking and dreaming. We are waiting for you patiently one the other side, sweet Sabrine.   

Much love and anticipation,

Your mama

P.S. – It bears mentioning that your father, though absolutely thrilled at the prospect of being the father of three daughters, was not completely convinced by the grainy images at the last ultrasound a couple months back. While I am confident beyond a doubt that you are my baby girl, if circa February 6^th, 2016, we find out that you are in fact my little boy, I promise to rewrite this letter more appropriately. And I love you forever no matter what.