I Am A Mother

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After 2 months it has officially hit me that I am a Mother. 

The feeling swept over me as I was facing a dilemma that I’m sure most mothers with newborns face: to wake their sleeping baby or not. I had put Claire down for a nap probably too close to her bedtime and I was thinking, “Do I just let her sleep or do I wake her and continue our routine”. I was staring at this beautiful sleeping child with the most precious face and tears started to stream down my face. I was thinking to myself, “I finally believe that this is real”, “This is MY precious daughter”, and “I am beyond thankful to be her mother”. I could truly feel those feelings that mothers talk about or that you read in books and see in movies.





To be honest when she was born, of course I loved her and cherished her right away, but it didn’t feel real. I still felt like the same person that I was before I gave birth, except now I no longer had a flat tummy and had a couple new scars on my body. I know that this was the child that we fought so hard for after many years of unknown reasons for infertility and finally deciding on pursuing the path of IVF. We even have a picture of her as an embryo which is so crazy. 

Floating through those first few weeks and even the first few months after her birth I didn’t feel any different. I didn’t have some mothering lightning bolt hit me like I thought it would. They say that the bond between a mother and child is amazing, but it felt like a dream to me, like I was in some alternate reality with a newborn that wasn’t really mine.

I believe that before every major life event like marriage or having a child, we have these extremely high expectations. That our lives will look picturesque, our marriage will be perfect, and that we will be the best parents. It truly is amazing how we don't honestly understand the new phase of our lives until we are actually in it. You can give someone the best advice before they get there, but your advice wont actually sink in until they live through it.




I know that being a mom will have its good days and hard days, but that indescribable feeling of what it means to be MOM will never leave. After 2 months I now know what it feels like to be a mother and it has sunk into the deepest parts of my soul. I’m a mother and will forever be one. 

Claire is the precious human that God has entrusted me to love, cherish, and provide for. This will forever be my life and words can’t express the amazing feeling within me.