Mother's Day thoughts...

Wow. My first Mother's Day with a child that exists OUTSIDE of my body...

I remember finding out I was pregnant and thinking, "I'm going to be a mom...that's so weird. MOM. ME. Weird." For many months I thought that, wondering when I would finally feel comfortable with the title of "Mom," when I would be able to think it without cringeing and feeling like an imposter.

Zach was born, and we had many struggles in the beginning: feeding, sleeping, hormones running rampant, feeling incompetent and insecure, dreading Chris' going back to work and leaving me home *ALONE* with the baby...

And time went on. Zach grew bigger, and as he grew, so did my confidence. Slowly, I learned ways to soothe him. Bit by bit, we figured each other out. We learned games to play with one another, we learned how to be together, and we learned how to go out and about together. We worked out our many assorted feeding issues, got thru some bouts of illness (both mine and his), managed my going back to work in a new job where I knew nothing and had to pump in a TINY little bathroom with NO counters or seats other than the toilet, we struggled thru sleep training, started solid foods, lived thru three consecutive ear infections and two medication sensitivities, laughed, cried and hollered together, played in the grass, walked many miles in the stroller, spent many lovely hours together in the rocker in the dead of nite, spent many not-so-lovely hours together in the rocker in the dead of nite...

And thru it all, my love for this little human being has grown more than I EVER imagined it could. To me, he is every cliche about love ever written. The sun rises and sets because he is in my world. He has taught me so much about myself in the past nine months, more than I had learned in the previous 34 years. He has taught me so much about love, and patience, and frustration, and forgiveness, and uncertainty, and laughter, and fear, and play, and pain, and joy....

But most of all, he's taught me that I truly am a Mom.