I First Felt Like a Mom...

I have been considering the question, "When did you first feel like a mom?"

Some Internet posters have these amazing, beautiful moments when it has all become real to them.

I don't have any one moment, but it was definitely a long, gradual process that in the beginning I was terrified would not evolve.

I had a cesarean birth after an 18 hour induced labor that was helped along by some magical drugs (the last 8 hours) which made everything wavy. The surgery went well enough but I was very, very under the influence of these drugs. I remember Ismael coming to the room, the anesthesiologist reminding me to breathe, and him taking our picture with Adam. As they wheeled me back to the room, I held Adam in a death grip, afraid he would slip. The nurse announced I would be giving him his first feeding and I said something emphatic like "nuh, uh" handed him off and fell into a drugged out bliss.

Every single thing about my hospital stay was horrific. I developed a "spinal headache" that required two blood patches to fix. I didn't sleep after that first night and in the last 48 hours I was there, I slept four. The idea of keeping Adam in my room over night terrified me. By the time we left the hospital, I had swollen up like a hot air balloon. I was exhausted and emotionally wrecked. I begged Ismael to take me home and bawled intermittently while I waited for the doctor to come release me. I came very close to simply walking out of the hospital without a discharge. What would they do? Arrest me? My son peed all over the cute going home outfit I had bought for him. I argued with Ismael about the car seat. There wasn't a tender moment to be found.

The first few weeks at home were not any better. I had lost enough blood in the surgery that I was extremely anemic. I can't even explain the kind of tired that was. I felt like I could sit in the corner and just cry every minute of the day from sheer exhuastion. I took my iron pills and slept every chance I got. Ismael stayed home from work for an extra week and would sleep on the couch with Adam in his bassinet so that I could sleep. Nothing helped. A hematoma (big pool of blood) formed under my incision. On Sunday morning, two weeks after the c-section, it began to weep out of the incision. By weep, I really mean pour. I got up to brush my teeth and felt/heard something dripping on the floor. Fresh, bright red blood was running down my leg. I made the phone calls and sat down on the bed to feed Adam. By the time my sister arrived, I had bled through my clothes and was sitting in a puddle of blood on my comforter. Ismael took me to the hospital and I bled through a towel I had shoved in my underwear and through those pants too. The hospital let me sit, bleeding, in the waiting room for more than 25 minutes. In the end, they did nothing, the bleeding stopped on its own, and I came home.

Later that week, on Halloween, I had a blood transfusion, and three full weeks after Adam was born, I felt like a human being again. It was only then I could turn my attention to him fully.

He didn't notice.

He continued to sleep 24 hours a day punctuated by hungry wailing. I enjoyed holding him and knew that really, he was a very good mannered baby.

Life went on. I began having what I found out were gallbladder attacks around Thanksgiving and had it removed on Christmas Eve. Adam spent his first Christmas at my sister's house with his cousins. I spent his first Christmas on narcotic pain killers.

In the days that followed, I remember having real fun with him for the first time. He smiled more and interacted with me. I would play with him in his room and realize two hours had flown by. I watched Ismael bloom more and more in his role as daddy. We became more competent parents.

If I try to isolate any one moment where I first felt like a mom, it would be a frustrating afternoon of trying to get Adam to nap. I had the realization that I couldn't control this little human being, only myself, and my frustration melted away. I was the mommy. I could put him down when it was naptime and he would either sleep or wouldn't. In the long run, it didn't matter.

But now, I am able to find joy in the way he smiles when he sees me. I love that he holds the sleeve my nightgown every morning when I change his diaper. I witness his delight when he sees something new about the world, like the way he discovered himself in the bathroom mirror tonight.

Every day, there is a small grace from God present in my son, if I still myself enough to notice it.

I love being Adam's mommy. It's the greatest blessing God has ever given me.