A Mother’s Love
Saturday, August 9th, 2008This year, five of my girlfriends had their first child. I was also pregnant, but with my second. As their bellies grew, they stopped looking at me with a bored stare. Instead, the first time moms gushed and cooed about my growing baby. Now each of them were interested and enthusiastic about the arrival of their own child and could not stop talking about everything baby.As each of them went on at length about the anticipation and excitement of growing a new life, they often asked me: “What’s it like to be a mother?”
It is a difficult question to answer, being a young mom myself, but when I finally found the words I replied, ’It is the hardest hard you will ever know along with the greatest love you will ever feel.”
A lump in my throat forms from just saying it. Never in my youth did I even think I would have kids, and of course the career girl couldn’t stand kids, the yuppie didn’t even think she wanted kids, yet now the mother of two wouldn’t know what to do if she didn’t have those kids.
You can never explain the transformation that occurs once a child arrives. Each and every one of us have gone nights—months!—without sleeping, changed more poo, seen more puke, spit up and every other body fluid than humanly possible. We’ve walked a crying baby for hours, slept sitting up or on the floor beside a crib, drove aimlessly to induce sleep or done whatever ridiculous amusement required keeping a baby happy.
The hard is harder than you can explain. The demands, the unknown, the endless consoling, feeding, burping, diaper changing and, just when they are content for a moment, it starts all over again. There is no instruction booklet or guaranteed solutions to colic, acid reflux, night terrors or striders. The diaper rash, cradle cap, fevers, crying, teething, constipation, crying, running nose, heat rash, croup, diarrhea, and did I mention crying? It takes its toll on any human being.
When you are on the verge of tears or too tired to sleep, you never imagined it was going to be this hard.
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