I can’t believe how quickly the ten weeks since Baby Boy’s birth have flown! I’ve had a few posts in mind, but have found it very difficult to squeeze out the time to post. While we are blessed to have a good (night) sleeper, Baby Boy is not a consistent napper, so most days I don’t have a reasonable stretch of time during the day to post anything, given everything else I want to get done. I have now given myself the seemingly realistic goal of posting something once a week, so we’ll see how well I do with that.
Ten weeks in, I am still amazed at my new role as “mom” or “mommy” and all the responsibility, wonder, and street cred that come with it. As I wrote on my old blog (www.unfertilized.wordpress.com), I loved being pregnant. Even though I normally do not like being the centre of attention, while I was pregnant I loved the attention that sporting a belly would bring me. After years of being on the outside looking in, I loved finally being able to take part in the primal, animal act of gestating a new human.
However, even while I was pregnant, the idea that I was going to be a mom did not fully sink in. Yes, I knew that my life was about to change (as parents everywhere were quick to remind me), and I knew that a baby was going to be coming into my life very soon, but I was not yet able to think of myself as a parent.
I was first jolted into thinking of myself as a mom during our pre-natal classes when the instructor discussed what mom and dad would be doing during the various stages of labour. The first time I heard this, it did not register that the word mom referred to me – I automatically thought of my mom and tried to reconcile what the instructor was saying with what I saw as my mom’s role in the process. Even when I realized that mom referred to me, it didn’t feel quite right. How could I possibly be a mom?
Once Baby Boy was born, to the outside world, I became a mom. Throughout my stay at the hospital, the medical staff repeatedly referred to me as “Mom”, whether in discussions among themselves, written documentation, or in speaking to me directly about my baby. As I slowly got used to the idea that I had a son, I knew that by definition, it meant that I was a mom, but it still didn’t feel real to me.
I still remember the moment when I first started to own the word mom(my). It was a few weeks after Baby Boy was born and he was lying awake in his crib in the afternoon. I was standing next to the crib, bending down to peek through the bars and trying to catch his attention. Without thinking, I said “Hi Sweetie, Mommy’s here. Look at Mommy.” to get his attention. As soon as the words came out of my mouth, I stopped short, overcome by the most amazing mix of emotions. Mom(my) was no longer a word that referred to someone else – to this one, tiny human being who was not aware of anything that came before him, I am mommy. And that is all that matters.
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Image may be NSFW.Clik here to view.
