What Makes Me a Mother

Two days ago, I got an email from a male relative telling me titled "Almost Your Day". In it, he explained that next year I would be officially "entitled" to celebrate Mother's Day, but that he hoped I had a wonderful day anyway.

Although I certainly appreciated his sentiment (he's definitely one of my favorite male relatives), I took a little umbrage at his suggestion that I'm not yet a mother. While it's true that my son has not yet been born, and that everything will change when he is, he is still with me and in my thoughts every single moment of every single day. My life revolves around his development: providing him food to grow, getting enough sleep so that I can haul him around all day, feeling his kicks and squirms, planning where he will sleep and how, deciding where and how we would like him to be born, securing the house so that he will be safe, getting a job so that we can pay for him to have the best care...

Every single thing I have done since I discovered that he existed in the first place has focused on him. I go to yoga every week not so that I can maintain my figure (ha!) but so that I can be strong enough to birth him well. I take nasty vitamins that give me terrible heartburn so that he can have the proper nutrition to develop a strong body. I budget my money so that we can be prepared for anything that may come our way once he has been born.

And the worry, oh the worry. I find myself thinking about what the world will be like 10, 20, 50 years from now; what I am bringing a life into. I fear for everything he will have to go through in life and worry about if I will be able to provide a strong enough example for him to follow. Will I be able to give him the tools in life to succeed? The What Ifs flood my mind day and night in a new kind of anxiety that is entirely pervasive to my every waking and dreaming moment.

Already, I find myself having to suppress my Mama Bear temper which flares at the very hint, real or imagined, that someone would ever do something to hurt my baby. I am more protective over him, and by extension myself, than I have ever been in my life. I just didn't care like I do now until I discovered that me was not just me anymore; it was me and him.

So if all those things don't make me a mother, I don't know what would.


Me at 23 weeks. I am going to be huge...


Little Dude's very own Baby Bunny Jacket. From Vogue Baby Knits Too in Cascase 220 superwash in the 1 year size. I've made 5 of these and I finally get to make one for my own baby bunny...

p.s. Jon totally celebrated Mother's Day with me this morning by cooking some KICK ASS gluten-free pancakes and then starting a truly touching Mother's Day tradition. I am blessed to have such a wonderful husband.

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This post was inspired by Kristen over at Motherhood Uncensored and was brought to you by the Blog Blast at the Parent Bloggers Network and Light Iris as well as the letter E and the number 8.