I’m a Mommy, For Real

December 2, 2012

Despite the 10-month and a few days too long pregnancy, the two-day labor, four-day hospital stay, and four digit hospital bill, I didn’t really feel like a mommy for the first few months of my daughter’s life.  Uncertain as to what being a mommy actually felt like, I just knew without a doubt that I wasn’t feeling “it” even as I celebrated a beautiful Mother’s Day just a few short weeks after the birth of my beautiful baby girl.

Now fast forward two-and-a-half years later, and I’ll tell you that I physically, mentally, financially, and otherwise feel every bit like a mommy.  I’ve got both tangible and intangible proof that I am indeed a mommy.  Even when I’m not mothering, which in reality I don’t think I am ever not mothering; so let me rephrase, even when my little one is not physically in my presence, I still feel like a mommy.  Thanks to my membership to motherhood I now understand, and usually more willingly accept, my mother’s – the best Momie ever! – unsolicited advice and protection although I’m on the verge of being dirty-thirty.  A mother’s job is never done.

So, after just tucking my little one in for the third time after a couple of episodes of vomiting at an insane time of the morning I present to you How You Know You’re A Mommy… 

1. When you get up in the middle of the night to change and wash dirty linen bathed in your child’s bodily fluids.  Gross, but we do it.
2. When you muster up enough strength to lift a toddler mid-air so as that precious bottom doesn’t touch the seat of a public commode.
3. When you pick boogies out of a nose that is more crusty than the lips of Dave Chappelle’s character Tyrone Biggums.  Now that is some kind of crusty!
4. When you’d risk being mistaken for a hobo or crazy person after having a night/early morning like I’ve just experienced, but still make sure that your child(ren) is clean, pristine, and ready for a close up.
5. When you give them the last of your food because they claim to still be hungry although they’ve eaten an entire kids meal.
6. When your heart melts after they hug you and affectionately dub you “Mommy” even though you just disciplined them 2 minutes earlier for misbehaving.
7. When you don’t make any plans for your future before thinking of them first and how they’d be impacted by your decision(s).
8. When you work harder than you’ve ever worked in your life just to provide stability and security that they can rely on.
9. When you allow them to lay in bed with you even though you just want to sprawl out across the bed without concern of waking up to a tiny toe in your nostril.
10. When you protect your child(ren) with a level of ferocity that  even you didn’t know you possessed.
11. When you can easily wake from your slumber at the faintest sound of their discomfort.
12. When your child inspires greatness in you and leads you to strive to be a better woman, parent, and partner so that your child has a role model whose behavior he/she can emulate.

Written by bequoted Posted in Be a Kid Tagged with children, kids, motherhood, parenting