Initially, I was cavalier about motherhood, treating reproduction as an experience to be had — an item to be checked off a bucket list. After two years of trying, pregnancy became an obsession, measured in doctor’s visits, sperm counts and the painful flushing of contrast dye through my fallopian tubes. When the pregnancy tests finally showed two lines— I used up a stockpile— I fanned out the positives in triumph.
Hearing my baby’s first heartbeat made me euphoric — a visceral awakening to motherhood. I listened, addicted to its rapid rhythm of her lifeblood, knowing my own steady pulse echoed around it. I became the poster mother for “What to Expect When You’re Expecting,” flushed with estrogen, progesterone and hCG, glowing like a stereotype and devouring baby books as she grew from a poppy seed (zygote) to a blueberry (embryo) to a watermelon (fetus).
Nothing prepared me for how quickly the abstract became flesh. I was birthed into motherhood in an epiphany of instinctual, cellular love. As my womb was sliced open, she was lifted from my body — bottom first and slippery. From the operating table, I yearned to hear her cry — her breath propelling her into life. The instant of her first wail, I became “mother,” born into a lifetime of aching love and persistent vigilance.
The world narrowed to her body and mine in relentless efforts of survival. I struggled to breastfeed, living by the mantra, “breast is best.” I pumped and pumped my “liquid gold,” while swaddling, swinging and shushing her through the fourth trimester.
She regularly drenched me in a torrent of “spit up” and our wardrobe changes were prolific. I was thrilled by the ritual of laundry, from the tiny hangers to sorting clothes and playing dress up as she bloomed. As she toddled forward, I bent to her, my back aching as I steadied her uncertain steps — every one worthy of my position as her personal paparazzi.
With the joy came fear — RSV, croup, EV-D68 — and those late-night hospital drives, somehow always on a weekend, with the windows down, hoping cold air would ease the swelling in her airways so she could stop barking like a seal and freely draw life-sustaining breaths.
The first two years were the hardest, juggling work and the self-inflicted pressure to be the best mother possible. I read her hundreds of stories thousands of times and then went to bed to research motherhood, yet again. As a bubble wrap mother, my love sharpened into hyperawareness. I smothered her with “be carefuls,” constantly alert to the smallest tripping hazard. I was terrified of choking hazards — grapes, popcorn — and particularly paranoid about tacks, scanning the floors beneath the community bulletin boards.
I professed to be one and done, until she turned two. I called them the terrific twos and greedily wanted to double my darling girl. I read that the most consistent friend is often a sibling: the one who knows you across nearly an entire lifetime, and all your versions. I campaigned for a year, and conceived my son the first month of trying.
Time collapsed into a survival swirl. Unlike my daughter, my son took to breastfeeding almost manically, which I indulged even as it depleted me. He tortured me with eight months of sleep deprivation while I worked full time. The toil bound us in early attachment, though his babyhood is mostly a blur, preserved in pictures and snippets of memory — strolling the Sunday farmers’ market, hunting for changing tables in public restrooms, breastfeeding while watching the eclipse.
We were still in survival when language became song, and I still sing him the song I made up during our rocking chair days:
“I love you, yes I do. I love you, yes it’s true. I love you, my little Finnegan boo. I love love love love you because you are sweet and silly and kind and so amazing to me. I love you so. You will never know how much you mean to me. Kiss kiss.”
He created a response song, “I love you, yes I do. I love you, yes it’s true. I will never forget you, with a kiss on your cheek and a hug so bright. I love you. Good night.”
Love, once singular, became comparative. As they grew and sibling rivalry flared, they turned my love into a commodity, vying for lap sits and declarations of adoration. I felt torn and implemented a timer-based system for lap claims. I told them, “I love you both equally but differently,” which left them both unsatisfied. In the end, I measure my success by their happiness, and I measure their achievement by the shape of their character.
As I’ve transformed from mommy to mom, and “play dates” to “hangouts,” I have become more free range. I find myself newly inducted into the sandwich generation, where puberty and perimenopause collide with elder care and an unfiltered preview of aging.
“The Golden Girls” made it look effortless, but aging gracefully remains on my to-do list. I am a middle-aged mother of two, unexpectedly preoccupied with preserving muscle mass, bone density and a thick epidermis. I am balancing being a soccer mom and seniors’ daughter, as I bus both tweens and septuagenarians across the valley.
But I am eternally mother, the facilitator of love and happiness.