“Making the decision to have a child is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.” ~Elizabeth Stone

“The moment a child is born, the mother is also born. She never existed before. The woman existed, but the mother, never. A mother is something absolutely new.” ~Rajneesh

“It’s not easy being a mother. If it were easy, fathers would do it.” ~The Golden Girls

I do love being a mother, but must admit it’s been a wild ride. When I found out that I was pregnant, I was delighted.  I immediately began read everything I could find about pregnancy, labor and childbirth. It wasn’t until my son was born that I realized I was not at all prepared for actual motherhood. So for the last 20 years I’ve just been “winging it.” It has been an ever-changing landscape full of different stages. It seemed like every time I mastered one stage, my son moved to a new stage.

By the time I’d mastered potty training him, he’d moved on to being a preschooler.

By the time I mastered being a T-ball mom, he was playing football.

By the time I learned to play Pacman, he moved on to Nintendo

And then there were those teenage years…….

Parenthood has been a very humbling experience for my husband and me.  Our son came into our lives after 12 years of marriage; a nice long honeymoon.  So we were “DINKs” (Double Income, No Kids) – professionals with a carefully ordered life. But after becoming parents, all bets were off.  We ate…whenever. We slept….whenever. Our carefully decorated home took on a sort of toy store/sporting goods store motif. We’ve survived everything from finding Pop Tarts in the VCR to broken bones to broken windows. Being a parent can really deepen your prayer life.

One thing puzzles me, though. In recent years I’ve seen proud husbands put their arms around their wives and say “We’re pregnant.” It is a joyous announcement, but I always laugh when I hear this proclamation. The word “we” is plural, implying the participation of more than one person. Let me reflect on my experience with pregnancy. Admittedly, it has been quite a few years since I was “in the family way,” but I still have a handle on the general concept and if memory serves me correctly:

We did not have morning sickness.

We did not get stretch marks.

We did not endure 24 hours of labor; that was pretty much a solo act. And as far I can recall, only one of us had an epidural.

We did not get up every 2 hours to nurse “our” little miracle.

So when I hear “we’re pregnant”, I’m always tempted to ask “really?”

Please share your favorite motherhood memory.