I Still Sometimes Cannot Believe It

I am not just a mother but a mummy?

WHAT!!!!

How did I get to this point?

I remember being pregnant that very first time I remember actively doing the deed to get to that point, I remember the birth (ouch) and I remember looking down into my firstborn’s face that very first time, her head between my crotch all smeared with my blood her eyes wide open looking straight at me and satisfyingly noticing before anyone else that she was a girl.

There was no ah! moment, no divine type experience in my emotions (except relief in it being all over) and I certainly did not suddenly feel like some baby’s mother.

Now don’t get me wrong even in those early days when feeling like a mummy was as alien to me as growing fur I still felt fiercely protective towards her and feelings of anger would sometimes overwhelm me when people who came to visit and welcome her God forbid wanted to hold her. Being me I think it helped that I never felt guilty about those feelings and just accepted them as what they were i.e. normal (for me at least).

I remember holding her upon my lap in the very early days and wondering how had I got to this point, going through the motions of caring for her and not experiencing that ah! moment that so many mothers talk about. Then at approx two plus months old I told one of my aunts I don’t feel like a mummy, she responded with laughter, saying she sometimes still felt like that (at the time she had two teenage children and always to my eyes exuded all things motherly). Those words help to confirm to me that I was indeed normal and that in time it would all become clear to me but most of not to rush it and certainly don’t obsess about it.

I mean I knew I loved her, couldn’t imagine life with out her and pray for the fool who might put God out of his thoughts and try to harm her. She was mine and I felt that deep in my bones, there was no question about that but thinking of myself as a mummy still was not tangible to me.

I’m not sure when it actually happened, me thinking of myself as a mummy not just as her mother, it was somewhere between her 18th month and her second birthday (I think). Please don’t ask me to explain what that feels like as I don’t think I could express it in words in type or verbally for that matter. All I know is that I am a mummy and thoroughly enjoy being one.

Now that I have two girls my ‘mummydom’ seems concrete in the eyes of the world and certainly in the eyes of my children but there are still times when I catch myself looking at them playing together and wonder how did I get here and when did this destiny truly became mine?

HOW DID I BECOME A MUMMY????