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I thought, in honor of my children, I would share with you guys a few of my favorite stories of being a mother. First, I’ll tell you the story about when I found out that my daughter, Ainsley’s, gender. She was a planned pregnancy and the goal was for her to be born close to the same time my father passed away so that his death would be a celebration of life instead of a sad time. When I got pregnant with my daughter, I was 100% certain that she was a boy. Her father’s bloodline was nothing but men, my father had two brothers and only 1 sister, I was the only girl from my parents…I was a tomboy..Surely I would not be given a girl..What was I going to do with her?! So, I went through my entire pregnancy telling myself that it felt like a boy, I wanted a boy…Surely it’s a boy in there. 20 weeks arrived and it was time to find out the gender…The night before I went to have my ultrasound I had one of those insane pregnancy dreams. I dreamed that I was at my mother’s house, in the living room, feeding my child in a high chair (it was genderless at this stage) and I all of a sudden remembered I needed to do something. I run frantically out of the house and get in my car, which in this dream happened to be an old yellow station wagon, and I just started driving….I am driving and driving and driving and I’m in the desert of New Mexico and realize I forgot my kid! So I turn around and I’m having all these horrible nightmares of what I’m going to find when I finally get back to my mom’s house..Like she’ll just be a pile of bones stuck in a high chair (pregnancy dreams make no fucking sense and scare the shit out of you and they stick with you.) So I’m rushing to get back…And I feel like no matter how fast or far I drive, I am never going to get there…It’s like one of those never-ending highways…Finally I get back to the house..I rush in and look at the highchair and it’s empty. I turn around and my father is sitting on the couch holding a baby and the baby turns and looks at me and my dad says, “Don’t worry, I’ve got her.” I SHOT up out of bed and yelled and said, “Oh my god I’m having a girl!” Sure enough…We got to the ultrasound and there she was. LoL I was a one-and-done mom after Ainsley. I didn’t want to go through pregnancy again because it was not enjoyable for me. Ainsley, though, had other intentions. It got to the point where she was walking through Target picking up baby clothes and toys and asking if we could not purchase something for her, but for a sibling that didn’t exist and wasn’t even being considered. At this point, their father and I had both already lost our fathers and the prospect of Ainsley having to go through that alone was not a comfortable one. We both have siblings that we are very close to and decided that we wanted that for Ainsley, but we wanted her input on the decision. We sat down with Ainsley and had a really deep conversation about what having a sibling would mean, what types of things she would gain, what types of sacrifices she would have to make and overwhelmingly she begged for a sibling. Part of the problem is that I was old…At least older than I probably should have been birthing babies. Their father was even older. If we were going to have another child, it would need to happen pretty quickly so we all agreed to project 2 months. We would try for 2 months and if it happened, it was meant to be. If it didn’t happen, it wasn’t. At the VERY end of the 2 months, I got a positive result and 10 months later, on D-Day and standing on the shoulders of some of the greatest men in history, Finnegan was born. He is the wild, stubborn, curious, analytical little dude I didn’t know I need but am very glad he came into our lives. He’s only two so I don’t have a ton of prolific stories to tell about him, yet, but my favorite thing about him is his fake smile that he uses when he has done something he knows he’s not supposed to do. He squints his little eyes up and his two dimples shine through and he looks at me and says, “I love you mommy, I’m sorry.” It is by far the sweetest thing on the planet and makes it really hard to discipline him. Being a mom is a really difficult job. You are constantly worried if you are doing it right and you have 18 years to wait and find out if you’ve succeeded. There are hints along the way in the form of compliments from strangers, report cards that come home and actions you get to observe in moments where they think you aren’t paying attention. Regardless of the challenges, the reward surpasses them by miles. I could not imagine my life without being a mother. I think from an identity perspective, being a mom is the one thing I identify with more than anything. I am not a blogger, a writer, a podcaster, an idiot with a camera and shitty internet….I am just a mom, and it’s amazing. To all you other mothers out there, I hope tomorrow is a beautiful day for you and you get to spend it with your littles doing something fun with them. To all those mothers who have either lost a baby or have been unable to have one, yet, I am thinking of you and hoping with all hope for you that you one day get to experience this feeling. Much love to you all, -H
