Believe me, I was in shock a few years later when I became a mother.
No one told me that after I nursed my beautiful little baby, he might just puke like a superstar.
I wasn’t prepared to deal an 8-pound human siren, either.
“My baby hates me,” I sobbed to my friend, Mary Dee.
“Your baby has colic,” she said with a sad look in your eyes.
“Is that a forever kind of thing?” I asked.
“No,” my friend shook her head. “But by the time he outgrows it, you will feel like it is.”
It absolutely amazed me that this little person – who didn’t weigh as much as a 10-pound bag of potatoes – took over my life. Every day he held me hostage. I was so afraid for his safety that I took my son and his punkin seat to the bathroom when I finally had a chance to jump in the shower. But if he started to fuss, I turned off the shower and jumped right back out, sometimes with shampoo still dripping in my hair. I couldn’t stand to let him cry. I was afraid he would choke.
When he cried for nearly three hours every single evening, I cried, too.
In the midst of it all, I learned how to be an octopus mom, using my blow dryer with one hand while holding my son with the other hand.
He was also the little king of daily schedules. For example, if I tried to sprint through the grocery store but it was too close to time to nurse, my son cried. I cried too, and my big old mammary glands began to leak through my bra. They also hurt so badly that I shamelessly smashed those big old jugs against anything in the frozen food aisle.
Yep, that’s right. First I mashed the udders against the cold doors. If that didn’t do the trick, I stuffed my bra with bags of frozen peas.
Until I became a mother I had no idea that I could rock a sick baby all night, get dressed and go to work the next day and the day after that and never once experience a psychotic break from exhaustion.
Sleepless nights and tears of frustration could never take the place though, for how completely in love I was then or now, either, with my perfect boy. Cheering for him at Little League games, praying for him when he left alone for the first time in his car, missing him when he moved out to attend college. All of those milestones are forever etched on my heart.
God truly blessed me when he put my son and me together, to share the same heart. It has been an honor to love him so much more than words could ever say.