What does it feel like to be a mommy?

When my first child was put into my arms I felt a love that I never dreamed was possible. It was the strongest, most intense kind of a love that I had ever felt. In that one instant all of my focus transfered from myself, to that precious baby whose very existence depended on me. What does it feel like to be a Mommy? It is the most incredible feeling in the whole world.

Becoming a mother is allowing a part of your heart to walk around outside of your body. It is the most intense love and devotion. I never imagined the joy and pain that would come from being a mother. Not the physical pain of actual child birth, but the fear of something bad happening to your sweet angel. The fear that someone may hurt them and that I would not be able to protect them.

I never imagined having a child literally sleep on my chest for three straight days causing intense pain in my breastbone, because she was sick with a fever and didn't want to be anywhere else. I never imagined waking up four or five times a night to make sure someone was still breathing. I never thought I could ever care about someone the way that I care about my children. Before I had children I thought I knew how to love, now I know what love really means. It is a feeling that is so hard to describe, but one that every mother understands. It is an all consuming, selfless, never ending, aching and wonderful thing. It is being full to the brim and overflowing. It is heart swelling with gratitude to be given the chance to love and be loved.

Before I was a mother I never imagined that I would smell another persons butt, or inspect the contents of a diaper. I never thought I'd clean up puke, or stick my fingers down a little throat to fish out that scrap of paper that could cause them to choke and die. I never stepped on toy cars, or sat on sippy cups. I never fished boogers out of noses, or tied a shoe a hundred times in one day. I had never been spit on, slimed on, threw up on, or drooled on. Before I was a mother I wonder how I lived?

What does being a mother feel like? It feels like nothing else on this Earth. It is a feeling I treasure and one that I intend to enjoy for as long as I am able.