Wait, What...I'm a Mom!

With mother's day quickly approaching @bumpclubandbeyond tasked me and other moms with the thought of when did you become a mother.  I thought it was a pretty good article so I wanted to share with all of you what I wrote:
​When this topic came across my computer I was immediately drawn to it and started thinking deeply about when I felt like a mom.  Then I realized how hard it is to pin point the day, or the moment that it happened.  Our journey has been a ride of up’s and down’s.  There was no labor, no placing my babies on my chest, no meeting them for 24 hours because of how sick I was.  My twins were born at just over 32 weeks gestation and were quickly whisked away to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit(NICU) where I had to try to get in my head that they were not sick babies they were small babies that I could not see for a day so I could get medication on board to protect my brain.  Did I feel like a mom sitting in a hospital room without my children?  Did I feel like a mom asking nurses if it was ok to pick up my own children?  Did I feel like a mom leaving my babies in a hospital when I went home and back for 38 and 40 days?  The sad answer is no.  I had “Layaway Babies”.  Babies that we surely were paying for financially and emotionally but did not get to take home until they could accomplish certain tasks.  Tasks that I really could not help them with.  They needed to grow. 
When we finally took them home and I was attached to a pump while feeding my babies and living on less sleep than ever that’s when it hit.  For the previous 5 weeks I did not get sleep because of that darn pump, but I didn’t have tiny humans who needed me to get them fed and clean and happy.  I remember late one night or morning when I was feeding the fellas and I started noticing some differences in my identical little boys.  When I could tell them apart like no one else and that’s when I was a mom.  I was crying in a mess of hormones still worried that I had ruined them forever because of my body falling apart, but I was their mom and we were going to persevere together as a family. 
I had done all that I could do to help them thrive and I would never quit on my tiny and mighty boys.  They saw me as their mom and it was time that I felt like it too.  As time passes I still see them as individual people and tell them apart from their cries, their looks, and their budding personalities.  That’s my mom story.  My own journey.  Our journey together.