My Mom-iversary (a few weeks late!)

Photo by Karpati Gabor
http://mrg.bz/l0HFD5

I've been a mom now for a little over a year.  Incredible.  After 10 years of wondering, hoping, wishing, it's really here, happening in real time.  I just put my little girl to bed, I just cleaned up all of her toys and books, I just recovered a lost soother thrown over the edge of the crib and curddled her back to sleep. 

Over the past month, I've paid very close attention to the small details of my life by comparing where I'm at now as compared to where I was exactly one year ago.  It started with our anniversary this year on February 25th - we didn't do anything fancy to celebrate this year at all, but it was an amazing day.  Our anniversary not only marked our 8th year of marriage, it was also one year exactly since our last day of childlessness.  February 25th, 2013 (last year - our 7th anniversary) marked the last day in our lives that we would ever wonder if/when we would have a baby.  Last year on February 25th, Apollo bought me flowers, he took my picture with the colourful bouquet and we went out to dinner together.  We were happy, but there was heaviness in our hearts too ...  another wedding anniversary with no baby to help mark the passing years, another night of just the two of us wondering when it would finally become the three of us.

Then, the next day, we found out we were about to become parents.  Just like that, the waiting, the wondering, the loneliness was gone. 

It's amazing how life can change in the brief moments of a phonecall.  I became an expectant mom at 6:00 p.m. one Tuesday night and I became a mom the following week. 

Apollo and I worked through infertility for ten years.  It shaped so much of who we are as a couple, how we look at the world and now how we parent.  We wanted this so badly and I know that neither of us take these very special moments for granted.  Our daughter is one.  ONE!!!  I am a mom of a one year old!  This funny, sweet, smart little girl.  In spite of (or because of?) adoption, we love to see parts of ourselves shine through our daughter.

The magic of our story is never lost on us.  We waited many many years for this special little girl and we feel so very blessed to have her as our daughter.  I feel so very blessed to be a mother.  To be HER mother. 

Now that our journey to parenthood is over and we can sit back and enjoy the beauty of this trip, I am thankful that I had to go through so much to get to where I am now.  I am full of gratitude and I feel like my priorities are straight.  Family time is precious ... fleeting moments when a little hand pats my knee or a gummy smile is flashed my way mean more to me than anything in the world.  Being a mom brings me the most happiness of anything.  And I really think I have infertility to thank for this.  I looked at a future of childlessness square in the eye and grieved.  And then I was blessed with a baby.