Mom. Wife. Military Life.

Every time I left the house as a teenager I remember my mom telling me “Call me as soon  as you get there and please stay in touch and let me know where you are.” I would sigh and say “Yes ma’am” as inconvenienced as I was in my teenage mind , I look back now as a mother and get it. It wasn’t over-protective moming, it was caring. It was my mom doing what she knew how to do best, loving us.

The day I found out I was pregnant my life forever changed. My perspective on the world started bending in directions I never even knew were even possible. After giving birth, I became a new person. When my oldest was born, so was I in a way. I would never have considered myself the maternal type. I wasn’t one to point out a cute baby, or swoon over a friend’s child. But my babies changed me.

The day they wheeled me back to that cold, white operating room I knew my life was going to be flipped upside down. It was no longer what I wanted to do anymore, it was what was going to be best for my family. I laid on that table with the anesthesiologist rubbing my hair comforting me as I waited for my husband to come around that blue curtain. I laid there thinking of what my baby girl was going to look like, was she going to have my eyes, how much she was going to weight…. and if I was going to be able to love her enough. Motherhood is this strange unknown. It’s something that many, many woman experience, but every single story is completely different. You can never understand or explain it until it happens, and even then the words come hard to find.

When my husband came in the room, he sat next to my head and kept repeating “your doing great, your doing fine”, I think more-so to calm himself then me. He has always said, you have no idea how scary it is as a husband/father to watch the love of your life strapped down on the table with doctors on the other side of this blue curtain delivering the one thing that binds you indefinitely. We looked at each other as we heard the doctors say “more suction, thats good….. Your doing great, your going to feel some tugging a pressure, your baby is going to be here very soon!” Those minutes felt like hours.

Just like that, we heard her cry…. Everything is different from this very moment on. “Come on over here Dad!”… My husband kissed my head and did his very best to keep his head down as he walked around the table to get the first glance at our beautiful baby. Between her little cry, and my husband’s updates “She’s 7lbs 6oz, baby”…. “She’s 20 inches!” my heart melted….

I have never loved my husband more in my life then the second I saw him holding our oldest. He was proud, calm, and strong all at the same time. He came over to me with Everly in his hands and all I could do was cry. She was perfect. My husband was a pillar of strength and we were going to be a family. Those couple of minutes flew by, they left to head down to the nursery as I finished up in surgery. “Your almost done… everything is looking wonderful!” I took those last 20 minutes and rested my eyes knowing this was the last few minutes of calm and quiet for the foreseeable future.

As I laid in recovery they brought her to me and I got the chance to breastfeed her for the very first time. We bonded. We fit perfectly together. After having a miscarriage before her, every single cry and movement to me was a blessing not a burden. I was grateful for this little person making my world rich and vibrant again.

Here I sit almost 6 years later, and 2 more babies to add to the mix, each time making me a better person. They stress me out and calm me down all at the same time. They drive me crazy only to turn around and make my heart overflow with love. I have been driven to the point of tears on every edge of the spectrum. I question all the time if I’m doing best by them, and the answer is I never am…. and thats ok. Im human. I can promise to love them, I can promise to keep God as their main point of reference, and I can love their daddy more then I love anything else in this world…. THOSE are the things I KNOW I can do. The rest is trial and error. There is nothing in this world I cannot do with my family behind me.

With this Mothers Day approaching I’m sending you love and I’m here to tell you, your doing great momma. If they aren’t eating organic, thats ok. If they play on the iPad for a while (or a lot) so you can catch a breath for a second, thats ok. If you tell them no because you just have nothing left in that moment, thats ok. If you are doing your best and you love them…. your doing it right. Kiss those babies, and squeeze them tight, because before we know it they are going to be grown.

Inspire. Believe. Succeed.

-Kinzy