016/365

Mother's Day is a celebration of a single mother who worked her ass off to provide a life for me.

Mother's Day is a celebration of my grandmothers, my aunts, my mother-in-law, my sisters through marriage, and the amazing women I call my friends who I, luckily, get to raise my children alongside.  

Mother's Day is a day to honor the women who may not be mothers by conventional means but are mothers nonetheless: women who have other women to give birth to their children, women who are trying to become mothers, adoptive mothers, aunts, grandmothers, brave women who say goodbye to their babies so that another family may take care of them, and women who lose babies or children. If you love a child like your own, I honor you on Mother's Day.

Mother's Day is a difficult day for many who no longer have their mothers around to hug and take to brunch. 

Mother's Day is a day to celebrate the single dads who step in and do the jobs of both parents.  

Mother's Day is one of the few days a year I honor the job I do as a mother and to marvel at the cool little humans my girls are turning into.

Mother's Day is the day where I take it easy on myself. Instead of the typical criticisms and constant evaluation I lament on myself, I shut my mind off and honor myself with grace. I take off my battle armor and believe that I'm doing everything right. And by right, I mean that I'm doing my best to teach them humility, respect, fairness, and kindness-- especially to themselves-- by showing myself the same courtesy. 

Mother's Day isn't about gifts or breakfast in bed or mimosas by a pool (although those are spectacular touches. ahem.)

Mother's Day isn't a day-off from motherhood because we all know that motherhood doesn't include sick or vacation days (someone else getting up at 2am with the baby doesn't hurt. ahem.) 

Mother's Day doesn't mean that your kids won't be assholes or throw tantrums or that your youngest babe won't take her full-of-shit diaper off in her crib only to experiment with finger painting for the first time.  

Mother's Day is a day to stop focusing on how hard motherhood can feel and to, instead, focus on how lucky we are to be given the opportunity to love and raise babies, to watch them blossom into people with minds of their own and paths to be traveled.

Mother's Day is a day we are reminded how fortunate we are to be their souls' safety net, to be the one whose arms make it all better, to be the one to put Hello Kitty band-aids on imaginary booboos and to kiss hurt feelings all better. 

Mother's Day is a day to, most importantly, be eternally grateful to feel the underserved yet unconditional love that our children provide.   

014/365

It's me and you, babe. Me and You. I trust you. Please, trust me. 

I have never meant any words more than the fourteen I silently and repeatedly recited to myself as I labored on the eve of your birth. 

Beyond what unfolded in that delivery room being nothing short of spectacular, my labor and your birth answered so many big questions I had about life-- the main one being how much can I handle?-- and proved beyond any shadow of a doubt that we do, in fact, possess the ability to heal our own wounds by simply facing our fears.

Before I had you, Edie, I wondered if I had enough love in my being to be a mother of two. It seemed impossible to love anyone else as much as I loved Mo. I feared failing because you're supposed to have enough love and, surely, you aren't supposed to think that you're going to be terrible at this.

I also feared facing another battle, this time with a toddler who would likely remember it and without my family. I feared resenting you because I knew how hard it was to not resent Mo for what I went through before, even though it wasn't her fault and wouldn't have been yours' either. I feared the toll that another baby would take on me mentally. I feared depression and anxiety. I feared hemorrhaging. I feared the slow recovery. I feared the unknown. I feared feeling lost again when I had worked so hard to find pieces of myself that had been left behind. 

I feared the guilt. 

I doubted myself and questioned why anyone would trust me with not just one kid, but TWO. So many more patient, more maternal, more kind, more everything women wanted babies so desperately and yet I seemed to be given one every time Joe and I stood in the ocean together. It seemed like someone-- the universe or whomever is in control of matters such as these up there-- made a horrible mistake and checked the wrong box beside my name.

*Christine Fadel: Fertile Myrtle, ill-equipped, and up for the challenge*

CHECK. 

After twelve hours of labor, one attempt to sit in a barely-filled bath tub all for you to decide that it was go-time, one hundred f-bombs, and one push later, I pulled you onto my chest as you wailed, so full of life, feeling a high I've never experienced before*. 

In that buzzing birthing room, on Wednesday, April 29th, 2016, only two things existed to me: your face and hope. 

As many women told me it would, it became clear that the love I have to give isn't a finite thing; rather, the more I love, the more love I have to give. The second I saw you, you were no longer just my leap of faith, but you were the destination of a journey ruled by a deeply scarred version of myself. You proved that there was something greater waiting for me: YOU. 

You were waiting for me.

Edie Bee, you not only trusted me to be your mom, but you taught me how to trust myself again. I love you and the light you've brought to our family so much it hurts. 

Happy birthday, baby girl. 

To the moon but so very much further. 

xoxo, mama

(And trust me, I've done the work to test this theory before I had kids. No synthetic or *cough, cough* natural high compares to the pure, unadulterated rush of oxytocin your body delivers to you with after giving birth. I swear to Gloria Steinem it was an out of body experience, one I'd pay an obscene amount of money to feel even a tiny fraction of again.) 

013/365

I remember this photo being taken.

Mo had only recently turned two, still maintaining the chubby wrists and gibberish verbal skills to prove it. Her hair had never even been cut, still slightly resembling a mullet, though neither of us cared. She still looked every bit my baby-- less the little girl I soon came to know and love. I was as madly in love with her then as I am now. 

I was only a few days removed from being rushed to a Brooklyn hospital and undergoing emergency surgery to remove my appendix, only eight months after an emergency surgery in a Manhattan hospital to remove my gallbladder. Fresh in my mind was the reality that my health had too easily been taken for granted.

My veins hadn't yet healed from the IV's bruising each of my arms and hands. I was weak and my morale was low. My skin was the faintest shade of yellow, my shoulder showcasing a bruise, caused by a quite-useless shot of morphine given by a far-too-rough nurse. I was too thin and my face was littered with acne- a direct result of the toxicity I had been living with for months, unbeknownst to me. Hidden beneath my far-too-large silk tank were four new open wounds, the portals which allowed the many machines (and the doctor operating them) to remove another one of my organs. Going under general anesthesia without having spoken to Joe or Marlo or any family for a second time was a reality still too painful to even acknowledge having gone through. 

I was spent. I felt emotionally defeated and my body, physically traumatized. I was going through the motions, as best I could, doing my damnedest to cope and maintain normalcy for Marlo and everyone around me, while somehow slowly coming to terms with how life kept feeling like an undeserved yet, repeated, ass-kicking.   

Ironically, I look like I had it somewhat together, though, that couldn't have been any further from the truth. I had been given strict orders to refrain from lifting Mo or anything over four pounds due to the sutures which had yet to properly close. Not holding my child was altogether a different kind of pain, far beyond the physical laments of surgery. Rather, it felt more like a cruel, let's-add-insult-to-injury punishing wound. I desperately ached to hold her, to comfort her, and to allow her and all of her two-year-old sweetness to soothe and comfort me. 

These photos capture me mothering, something not even surgery or a healing process (that had yet to commence) couldn't-- wouldn't-- stop me from doing. I needed to hold her and so I did.  

And that's really the underlying, intoxicating beauty of motherhood, isn't it? It remains constant no matter the circumstances. The instinct and love is always, ALWAYS, there. No matter where the road leads me or my kids, they will always, ALWAYS, be mine and I will always, ALWAYS, be theirs. Their arms will always be the place where I feel purpose and my arms will forever be their home, even years and years from when I can actually hold them.

Even though life feels less like the complete wreck it was when these photos were taken, my inexplicable love for that tiny human has remained the same. Mothering her-- though it did not come naturally to me as I embarked on it-- now feels as natural as breathing. 

And equally as vital, which often feels like such a double-edged sword-- equal parts comforting and suffocating, providing a grounding center yet disrupting all that I've ever known to be true about independence and balance.

What a wild, wild trip motherhood is... 

012/365

I've only wanted to tell my kids I'm not their bitch forty-seven times today. But we all know that I'd be lying.

So. 

011/365

Thoughts on the becoming of a sisterhood:

When I told people that I was pregnant with another daughter, it was rare I didn't get told how lucky Marlo was to be getting a sister.

"What a gift you're giving her!" Luck of the draw, really.

"She is so lucky! Sisters are the best." I wouldn't know... don't have one. 

"She's got a best friend for life!" They'll both be teenagers so they're bound to hate each other at some point, right?

There were also fearful, sympathetic undertones in their well wishes, too. People often have an inexplicable instinct to create competition between sisters (and women in general, for that matter). Someone once had the audacity to tell me, "Well, I'd really hate to be known as Marlo's little sister. She'll never be able to measure up to her because she's so beautiful." Mo also was made fully aware of how dreadful her life would become once the new baby comes. "Uh oh! It's not just about you anymore!" 

Since I didn't grow up with a sister, I had no frame of reference on these matters. Maybe I was naive but I chose to believe (and still do) that Mo would grow up being the kind of girl we simply encouraged and supported her to be and I intended to apply that same tactic to sisterhood if only because it made the most sense.

After Edie was born and as I watched Marlo adjust to this new world we were all trying (and mostly failing) to navigate, I often cursed the well-meaning people who ever told me that giving Mo a sister was the best thing we could ever do for her. Liars! All of them! It wasn't a blessing. It felt like a curse for all persons involved. It was the hardest thing I'd ever done and still failed miserable at. It was even more painful (for Edie, mostly) to watch Mo become so frustrated with us and her new role but not be able to communicate it in a way that didn't involve hitting or scratching her sister. I'm not sure who cried more those first few hazy months: me, Edie, or Mo. 

Sorry, kid. I hate to break it to you but she's here to stay. 

About a month into the game, I had a complete breakdown. I weeped to Joe, convinced we made a mistake having another kid. I remember accusing myself of being selfish for wanting another baby, for wanting to disrupt Marlo's life just as it was really getting so good (I had yet to meet the threenager she'd soon become). I was certain that I'd ruined Marlo's life beyond repair and that she would never accept, let alone like or love, her little sister.

Mind you, I may have been slightly hormonal and irrationally over-dramatic but I was also understandably devastated. Sibling-hood looked nothing like I pictured it and my expectations were shockingly realistic. I expected and prepared myself for an adjustment period but I didn't think that Marlo's heart would actually be broken by bringing "that baby" into the world.

She wouldn't even say her name for the longest time. Edie was That Baby. 

That baby pooped. 

That baby won't stop crying. 

That baby needs to eat so it will stop crying. 

Looking back, I know that I had only yet to see the light at the end of tunnel. We weren't there yet-- we weren't even remotely close and in such dark, difficult to navigate times like postpartum, whether it be for the first time or the third, ignorance ain't bliss. That tunnel turned out to be eleven months longer than I had hoped. (Hey, just because I was realistic, doesn't mean that I wasn't optimistic for a best case scenario.) 

When I became pregnant with Mo and began thinking about the kind of mother I wanted to be, I promised myself that I'd always let my kids figure it out on their own time, never rushing them into being something they weren't ready for. In this case, all I could do was follow through with that promise and hope for the best, whatever that best looked like. 

Two weeks ago, as I walked into the girls' playroom, I watched Mo lean in and whisper to Edie, "You're my best favorite girl ever. I love you so much, Edie girl."

As my heart began beating outside of my chest in total awe (and an immeasurable amount of pride for Mo) like one of those lovestruck cartoon characters, I realized that the people who once told me how magical it would all be... well... they couldn't have been more right.