The love?....It's bigger!

My mother sent me a message today letting me know that she had been reading thru old blog posts of mine.  She recalled a specific post I wrote on Mother's Day of this past year (read it here: Mother's Day 2010 Post) and suggested I revisit it.

In this post I had included a quote that kind of confirmed why I wanted to be a mother - keep in mind this is while I was still pregnant and hadn't actually been a mother yet. 

"I had always wanted children. Partly, I wanted someone else to be more important than me; myself was a burdensome thing to keep carrying around. But I'd been missing that Self since my daughter's birth. I hadn't know it would be so eclipsed by the constant worry - had she burped, slept, peed? ("Sleep when she sleeps," the doctor said. I couldn't. I was too stunned. There were moments in those early days that when she cried, I cried too.) But that day I saw her from the window of the bus, I almost yelped aloud - not just with worry, with love. Minutes later I sat on the front stoop, and when the babysitter pushed the carriage around the corner, I felt a huge billowing of love that sat like a gigantic, soft helium balloon on my shoulders. I didn't know a person could feel that love, it was so large. But then, a few weeks later, I watch my little daughter wake from her nap, kick her little feet. And-whoosh!-that feeling of love grew exponentially. This kept happening as the weeks went by, and each time I was amazed. How could love be this big? That enormous, soft helium balloon got bigger and higher, until my love filled the skies. Boundless, as they say."



- Elizabeth Strout, author


The love that this author is describing seems unimaginable, but I assumed I had a pretty good idea of what motherhood would be like and how much I would love my child.  I absolutely adore children, so of course, I would absolutely love my own kid. 

Not....even....close.

My little one is almost eight weeks old.  He hasn't taken his first steps or said his first words or climbed onto a school bus or learned to read or gone to college yet.  However, the pride and love I feel towards him already is so much bigger than I imagined before I became a mother.  I look forward to all those milestones but at the same time I want time to stand still when I get to see him smiling in the morning or when I see him start to notice faces and things around him or when I just simply feel his weight on me when he sleeps on my chest.  I am finally feeling what is being described in Elizabeth Stout's words.  I thought I knew the 'boundless' love that I would feel when I became a mother.  That love that I had imagined?....it's bigger!