Tonight my baby woke up crying at 9:30. My heart leaped, I jumped up--your baby's cry can do that to you. I took her out of her crib and cradled her in my arms. I could just see her fuzzy, downy hair in the darkness. I rocked her back and forth, back and forth. She stopped crying within seconds and fell asleep again. I held her and breathed in her soft baby smell. Sometimes being a mom can be wonderful.

Will I ever like being a mom?

Before I got pregnant I had grandiose, well, maybe not grandiose, but definitely inflated ideas of what being a mom would be like. I knew in the back of my mind that it would be hard. But I thought it would be the kind of hard like writing a 20 page paper in college was hard, or like confronting a parent of one of my second grade students was hard; you hold your breath, brace yourself, then you just do it. No, being a mom is NOT like that at all. You can't hold your breath, you'll just die from suffocation. When Carissa was born my husband, Shane, handed her to me and that was it: I was a mom. I played the roll I was supposed to play--I fed her, changed her, burped her. I cuddled her and counted all of her fingers and toes. But it wasn't until about the end of the first week that I started to freak out. I could not get any sleep. It was torture, pure hell. I woke up every 2 hours for the first three weeks to feed her. The hormones kicked into high gear about week 2. I couldn't stop myself from thinking that this beautiful baby would somehow die in the crib when I wasn't watching. I loved her so much that it physically hurt. Now Carissa is 5 months old. The hormones have leveled out, she's sleeping more, I should have the mom think under control, right? No, it never gets easier. I had this thought yesterday: what if I never like being a mom? What if I grow to resent this child? That thought made my blood run cold. I didn't want to admit that I didn't like being a mom. I wasn't this angelic mother who kisses and cuddles her child all day long like I thought I would be. I'm a sleep deprived woman who is stuck with a baby who fusses all day long. I confess, yesterday, if they were offering refunds for babies at the hospital, I would have taken one in a heartbeat. And at the same time I am utterly in love with my Carissa. One smile, one laugh, one coo and I am done for. She has me, once again, wrapped around her tiny finger.