As I sit in my plush glider chair, resting my aching feet on the matching ottoman, I drop my head wearily back into the cushion.  The dim light casts shadows upon the nursery walls, and I close my eyes to listen to a reassuring sound.  “Ts-ts-ts-ahh, ts-ts-ts-ahh,” my infant son nurses from my breast.  I glance down at his sparse, silky blond hair and admire his perfect little fingers as they delicately grasp my sweater.  Only five months ago he announced his world debut with a hearty cry and commanding presence.  The experience of our first moments together already fades from my memory like a fantastic dream.  I know that once he finishes his meal he will drift into a blissful sleep as I lay him down for the night.  It wasn’t always this simple.  I learned more over the last five months than in my last year of medical school and endured more harrowing, sleepless nights than I did on call as an intern.  I smile now as I recall the traumatic joy of each precious second.

I insisted on coming home the day after Alex was born.  As a doctor, I didn’t want to spend any more time in the hospital than I had to, thinking it was for women who didn’t have the comfort of medical knowledge.  That night I discovered that medical knowledge was the furthest thing from comfort.  I felt like I was sleeping on egg shells, hyper vigilant to the faintest sound of distress.  I awoke repeatedly to warn my husband against rolling over the baby in bed, only for him to remind me that Alex was sleeping soundly in the bassinet.  At one point I arose to his cries and noticed that his arm seemed limp.  I frantically shook my sleep deprived husband awake to notify him, desperate for reassurance.  Despite his brilliance as a doctor, gathering his wits upon waking is not one of my husband’s strengths.  “Okay, calm down.  Is there any juice left in his fingers?” he muttered.  Feeling utterly hopeless I burst into tears, convinced my husband had lost his mind.  Looking back on that night I understand how overwhelmed and isolated single mothers must feel.  I believe that sense of powerlessness when one cannot soothe her crying infant must be universal to mothers of all cultures and backgrounds.

Of all the things I know now that I didn’t before becoming a mother, would any of them have made a difference?  If I knew that a baby can poop with projectile force across a room would it have prevented me from getting it in my hair?  If I knew that snaps were so much easier to fasten than buttons would I have requested them exclusively?  If I knew how pacifiers tend to mysteriously disappear would I have stocked them on every flat surface in the house?  If I knew how many countless gallons of water I would have to drink and hours I would spend pumping at work, would I still have chosen to breast feed?  I don’t know that I would have done anything differently had I any foresight into these life secrets.  It seems that part of the magic of raising a child is in discovering them.  Considering how my medical training only heightened my anxiety when something didn’t go as expected, knowing what to expect as a new mother may in some ways be a curse.  I read the leading books on getting baby to sleep through the night and establish a comfortable routine, but apparently Alex did not.  He set his own pace and determined his habits with blatant disregard for my agenda.
There is one thing that I know now that I wish I knew before becoming a mother.  That is exactly how boundless a mother’s love is.  All my life I heard women describe the wonder of becoming a mother.  To say I never listened is an understatement.  The concept of motherhood existed completely outside my reality, in a world so far from me it may as well have been another dimension.  I always appreciated my mother, but I never understood what it meant to love as a mother.  Looking back it suddenly all makes more sense.  From the time I was a young child up until I delivered my own child my mother's love comforted me, lifted me up and carried me.  She sat in the delivery room with me while I suffered painful contractions.  I cannot imagine how much more painful it was for her to see her daughter endure them.  When my husband and I dozed off, she remained awake.  She said, "Even though you are having a baby, you are still my baby and I have to take care of you."  

I think of that night now as I look at my son.  As a mother I may not know the meaning of life, but I have certainly discovered its value.  That is something that years of training to be a physician cannot teach.  Just as I have learned a new sense of love, I must now learn a new sense of patience.  I realize that Alex may never understand my love for him.  He may not know why I worry, or why I say or do certain things.  Only in becoming a mother did I learn this; how can I expect to teach him something that no one could teach me?

In medicine it is not as important to know information as it is to know what to do with information.  If I knew how it felt to be a mother, would I have done anything differently?  Maybe I would have worried more about myself, driving more cautiously and wearing a jacket more often.  But my mother would argue that it is a mother’s job to worry.  She took that burden upon herself as I will take it upon myself for Alex.  I guess her reward is in being his grandmother.  That is a joy that I hope to one day know.