Motherhood.

It has flipped my world upside down, sideways and every way in between. It is wonderful, exciting, heartbreaking, stressful, monumental, tiring, amazing and a slew of other adjectives.

It is giving your heart and soul entirely to a tiny human being, who screams in your face, pulls your hair and poops on your sheets…then smiles at you and laughs when you walk into a room. It is the heart-swelling feeling when he watches you wherever you go and is happiest in his mommy’s arms.

It is days — weeks – without sleep, followed by improvement little by little; until one night he sleeps for seven hours straight. And then, you inevitably wake him up from that peaceful slumber by sticking your face in his face, because how can that be? Seven hours? He must have stopped breathing. (And that thought? Is terrifying.)

It is a constant guessing game. When you figure things out (what he loves, what he hates, how he likes to go to sleep), you feel like a rock star. And then, just when you’ve got it all down, he goes and changes things up again.

It is the little things becoming your favorite things: bath time, putting lotion on chunky thighs. The first smile of the morning. A little knit cap covering downy fuzzy duckling hair.

It is taking pride in small milestones, like grabbing a toy, or rolling over. It is looking forward to the next milestone, then missing the previous ones because they’re just growing up so fast. It’s wondering how your tiny, wrinkly infant suddenly seems so big.

It is a million firsts — a first bath, a first smile, a first pumpkin.

It is missing the small, quiet moments with your husband that fall to the wayside during the early weeks in favor of tending to the cries of a little someone. It is falling asleep on the couch, rather than with your arms wrapped around each other. It is sleeping on opposite sides of the bed when that little someone takes over the middle at 4 a.m.

And then, it’s the reconnecting. The bewilderment you share over creating that little someone and the mutual love and admiration you feel for them. It is making time for each other again as parenthood becomes more of a routine and rediscovering the crook of each other’s arm, the curve on their back when you become the big spoon. It is the realization that you’re in this together and together, you can do anything. Even raise a child.

Motherhood is chaos. It is magic. It is insanity.

It is love.

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