how's it like being a mom?

I was dumbfounded by a question posed at me almost 4 years back: How is it like being a mom? To be precise, it was when Bryan was one month old.

I really had no idea how to answer that question then. I had nothing in my mind except that breastfeeding was indeed a tough decision to live with. The first four weeks were marked with insecurity of whether I had latched the baby on correctly and if the baby had enough to drink. I didn't know how time passed coz there seemed no end to breastfeeding and there wasn't much sleep to talk about. For the first time in my life, I wasn't functioning normally, i.e. my mind could be thinking about something and my mouth would be uttering total nonsense.

So that much went through my mind when the question came along. But I didn't really dwell on the early troubles of breastfeeding. I smiled and said, "I'm still learning how to be a mom." Only that much sense came out of my mouth that morning.

Four years have lapsed since that question was first posed at me, and I won't say I can asnwer the question well yet. I'm still learning how to be a mom each day. A good one. A responsible one. Sometimes, it backfires and I become a not-so-nice one who screams and yells at my children. And believe me, the learning curve was great when I suddenly switched from a full time working mom to one toddler with help from grandparents and a maid to a stay at home mom with a baby and a toddler to care for, minus all the help. Luckily, my mom helped a lot during the transition period. Yeah - so great is a mom's love. It never ends even when your child is thirty-something and even when your child herself is a mom too. That's one thing about being mom... Will I ever be that kind of mom one day when the situation calls for it?