All that being said, I wanted to share the story of my journey to motherhood. Some of you who know me know most of this, but I think going back through it will help me stop apologizing for it. I never wanted kids. I wasn't one of those little girls who played house, always rocking a little baby doll while kissing my "husband" goodbye. I often role-played male characters. My brother and I were Batman and Robin, wild animals in the forest, or two fix-it-guys (it was a wonder we never stuck a screwdriver in an electrical outlet, though we did dismantle an old adding machine once, and people are probably still finding parts in my father's old apartment...) I went through school, first as the "smart girl" then as "the artist." I was going to do something Important with my life.

I went to college, and met The Guy. An art degree didn't afford a lot of immediate opportunity and I didn't know where I wanted to go, so after graduation I tagged along while my Guy got his graduate degree. We got married. We partied. We made money. We had a hell of a lot of fun. We insisted we were never having children.

Time passed. I approached the age of 30 and suddenly I had this very real, very physical desire to have a child. It was kind of scary, but kind of exciting. I never believed that biology was destiny, or in the Biological Clock, but here it was. I also felt that I wanted the experience. I've tried a lot of things in my life, and am always open to new experiences, though Motherhood is one that you can't just decide not to do again if you don't like it. In many ways I felt (and still feel) totally unprepared for motherhood, not having had all those years to work up to it.

Childbirth is something the childless take for granted. For me, it was the most empowering, intense experience I have ever been through. Creating life is the stuff of myth and magic, and it is a much more profound undertaking than I ever knew or acknowledged.

Now that Lily is here, I still have moments where I mourn who I was, and don't quite feel comfortable in my new skin. I freeze when people ask me "what I do," since I have chosen not to work outside the home for the time being. I always follow "staying home with Lily" with a "but..." I am pursuing freelance design work because I enjoy it, not because I feel I have to, and I still feel I need to be recognized as a creative individual for whom motherhood is just one aspect. I was not in a "career" mode due to our moving around anyway, so I didn't have anything to go back to. I want to enjoy these few short years of babyhood and give Lily as much of myself as I can. Motherhood seems to be the extremes of selfishness and selflessness. I still have terribly mixed feelings about motherhood and about my choices, and I wish we lived in a society where I didn't believe the hype and feel somehow lesser as an individual or intellectual because of choosing to have a child. I want to revel in it right now, knowing that it is a temporary state (not being a mother, but being totally engulfed by motherhood). Pregnancy, while not enjoyable for me, was fascinating. Childbirth needs knowledgeable, empowered women to speak up and take their births back from the medical establishment. Motherhood needs us to be involved, instinctual, and interested.

The bottom line is, when I look at Lily and she smiles at me, I know that I made the right choice and that nothing else matters. I get to share my life with this new little person, which is absolutely terrifying and absolutely the most sublime thing in the universe, all at once. It is what it is, and is not a judgement or indictment of anything anyone else has chosen to do. I couldn't possibly have explained all this to myself before I was a mother, nor could I have convinced the younger me that it has immense value. And in the long view, it is just a brief period in my life; however it is a very intense one in which I need to be totally absorbed, without apology and without regret.