On Becoming a Mom

The journey to motherhood was quite easy and uneventful for me. Stuart and I had just celebrated our 2 year wedding anniversary, we were stationed at Nellis AFB in Las Vegas, NV and we had our first dog, Turbo. Life was good. Stuart was obviously working and I had a fun job (with a not so fun boss) at the Arts & Crafts Center on base. We were quite proudly-DINKS (dual income no kids).
All off that came screaming to a halt when at the end of January I realized I was late. Let me explain a bit here: we were on birth control. No, not just a condom, but actual, prescribed by a doctor birth control-Nuva Ring to be exact. Silly me was tired of taking a pill everyday and thought that this handy little ring would help. WRONG. I had just started using it at the beginning of December and I in fact got pregnant sometime around December 15 (too much info??). I took two home pregnancy tests, both coming back positive and then got a blood test the next day. When that came back positive as well, Stuart did that right thing and bought me my first ever roses.

41 weeks and 2 days later, we sat in a private room on the L&D floor at Wilford Hall. Let's just say I was very ready to not be pregnant anymore. 18 hours after starting the pitocin, after 2 extra "bumps" to my epidural, and 2 hours and 45 minutes of pushing, this beautiful little boy was born and I was a M-O-M.

Tyson Clarence Doss
17 September 2005
9 lbs 4 oz
21.5 in

A brief nine months later, I had another one of those late months. I chalk this up to baby brain. No one in there right mind gets pregnant 9 months after delivering their first child, unless that person is me...

Apparently when you have sex, you get pregnant. Someone should have told me this!

A mere 38 weeks later, Stuart and i found ourselves in a very familiar setting. Well, except this time we were at United Regional Hospital in Wichita Falls. And we also had a 16 month old waiting at home with no idea the bomb we were about to drop on his world.

Lucky for me, Tucker decided that he wanted to make his debut a little more dramatically and after 12 hours of labor went in for a C-Section. Less than 30 minutes later, I was a M-O-M, again.

Tucker Patton Doss
1 February 2007
9 lbs 14 oz
21.5 in

Here are some things that have taken on a whole new meaning since becoming a mom:

• Showers. No longer can I sit under the very warm spray of water for 10 minutes. No longer can I take my time shaving, making sure not to cut any major arteries in my legs. No longer can I exfoliate while the steam from the shower surrounds me. Now, I'm lucky to get 5 minutes of shower time without a head poking in to say hi, no longer to I worry myself with shaving-that's why jeans were invented!, and exfoliating is now Greek to me.
• Eating. When the boys were young, I affectionately called this civilized experience-grazing. I would grab snacks in between feedings and do my best to muster up something edible for Stuart somewhere near the appropriate eating times. Now that the boys are bigger, eating is an event.
  
• Dressing. Long gone are the days of "real" clothes. "Mommy" clothes are totally the norm and they consist of t-shirts, pajama pants, yoga pants, athletic shorts, and flip-flops. Yessss.
• Decorating. When we didn't have kids, I would laugh at our friends with kids because their houses were completely over run with "kid things." I vowed to never let such a silly thing as a child get in the way of good decorating. Right. Let's just say I am all over kid friendly houses.
• Sleep. Hello!! What happened to you?
  
• Socializing. Before we had kids, we went out with friends, went camping, had people over, went to movies...ahh, those were the days. Now, I am truly frightened to leave our home. Our home is safe. It has all the boys' toys. It has diapers and wipes and extra underwear and little potties and extra clothes and I can walk around with glasses on and hair un-brushed and no bra-why would I want to leave the house?

After all the dirty diapers, all the messy hands, all the thrown food, all the melt downs from not being able to have cookies for breakfast, all the sleepless nights, all the stuff-it really just boils down to: I am a M-O-M. And there is nothing better in the world.

I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you. --Gen 28:15