This moment right here causes memory loss. It isn't really amnesia, it is more a sort of delusion.
There is no other reason, event, or time that would inspire me to say sure, sign me up to vomit, pee every 20 minutes, spread my hips, stretch my belly, hold a bowling ball on my pubic bone, crowd my stomach and push stomach acid into my esophagus, press on my diaphragm so all I can take are shallow breaths, swollen ankles and hands and labia, split me open, push out my insides wedding dresses for big busts ... , face potential major surgery, introduce my vagina to 8 pounds or so coming through it, poop with an audience, bleed for several weeks, rearrange my insides, fearfully learn how to pee and poop all over again, smell like sour milk for months, give up on sleep...
All for a cheese covered prize that will scream if I don't get my boob in their mouth fast enough.
I look at a picture like this one and say "pshah, that was no big deal, I can totally do that again. I want a vernix baby too!" The puke, the poop, the goo, the pain, the work, all of it just fades when you breathe in a new baby. Or see a picture of one.
Science has proven that mommy brain is a thing, we actually lose brain cells when we have children. And even better, those kids leave some of their own cells in our heads too.
I am evidence of this. How else can it be explained that I see this picture and think I miss that moment.
It isn't really that I've forgot how hard it was, I remember. I remember very well. But the baby has bewitched me into thinking it was no big deal, practically a walk in the park...
Just give me a baby!
Babies are magicians. They make ovaries twitch and uteri set up a baby bed on the spot.
This moment is everything.
Why do we do it?
This moment and so many more after it are why. Even if we know we can't or won't be doing it again, this moment makes all of what it took to get there so small, so insignificant, so totally worth it.
A delusion that it was no big deal, not that hard, didn't turn us inside out. Because in this moment, nothing else matters.
This beautiful image was posted on Instagram by OzBreastfeeding from Courtney Benno. Such a beautiful photo.
So whose ovaries are twitching at the sight of this?
~Jessica Martin-Weber
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