becoming a mom

Lately Anastasia has begun to distinguish among people. More specifically, she's beginning to notice a difference between the two main categories of humans in her world: "mom" and "not mom." 

For a lot of parents, I hear, this stage is frustrating because she's less and less willing to be comforted by anyone who falls into the category of "not mom." Babies who could once be passed off to someone else for a while become more clingy. Moms get more tired as they become more in demand.

That's the reaction I expected to have, anyway. I was tired when Anastasia wanted to be held all the time; I thought it would be even harder when she insisted that I be the one to hold her.

But my expectations were--as is so often the case--completely wrong. The truth is, I love this stage.

I've spent a lot of time in my life with babies and little children. I'm familiar with the pattern: you play with the baby until it gets fussy or cries, and then you pass it off to mom. I never realized how strange it would feel when suddenly I was the one people were passing the fussy baby off to. (How does one know what to do at that point, anyway?) But even stranger was the moment when somebody passed her to me--and she stopped crying. Just like that. She stopped crying because I was holding her.

Which is something I've never experienced before.

But I guess it's only one of the first of the amazing things that happen when you cross the barrier into that magical, unique, one-woman category of "mom."