Tay's 15

Wow. So it is really true. I now officially have a 15 year old daughter. I always heard nightmare stories about what it is like to have a teenage daughter, and I will confess it scares me. I’m not saying we won’t have some patchy times ahead, but for the moment there is an incredible sense of excitement that comes with this particular day.

As a mother on any one of the (hopefully) many birthdays I get to celebrate with my daughters, I always find myself flashing back to the moment she was born, with all the intense emotions that were part of that particular space in time.

With Taylor being my first born I have to say the strongest feeling I had was complete and utter fear. I was the poster child for that deer in the headlights phenomenon. I had no idea what lay ahead and I was putting a lot of faith in the notion that God doesn’t give us more than we can handle.

Just after midnight I woke up from a new kind of pain. I remember repeating in my head, “This is it. I can do it. I can do it. I can do it.” As if saying it would somehow convince me it was true.

Having an emergency c-section proved to be a blessing because I realized early on, those, oh so tiny little things called contractions were my idea of total and complete hell on earth. Truly, there is nothing, to this day, that I can imagine hurting more than those (my apologies to anyone that is reading this with plans to give birth in the future).

It’s funny. I remember wondering when the moment would be that I felt as if I knew my child, really knew her. When she would sound familiar, feel familiar. It happened faster than I ever thought it would. It was in her very first cry as my doctor ever so gently slapped Tay on her fanny.

Her voice, although it should have been unfamiliar, was incredibly familiar. I knew her instantly. And from that moment on I was able to hear Tay’s voice anywhere she was, and know she was mine. My sweet little soul that somehow stumbled into my life 15 years ago.