My Baby

Wolfgang is the dude who made me a mom.

I’ll never forget the moment I realized I was pregnant. I had just turned 20 and had been vomiting every morning for an hour before heading to work, and to be perfectly honest….had just lost my virginity. Maybe we will talk about that another time.

I was sadly undereducated in sex ed (had managed to avoid it not once, but FIVE TIMES in middle and high school). I knew the logistics but there was a disconnect between the act and the result.

Yes, I was sheltered. Shut it. I’m still kind of a prude.

But the second I knew there was someone in there, I was terrified. I barely knew how to take care of myself, let alone another tiny human who would need me.

Pregnancy for me meant my whole body inflated like a balloon. I gained 100 pounds, was sick most of the first 5 months, ate Caesar salads for nearly every meal, and had to have several scary tests to make sure he was OK in there (amniocentesis is no joke, and that needle is the size of a small PVC pipe).

Labor and delivery was…well, it was interesting. I was a model student in the birthing class I took with my mom, but nothing really prepares you for how intense it can be for a small human to exit your body through an opening that really shouldn’t stretch that far.

I had a really ambitious birth plan that I’m pretty sure was thrown out the window when Wolfgang decided to make his entrance 2 weeks after my estimated due date and I JUST WANTED HIM OUT.

Ahem.

He’s been a great kid, for the most part.

There was the time he went to the hospital when he was just about 2 with a heart condition that was so scary, they came into the PICU where we stayed for 2-1/2 weeks to remind me every day that it’s possible that day would be his last day on earth.

Then there was the time he ran into the wall and split his lip all the way through, and all the way up into his nose.

There was the time he corrected his preschool teacher’s solar system diorama (Mars and Mercury were switched) and they told him he couldn’t be in preschool and moved him up to kindergarten.

The time he got the wind knocked out of him in football and he was really still for a really long time and I thought he had died. My whole world stopped.

The time he was so mad at me, he slammed our front door and the glass panels all shattered.

The time I caught him lying on the floor, reading to his baby sister through her baby gate at 1am so she would go to sleep and not wake the rest of the household up.

And now, as this school year wanes, we head into the last year of his public school. The last year I can call him my baby, and fuss over him. The last year he will still be my child, and not yet an adult.

Yes, I am crying while I write this.

I am so proud of him and who he has become. He is smart and will go out of his way to help his classmates with their work (sometimes at the expense of turning his in). He is a hard worker, and just got his very first job so he can pay his own cell phone bill (HALLELUJAH). He is kind to his sister, even when she has a thousand questions for him. He is polite, often to the point of formal. He will help our neighbors move furniture or rocks or take care of their chickens with absolutely no hesitation.

He is a fabulous human being, the growth of whom I can take only the slightest fraction of credit (if I can take any credit at all). He is humble, he is gentle, and I am so glad I got to spend most of his first 18 years with him.

I am absolutely devastated that my time being his momma is coming to an end.

Checking his homework and making sure his unruly cowlick is pasted down. Sorting his rather large selection of socks. Listen to him hum the trumpet part of whatever song the band is working on. Pretend I can help him with his math homework (I haven’t been able to actually help him since he was in the 6th grade). Bug him to clean his room. Worry when he doesn’t come home when he says he will.

But I had my time. I had 18 years to put in all the good things and encourage him and teach him and help him and do my very best to show him how to be a better human than I am. As a parent that is the ultimate goal; that they go out into the world and are better people than you.

Despite my tears (seriously, bawling as I write this) I cannot WAIT to see what he does as an adult. He is going to conquer the world in whatever he chooses to do.

And I still have one more year to try and mother him enough to carry me through.