Multi-tasking Momma

For those of you who can't handle TMI (too much information) read no further.

So technically the moment you conceive you are a mother and then the moment you give birth your a mother too. But technically becoming a mother and then really feeling like you are a mother are two vastly different things. I have recently found that there are moments in life which make you truly realize and finally feel that you are a mother. While the past two months have held many of those moments there are three which stand out to me in stark contrast to the rest.
The first time I knew I was a mother I was looking at Addison in her isolet. They had just wheeled her in from doing one of those required "exams" that in my mind took way too long and made me anxious by not being able to see what exactly was going on. When I looked over at her I noticed her eyes. They were watery and while she wasn't crying at the moment I knew she had been. At that moment my heart broke and I wanted to cry too because I knew she had been in pain. It took everything I had to not start bawling myself. It was then that I KNEW I was a mother.
The second incidents is really a combination of many moments. It is wanting so desperately to grab the precious few minutes of sleep that you finally have and not being able to. Why can't you go to sleep when the baby is asleep...finally. It's because you have what I have dubbed "Mommy ears." That's right no matter how badly you want NOT to hear you hear every little sigh, movement, and cry no matter how brief it is. And while these sounds do not require your attention or action you hear them non the less. These new Mommy ears in combination with the constant worry that your new precious little one will somehow smother, in the blankets that are so tightly swaddled around her that she resembles a very neatly folded burrito, let me know for the second time that I had defiantly become a mother.
Now for the culminating experience of my discovering that I am a mother which occurred yesterday. I had gone out with my girlfriends for an early dinner and was back at the house where I threw Addison in the bathtub, washed her up, dressed her in her pajamas and glanced at the clock. I had just a few minutes to go until I needed to get to Young Women's yet there were three things which needed addressing before I left and there wasn't enough time to tackle them one at a time. (Ryan is underway and thus I only had two hands to accomplish this all with.) So last night I found myself feeding Addison in her car seat, while calling my sister back, all while sitting on the toilet taking care of business (this is the TMI part). And sitting there I suddenly realize exactly what all I was doing, I don't think I've ever multi-tasked so completely before, and I knew then that I was a mother.